Tintagel Castle

So if you want to know how I spent my day today I only went back in time to a medieval castle to see where King Arthur was supposedly born.Needless to say...my day was AWESOME.

Tintagel Castle is nestled in the small village of Tintagel, England. In order to get there we had to take a train, then a taxi, then walk about 1,000 stairs up towards the castle. You might think that this is crazy, but it was SO worth it. I'll start with the train ride...

So the train was a cool "Harry Potter-esque" experience as we boarded at "Platform 4". The trains go really high into the air here in England and you find yourself going through bunches of trees that form a canopy over top of the train (almost like a tunnel made of BRIGHT green leaves). Once you make it out of these tunnels you have a panoramic view of the rooftops of England. It was an amazing sight.

Once we got to Bodington Parkway we took a taxi to Tintagel. Our taxi driver was a very nice old man who told us all about the culture of England. Apparently the taxi drivers must go through 2 years of training in order to have superb depth perception on the roads. This is extremely important because the roads are SO small in width and are winding paths in between about 7foot high hedges. It was definitely an adventure. Namely the part when we were stuck in the middle of the road because a herd of cows had broken through. It was nuts! The video was too good to not put it on here!

Once we got to the castle we had to walk (like I already said) about 1,000 steps. It was extremely tiring but once we got to the top of the "castle" (small parts of the castle walls are all that remain now) we got an AMAZING view of the ocean and coast of England, It's easily the most beautiful landscape I've ever seen.From the top of the castle we could see these caves along the shore down below and decided to venture down into them. They were called "Merlin's Caves" and MAN was it an adventure. You can only get to it if the tide is low, and lucky for us it was. Inside the cave was what you would expect...dripping, darkness, and crazy birds that were mad at us for being in there so far. It was an experience I'll never forget.After seeing all of the sights in the caves, shore, and castle we finally climbed ALLLLL the way back up to where the main town was. We went into a pub dating back to the 14th century called "Ye Olde Malthouse" to get out of the rain. We then had the same taxi driver drive us back to the train station and we finally just got home to Plymouth.It was an amazing day. I can't even begin to describe how beautiful it was. I'll post a picture on here, but I doubt it will give the place any justice.

Tomorrow is my first day at the elementary school!!!! I'll let you know about that tomorrow! Until then..

Cheers!

Tara