The day started well enough, with my leaving my self-catering cabin and taking a 9:00am bus to Redruth, where I planned to toss my big pack into a locker and hop a local bus to visit a copper and tin mine museum for an hour or two, and then take the 2:30pm train to St Austell and book a bed with the help of the onsite tourist info center.
First off, there are no lockers at the tiny Redruth station. So I lug the bag onto the bus and leave it with Andrew, the mine's helpful docent, while I tour the three mine facilities. Lug the bag back on the bus in plenty of time to catch the train. OK, inconvenient, but so far, so good.Then came my arrival at St Austell. I wanted to stop there overnight so I can go to The Lost Gardens of Heligan tomorrow before heading out of Cornwall for Devon the same day.
St Austell looks pretty big on a map. It's a relatively major rail stop and has a bus station across the parking lot. I pictured something like Bath, where I'd pull in by train, get help from the at-station TIC or, better yet, book at a B&B down the street. Leave my bag at the railway locker tomorrow while I took the day tour to Heligan, return to hop the train to my next destination, Plymouth. Easy.
Not.
There are no lockers at either the bus station or the train station. Since the terrorist attacks on the London subway, I'm told, the lockers are gone from all but the biggest stations. (So are the trash cans.) Damn. That had been a standby plan for future day touring. It also meant that I'd be schlepping 25 pounds on every step of my search for a bed in St Austell. And on another scorcher of a day.
Rather than being next door as I expected, the TIC for St Austell is two miles from the station. I'm feeling too cheap for a taxi, a bus doesn't run for half an hour, and using the TIC two miles away could mean even more backtracking to an actual lodging. I'd rather stay close to the train station, as I'm here only for the night.
No youth hostels are listed in the phone book, either--I found out that "hostel" also means a rest home, which, as one amused proprietor I called told me, didn't take overnight reservations.
I am hopeful when the clerks at the rail and bus stations say they think there are B&Bs a few blocks away, even though they don't know for sure where they are.
I set out in the direction of the B&Bs--and in defiance of physics, it is uphill no matter which way I turn. Strapped to my 25-pound pack, I break into a hot-faced sweat within five minutes and have no luck finding said establishments. Repeated requests from locals to point me to the streets that were supposed to have B&Bs scare up nothing but one B&B (booked) and another half a pint of sweat retracing my steps.
I head back to the train station, hot crabby and bothered, without a car, all by myself, relying on stupid public transportation that never leaves when I want it to, and stupidly entering this place without first finding a way to call into town beforehand. No nearby Internet access, no TIC that's near where people are likely to land in their city, not even a map of the city at the train or bus station.
All of which makes me hotter and crabbier and closer to wanting to cry. Waaah--I don't like this part of traveling alone, when the avenues of help are shut off or dry. And this pack is too damn heavy on a hot day. And I've mailed back the Ramblers hotel book to Norman because I didn't want the weight and I specifically wanted to go without the printed guides. Dumb dumb dumb. Damn damn damn.
OK. These feelings are familiar. It's scare. Plain and simple. Breathe. Remember what this whole trip is about. I know I have ideal lodging waiting for me--I just need clarity instead of confusion to get to it. I remind myself that I am in the right place at the right time, and that all of this is good. Yeah, right.
I ask for a definite lead from my intuition--make it really clear what direction I should go.
I am facing the first street out of the rail station, a shady downhill curve at the outskirts of town center. The elusive B&Bs are supposed to be to the left and behind me.
Movement catches my eye. A crow is flying straight down the road ahead and veering to the right over the trees.
"Follow it," I think. "Go that way. This is your lead."
"Stupid," I answer. "That's not a sign. It's a bird."
"It's the lead."
"This is irrational."
"OK. So it's irrational. Intuition is like that. Follow the hunch."
"This is irrational," I say aloud, "so it must be right."
As I head down hill, I notice the bird has flown over the yard of the big church that the bus clerk had pointed out as a landmark. Church people can help people find lodging. At least they used to. If anyone's there.
I climb the stone steps to the shadowed yard, still looking for what Crow had been trying to tell me. Across the street and now visible from my elevated position is the White Hart Hotel, home of St Austell ales.
"There. Check it out."
"Probably very expensive, by the looks of it. Hotels always are."
"Find out."
Out of more than 50 beds, they had only two rooms available tonight--both of them a double at £60, twice my target maximum rate.
"Can you do any better?" I ask the young man, Scott, behind the desk. I am breathing a little hard, and sweat is pouring down my forehead and into my eyes. Now that I've stopped walking and am inside a warm and still lobby, my overheated body is offloading liquid from every pore. I am sure I look like I used to after PE every day at school--beet red in the face, sodden hair flat to my head, a generally unflattering picture of physical fitness. I don't want to remove the pack if I need to keep moving, so I peel my paper fan out of my waist pack and breeze my face.
"No, sorry." Scott seems truly pitying of this woman who is wilting before him. "We've got the same rates throughout the year, so no seasonal differences. Maybe the Queens Hotel down the street."
He calls the Queens. No openings. Before we can go further in our interaction, he takes an incoming call for a reservation. It's from Switzerland and it turns exasperating for Scott. The caller can't locate the expiration date on his card in order to reserve a room. Scott patiently--and repeatedly--tells the caller how to read a credit card while he shares a rolled eye and a grin with me.
Then he starts explaining into the phone, "No, that's Exeter…400 miles away…a different county. No, I wouldn't know about that hotel--that's 400 miles from here. Yes. Yes. No. Thank--thankyo--yes, alri--that's right then, goo--no, not there, yes, goodbye then."
He finally manages to hang up and we are laughing. I am still fanning my face, but the sweat has dried, and I have managed to consolidate what fortitude I still have left. "Can you recommend any other hotel?"
I must still look rather pathetic. "Tell you what," he says, "I can give you the double room for £50, but that's the best I can do."
"I'll take it," I say with a flood of thanks. I dislodge my bag from my back as he takes my information and tells me that the cost includes a full breakfast.
"Cooked?"
"And continental--you can do both if you want." Score.
He carries my bag up two flights of stairs while I plod up behind him. Score.
The room smells of flowers and has a bathtub the size of a wading pool and a big, deliciously phlumphy double-bed. Score.
I don't care how much it costs. I'm in a real hotel for the first time in a month after an aging hotel, a Spartan YMCA, a B&B with cold breakfasts, and a musty smelling self-catering flat that requires coins to keep the electricity going.
I chuck off my sweaty clothes, wash my face and neck, break into my pack for my culottes and a fresh shirt. Off with the socks and boots and foot wraps. On with the aerated flats. Ah. I'm human again.
Refreshed, I head downstairs to ask Scott for pertinent information: TIC number? Check (too late to call though--they're closed).
Internet? Only at the library half a mile up the street. Sigh. I need that to arrange lodging for rest of my Dartmoor stay. I'm not going to land in a town without lodging this way again...especially since I'm heading deeper into the countryside, away from civilization, where TICs and rail stations are progressively smaller, or nonexistent, and open fewer hours.
I manage to get to the library a half an hour before they close. Their Internet has just crashed. Not available. Not no way, not no how.
Grrr. Can I scream now?
The librarian and I resort to old-fashioned research for help finding lodging in the Devon area: a row of low-tech phone books upstairs. We pore over a few with my Dartmoor maps, and he leaves me to it.
I manage to call a few places in the area, remembering that I really do have enough cash to take a taxi when I need to, or that I can often find a host who might pick me up from a station 15 miles away. Information, information.
I rough out the next few days with yellow pages and train depot help, grab phone numbers to call from the hotel once the library closes. I feel relieved to have a plan after today's bit.
As I work, I consider what I've learned about how I prefer to travel and the silly assumptions I made that escalated my scare. I just expected St Austell to be bigger than it was, and discovered that getting around the small towns only on foot and public transport is tricky. I remember someone telling me a few days ago--was it Norman?--"It's often the last 14 miles to a destination that are the hardest."
I've also decided that staying at least two nights is best if I want to see a place, and that I do better having an idea of where the TIC and my lodging are in relation to a train or bus station before I arrive in a town.
When I'm traveling with only the small daypack, all of this is much easier. I keep wanting to downsize more to make the big bag lighter, but I'm already thin in the pack while still being prepared for weather shifts of rain and cold later in the trip. I haven't found much more to jettison.
I finished the planning by calling for lodging through Salisbury from my room, combining youth hostel and B&B and asking proprietors for help getting phone numbers and bus info as much as possible. It felt good to ask for and get help, something else I'll remember to do more often.
Just looked at the clock. 7:30pm. I've spent four and a half hours putting together lodging and travel plans for the next 5 nights. Better than feeling stranded again, or getting stranded for real.
Ate dinner at the hotel and nodded off soaking in the tub. Big bath towels, big bed, four fluffy pillows. Really needed this bit of pampering tonight. It's only 9pm and I'm in bed, pooped and feeling better about where I am. Tomorrow's another dayrise.
