TRURO — Despite what I wrote yesterday, I went back for some more family history research—but just for an hour or so. I realised that there were some burials for which I didn’t have the details and I couldn’t rationalise coming all this way and not attempting to get them.

After finishing at the record office, I vacated my parking space (the guesthouse has been very busy this week and I wasn’t confident of finding an empty space when I returned) and drove to the beach at St Agnes at Trevaunance Cove. Just a short distance fom Truro (about nine miles) but it gave me a chance to reaquaint myself with driving in Cornwall—took a few wrong turns, and made a couple of five-point turns.

St Agnes is a picturesque village on the west coast of Cornwall in what used to be a tin mining area. The streets are quite narrow neccessitating the use of a one-way system, but I managed to find the public carpark the second time round.
The beach is a mix of stone and sand and is apparently quite a good surfing beach. You were warned off getting to close to the cliffs at one end of the cove due to a recent rockfall and the prospect of more.
I had lunch at the beach before exploring the village on foot.

Once back in the car I decided to try and locate Wheal Coates, an old tin mine now maintained by the National Trust, but I was unfortunately unable to find the access road. So I decided instead to spend the rest of the afternoon seeing Newquay, but on the way I got sidetracked by a visit to Blue Hills Tin Streams. There you can see how tin used to be extracted from alluvial and mined tin-bearing ore. Blue Hills still produces tin on a much smaller scale than it did in the past, and uses the metal to produce souvenirs of Cornwall, one of which will be making its way to New Zealand.

After leaving Blue Hills I continued on to the end of the road for another view of the Cornish coast. You could just see around the headland into neighbouring Trevaunance Cove.
And that was the end of the day.

P.S. There was a car park waiting for me when I got back.