Day 28 - More Looe and more headstone hunting

This morning we had to get up early as our cousin’s children came over in the morning to have breakfast then are walked to school by Auntie Eve.  This is a regular Tuesday event as both mother’s work on this day.  I showed them some of my photos from the Harry Potter exhibition before they got ready.  Kylie and I asked if they wanted us to walk them to school, talking about being excited.  They were even more excited when they found out we are cousins as well!  It didn’t take long before half the school knew were their Australian cousins.  We also had a guided tour of the classrooms etc.

Today on our agenda is to find the former family homes in Saltash, visit the National Trust house Antony (where Alice in Wonderland was filmed), go to Trago Mills at Liskeard, then to go to Tavistock for a bit of shopping.

First off is to go down to the waterfront under the Tamar Bridge.  Here we found three of the streets that they all lived, none of the houses are standing on two of them.  The bridge is very large from down below.  Kylie took me to where our grandparents, aunties and uncles lived (Dad didn’t live with them) before, during and after WW2, it is quite small for the size of the family.  It has fabulous views over the river and I can see how they had loads of playing areas when they were young (Dad was one of 12).  After this it was off to Antony.

We drove down a wrong street, the sign said Antony but it was for the wrong Antony.  When back-tracking we went past the St Stephen’s Church, I noticed how there were many cars were around, so Kylie dropped me off to find out what is happening whilst she parked the car.  Well, to my great luck they were preparing for a Jubilee Flower Show and had people everywhere setting up.  I went inside the Church and asked if I could look around and gave my, I am from Australia spiel again.  With this they introduced me to a lady who handles all the burial register, she offered to get it out to show me plus the plans of the burials.  I shot out to get Kylie and bring her into the church.  The lady was so helpful, Kylie had to go out to get my laptop as there were so many ancestors buried there (I couldn’t remember them all from memory).  Unfortunately most do not have headstones, but I did get their plot numbers and importantly their burial dates.  Next time I return I shall make sure I have the list handy and printed out, this was totally unexpected.  The Church is lovely inside and well looked after.  It dates back to around 1258, we gave a generous donation for the help and for restoration work. Most of our ancestors are buried in the same area, so off again we went headstone hunting (just in case there were any).  We didn’t find and headstones.

Well that was an unexpected delay, we headed to the furthest point we need to go, that was Trago Mills.  This is a very large complex, which is former working mill and has been transformed to a shopping complex, not unlike Harris Scarfe’s as it used to be.  I bought a red trench coat (my first buy for myself on this trip) and Kylie got a few dresses and shoes, also we bought Auntie Eve some Union Jack/Jubilee things as a thank you for having us.  We had yet another late lunch as time keeps flying by.  As we enjoyed Looe so much yesterday, we went back today and had Cornish clotted cream icecream, yummo, and had another look around the shops and the tide was out again!

Everyone did get a chuckle as we didn’t get to barely any of our destinations!!!  Uncle Winston and Auntie Evelyn asked would we like to go out for Chinese or something for tea.  If course we said yes, with this Auntie Eve rang Sean to get his discount card for the Golf Club, with this he asked could he come along, then before it, everyone was coming along.  To top it off it was cousin Lee’s birthday.  It was a great unexpected night out.  At least we got to see them all before we leave in the morning.