Around St Ives and to Lelant and back

We spent two nights in St Ives, staying at Chy-Roma Guest House, five minutes walk uphill from the station. We had a lovely room, with excellent views down to the harbour. The guest house reminded me of my Aunty Joan's house in Nottingham (only with a better view!) and then I remembered that Aunty Joan lived in Cornwall for a while. I later discovered that my memory that Aunty Joan lived in St Ives was false, but I can imagine her here. I liked St Ives - it has a long history as a fishing port (with the harbour protected by St Ives Head, or 'The Island') but in the more recent past it has been associated with arts and crafts and it has a cosmopolitan and artisan feeling.

One of our reasons for spending an extra day in St Ives was to visit the Barbara Hepworth Museum. Our daughter Helen is a student at Churchill College, Cambridge and they have a Barbara Hepworth sculpture there - much loved by the students and known as 'The Hepworth'. Its official name is 'Four-square (walk through)' and there is a similar sculpture in the garden of the Hepworth Museum (and another at Harvard) - the idea is indeed that you walk through it! The house and garden were packed with Hepworth sculptures, and had been restored to give a feeling of what it would have been like when Barbara Hepworth lived here; the inside of the house was actually destroyed by the fire that killed her in 1975. Barbara Hepworth had obviously felt very much at home in St Ives and she even looked like my Aunty Joan - uncanny! The Hepworth Museum is an outpost of the Tate St Ives. The main art gallery was closed for re-hanging, but this gave us the advantage of being able to visit the shop and cafe and to admire the unusual stained glass window (with no leading) without having to pay to get into the building.

After pasties for lunch we set off to walk to Lelant. It was slightly misty, but a most attractive walk, passing Porthminster Point, Carbis Bay and Carrack Gladden before reaching Porth Kidney Sands and turning inland across a golf course to Lelant. We had a cup of tea at the 'Old Station' then descended to the beach by the Hayle Estuary. From here there were excellent views across the estuary, but to get to the other side of it the South West Coast Path has to follow roads round Hayle Harbour. We returned to St Ives instead.

We were spoilt for choice for good eating places in St Ives, and on both the evenings ate at good seafood restaurants overlooking the harbour. I preferred the atmosphere at Alba, which is in the refurbished lifeboat station, but the food at Alfresco was also superb.

Following day