Penryn! We got here in the afternoon after having spent the day at Land's End. The reason we ended up booking a hotel in Penryn was because I looked for "a cute town in Cornwall", and I was not disappointed:
In the middle of our walk we heard church bells starting to ring, and we could immediately tell it was an actual live bell ringing band (yes they are called bands :)) practising. I'd only seen Liam ring once, but it was mesmerising, so I asked if he wanted to go, and he said yes. :)
You see, the thing about bell ringing, is that if it's a smaller local tower, and the local band are having their usual weekly practise, they will always welcome a visting ringer to ring with them. (Kind of like swing dancing, where you can go and visit local dancing when you're travelling.) Especially if you have experience, because the local bands in small towns never have enough people at the same time who are skilled enough to ring the complicated stuff. And Liam, well ... He does have experience (he has a paper that says he's a lifetime member of some obscure ancient London bell ringing gang, and he's allowed to ring in an especially fancy church* or something like that. Not that he would nowadays because it's been so long since he was ringing actively, but still).
*I checked with Liam, it's Saint Paul's Cathedral. It is fancy, so I remembered correctly! :)
So Liam joined them for practise and I got to sit and watch them ring and I LOVE it. It is the nerdiest instrument and it's just so meditative and fascinating to watch. I've never tried it myself but I will at some point (it's just a bit of a faff to sort that out, given that a church bell tower really isn't an instrument that's very easy to come by).
And an hour or so later practise was over and we went out to resume our hunt for dinner. But slightly giddier than before. Gosh I loved how British this whole thing was - it almost beats the surprise cricket of 2018.
I like him!
We found dinner!
A cute pizza place.
The pizza was very good and the evening so warm that everyone there chose to sit outside even though it was late at that point. So nice.
And the we walked down to the harbour and had a look around before bed.
It was the best day of the whole summer. Maybe the whole year so far.
And this is when Liam has had enough of my photographing. :)
Alejandro Aranda | Pieces
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