A shimmering azure blue sky day in Penzance etc.

My third day in the UK started with a morning in Totnes where I had a delicious breakfast of tiny proportions at a cafe with a Santa Fe meets Saint Tropez meets Santa Cruz vibe where they were options like chia kiwi pudding and avocado toast and there were actual wooden swings for seats in the window facing the street and umbrellas out in the back where it seemed like the long seats were made of adobe. I did a terrible sketch there but really enjoyed listening to the various conversations around me and sensing that all of humanity just cares about the same issues everywhere. As always there was at least one seagull looking for the stray food scrap nearby.

I wandered from here down to the market filling the town square, watched a juggler and thought of how there were probably jugglers there over the past centures, and from there found a gorgeous cafe with colorful tables right behind the Totnes library. I noticed little clay human sculptures within the grates at along the alleyway - a mini art project? Changes by David Bowie was playing inside, connecting me to the documentary I had watched on the plane over. There were parents with little kids everywhere and hardly anyone was looking at devices.

I walked out the cafe and was standing on a corner debating if I could get to my airbnb faster from there when I realized I had been standing in fresh dog poop. The owner of the pub came outside to clean it up and gave me a bunch of paper towels to get it off my sandal. I took this as a sign it was time to leave Totnes and take the train to Penzance so I made it back to the airbnb on Smithfields and had a wonderful conversation with Margi the host (who really appreciated the candle) and dragged my very loud rolling suitcase the 20 minutes to the train station. I was so tired on the train that I fell asleep for an hour and then doodled in my sketchbook, read a bit of my book (a novel called The Art of the Lie which is a pseudo mystery story taking place in 18th century London), aimlessly scrolled the world news with dismay and horror as usual and then arrived in Penzance.

I wandered around Penzance looking for a bite to eat and a place to get some breakfast food because the new airbnb didn’t provide breakast, just a toaster and refrigerator and hot pot, so I found some decaf instant coffee, muesli and milk and boarded the bus for Newbridge. Brook Cottage is beautiful, with a stream gushing and burbling right outside my little cabin and enormous plants (Gunnera) growing in the stream. The leaves are literally 7 or 8 feet across. Ros greeted me and introduced one of her cats, Grayson, who immediately parked himself in my lap as soon as I sat down and because he was like a small leopard, I let him stay there for a bit.

After a good night’s sleep I set off for Penzance where I waited for the bus connection to Mousehole (pronounced Mouzil but it’s so much more fun to say Mouse hole) and once there, found a gorgeous cafe spot called the Orange Cafe where I had probably the healthiest breakfast I have ever eaten with steamed spinach, black beans, avocada, hash browns, aioli alongside a decaf americano with oat milk. I pulled out my sketchbook and tried to sketch the scene which predictably kept changing with various families and young children coming into the picture but never staying still enough for me to draw them. One girl near my table was steadily and somewhat sulkily gradually pulling nasturtium and ivy vines off the wall despite her parents telling her not to. She was bored and the vines were helpless. A white butterfly was visiting some of the flowers against the wall and her parents kept trying to get her to notice the butterfly but she was hard at work with her vine project. It was so nice to see people talking and interacting with one another and not looking at phones. The sky was blue with whisps of clouds and I felt very lucky to be there. I struck up a conversation with a woman named Georgia who had biked to the cafe and I asked her about biking in Cornwall. She said she has been biking all around Cornwall (no electric assist!) and had heavy paniers on the back and a gel seat cover. She told me that if I was ever to do a long bike trip I should use chamoix cream to make it more comfortable and to use the National Cycle Way to map a safe route on the roads which often have no shoulder. My experience with British roads is that none of them are safe for biking, but apparently a few are here. https://www.walkwheelcycletrust.org.uk/find-a-route-on-the-national-cycle-network/?location=null&distance=null&routetype=null

I left the cafe and wandered a bit around Mousehole, finding a tiny gallery up a tiny street where I talked with the gallery owner about some of the artists represented there and then I decided not to go on to Lamorna but to head to Newlyn on the way back to Penzance and see art there and maybe get some lunch. There were some interesting plaques around Mousehole and also a garden full of inspiring messages relating to our current political challenges. The signs said: “Be Kind” “Be Curious” “The Wise Seek Peace, Others Start Wars”, “Act Out of Love Not Anger”, “Stand Up to Racism”, “Destroy Denial, Not Rainforests”, “Genocide and Starvation Are Never Acceptable”.

I launched off on the path along the ocean towards Newlyn feeling grateful for my two cat sitters who are looking after my fragile cat back home so that I can have this series of adventures and inspiration. I wandered into a gallery in Newlyn and struck up a conversation with the owner who had lived on Nantucket for 23 years running a gallery there, importing Cornish artworks. He wanted to talk about politics in the U.S. and how he was going to let his visa expire because of how he was treated coming into the U.S. recently. I asked him if he knew Clare Bowens who has a vibrant instagram account I follow where she does reels that demonstrate her process of mixing colors and making a painting come together. It turned out her studio was about ten minutes away up a very steep hill. I wandered up there thinking maybe she had a gallery that was open but a woman outside said she might be away and I should climb up to her house to see if she was there. I normally wouldn’t just knock on a stranger’s door but knowing what a friendly person she was I climbed up the stairs to her house and discovered she wasn’t there but lived in one of the most spectacular spots imaginable. What a view!

I headed towards the Newlyn Art Gallery and stopped into a shop where a woman was working on a huge fish print. We had a great conversation about her process and how she teaches it to children and about the state of fishing and fish in the Penzance area (apparently there was a recent influx of thousands of huge octopus(es?) who were eating the lobsters out of the pots. She described that they puncture a hole in the lobster and secrete ink or something that kills the lobster and then they suck out the meat from every part of the lobster. It is kind of them to kill the lobster first! Just another reason to admire and be in awe of octopus. I had some ginger bread and water and sat looking out at the water and did some yoga stretches and a little sketch.

On the way from Newlyn to Penzance, I watched a man named Andy work on his rock towers. The rocks were so perfectly balanced that it seemed like magic and as if he and Andy Goldsworthy spoke the same language of the energy of stone. I asked him if he felt the energy in the rocks and he said he did often before he picked up one. He could tell which would work in his towers. I didn’t ask him if people had ever knocked them all down and just enjoyed that he was doing this. I wished I had had some coins to give him for the hat he had on the wall.

Once in Penzance I headed straight to the Penlee Museum to see some of the paintings by people who had worked in the Newlyn Art School in the late 1800’s. I was especially interested in the texture of paint using scraping off and palette knife to give the impression of reflections on the water and also of the artist Frank Bramley who was known for using a square brush to apply different variations of color to get a sense of glow.
After the museum I went to a cafe for another mini meal to work on my sketch of the two artists from Totnes (below)

I wandered down to the pound store (equivalent of the Dollar Store) to get some shampoo and then took the bus back to Newbridge. It seems jarring that the double decker buses keep hitting the tree branches which sounding like explosive cracks against the roof and that nobody trims these branches or maybe thinks of not using a double decker bus on these tree lined small roads? I feel bad for the trees getting pummeled throughout the day. I am happy to be back at this little oasis and to hear the much-needed rain falling outside. Tomorrow I will head to St. Just to walk and sketch. Probably a slow day since the Kurt Jackson foundation is closed until Tuesday morning. Don’t get me wrong, double-decker buses are fun, but not so much when they whack trees. Another full day of overhearing conversations, feeling connected despite being on my own here, loving the serendipity of travel and the throughlines of art and music that connects strangers.