A B&B in Penzance, no less

For my second HelpX I headed down to Cornwall in the South-West of England, to a town called Penzance. It was about 4 hours on the train from Barnstaple in Devon and it was a very pretty train ride, especially when it went along the coastline. My host was an older lady called Liz who owned a B&B a minutes walk from the sea front, and I was there for two weeks. There were no guests at the B&B while I was there so I got to stay in one of the very lovely rooms instead of a little sleepout in the garden. Usually HelpXers helped clean the rooms and do breakfasts etc when there were guests but I mainly helped out in the garden and did random jobs as they came up, like polishing a brass lamp, trimming the hedge, mowing the little lawn, or weeding the gardens/pots and the edges of the drive. There was a small courtyard out the back full of potted plants, plus two sections of garden in the front, which included a little carpark for guests. Liz was a lovely lady who was very widely travelled and it was great hearing all her stories from when she lived in the United Arab Emirates.

On one of the days we went along to Liz's friends' house to help out in her garden. She was an old lady in her 90s with a big garden built into a steep hillside, with lots of steps and levels. Her usual gardener had had an accident so it was really nice to be able to help her out. She cooked us a big roast lunch as a thank you, and we enjoyed the amazing views of the ocean and the coastline from the top of the garden. Other days Liz took me to a huge car boot sale, a food festival in a nearby town, and to a couple of other sights around the place. Liz was really flexible and really keen for me to see all the sights of this beautiful area, so sometimes I'd do a full day's gardening then go on a day's sightseeing, or do a half day then go for a big walk to the other little towns and things along the coast depending on what the weather was doing.

There were a few rainy days but it was mostly really great, sunny weather. It was interesting to find that the Penzance area has much better weather than the rest of England due to it's location, so there were plants around from tropical areas and it was a really nice place to be. I really loved looking around Penzance and Cornwall, it's such a beautiful area. It used to be a massive area for the London middle class to come and holiday in, marketed strongly by the rail network. I loved spending the evenings walking down the long promenade along the huge, curved seafront.

I also helped Liz out a lot on the computer, transcribing some old records into a database, which is an ongoing project for her as a genealogist who is documenting all the births, deaths and marriages from a church in the parish of her ancestors. She would decipher them and read them out from her enlarger and I'd type them up for her. I think we got through quite a lot and she seemed really pleased, and I'm not too bad at transcribing so it worked really well. Liz even took a big interest in my family history and did heaps of research for my mum's side of the family once I'd given her a few names.