August summary: people power and beautiful places

Two faces of Britain were manifested in the first week of the month.

Inspirational in Paris, where team GB and Northern Ireland enjoyed a tremendous Olympics with some amazing athletic performances.

And despicable across the channel where riots in UK cities were led by far-right thugs, sparked, of all things, by the murders of three little girls in Southport. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said "To those who feel targeted because of the colour of your skin or your faith, I know how frightening this must be. I want you to know that this violent mob do not represent our country. We will bring them to justice". 

Under the same flag!

Swift justice was indeed delivered with hefty jail sentences and a huge police presence. But what was heartening was the huge anti-racism protests by thousands of British people, who came out onto the streets to counter the minority of cowardly individuals who had been emboldened by extremists, who had seized the opportunity to fan the flames of far-right hatred and violence on the back of the most awful tragedy and the spread of misinformation. The show of unity was a welcome reminder that the rioters don't speak for the country. 

The brief episode, which led many overseas governments to advise their citizens to avoid travel to the UK, and the ludicrous boss of X (Twitter), Elon Musk, to tweet that civil war was inevitable, thus came to an end, highlighting the true nature of the British people.

Source The Times 9th August

Cornwall is like another planet. We heard of the riots only via the media, although the closest rioting was just across the border in Plymouth.

On the second weekend of the month Barbara and I headed to Great Britain's most southerly area, the Lizard Peninsula, which was once a geological enigma before the discovery of tectonic plates, as its rocks are very much different from those of the rest of Cornwall (posting of 25 July 2010). We walked between Mullion and Poldhu Coves. Between the two, Polurrian Cove marks the geological boundary between Cornwall and the Lizard, the rocks on the north of the cove being Devonian slates, and on the south hornblende schists of the Lizard (posting of 13 March 2011). 

Polurrian Cove

The impressive south coast cliffs between Mullion and Poldhu

An early morning walk to Mullion

Mullion Cove harbour

The Marconi monument
near Poldhu Cove

Apart from its beauty this is an interesting stretch of coast line, as it is famous as the location of the Poldhu Wireless Station, Guglielmo Marconi’s transmitter for the first transatlantic radio signal. It was common belief that radio waves could only travel in straight lines, so could not navigate the earth's curvature, but Marconi was determined to disprove this. After building a transmitter at Poldhu, Marconi and two assistants travelled to Newfoundland and on 12 December 1901 they received an extremely short signal from Poldhu (three dots representing the code letter 's').

In 1912 Marconi was given a free ticket to travel on the new ocean liner RMS Titanic but was too busy at the time and ironically travelled on the RMS Lusitania (torpedoed off the Old Head of Kinsale on 7 May 1915).  Although many lives were lost when the Titanic sank on 15 April 1912, those saved had radio to thank as the Marconi Station at Chatham, Massachusetts was able to alert RMS Carpathia to pick up survivors.

Cornwall undoubtedly has some of the world's finest scenery, but so does Switzerland's Jungrau region, where Jon and family spent a few days before moving on to Lake Garda in Italy. There was some nostalgia in seeing the grandchildren enjoying the magnificent view of Lake Brienz from Schynige Platte, as it was from here that I commenced my first ever hike, the stunning 16km trail to First. 

It was an unforgettable hike, even though it was 63 years ago!  It was part of the itinerary on my school trip to Switzerland, my first time out of England. It's hard to imagine that back in 1961 a school could even contemplate taking a party of 70 school children on a long, hard hike such as this. There were no trainers then, we all had leather shoes, no sun protection and carried no water! But after 6 hours we somehow made it to First, and then the chairlift (now a gondola) down to Grindelwald and the train back to Interlaken.

Barbara and I must have travelled to and fro by train between Truro and London Paddington hundreds of times, but only occasionally do we take the final few miles from Truro to the terminus at Penzance. It is a fascinating journey as it takes us through the old mining area of Camborne-Redruth and a landscape dotted by the ruined 19th century engine houses, We did this on August 26th, then walked the 3 and a half miles from Penzance to Mousehole for our 57th Anniversary lunch at one of our favourite restaurants, 2 Fore Street.

The busy fishing harbour at Newlyn, between Penzance and Mousehole

1967 and 2024