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Weird Cornwall

as someone born and bred in cornwall, can i just confirm that camborne is indeed a shithole and newquay is hell and would be much better if it was just bulldozed.

as for mizzle - it's the worst weather on earth.

inbreeding does indeed go on down there, hence the term 'a redruth wedding.' there was a couple of obviously inberd kids at my school.

as for independence, yeah right. and what's going to support the economy? the eden project? dream on. you haven't even got a motorway.

as for weirdness, yes, cornwall is very weird and particularly good for nature spirits. oh, and my mate knew the bloke that hoaxed the mawgawr sea monster thing back in the 70s. yes, it was all a big joke.
 
united fruitcake outlet said:
as for weirdness, yes, cornwall is very weird and particularly good for nature spirits. oh, and my mate knew the bloke that hoaxed the mawgawr sea monster thing back in the 70s. yes, it was all a big joke.
Doc Sheils?
 
Ah! Morgawr! A nice article in The Unexplained but my amusement was reserved for a proclamation by Alex "I'm a King of witches, I am" Gardiner. He got lots of reporters together and declared he would 'summon' the monster. After a fruitless hour or so of ranting, he then said he'd actually cast a 'spell of protection' on the beast to save it from all the nasty reporters.

There's a jolly good ghost walk in Penzance.
 
Cornwall 'boosted' by spooky tag

Tourism leaders in Cornwall are hoping to cash in on a new survey which has found Cornwall to be the spookiest place in the country. The survey has identified an area around Penzance which it is calling the Cornwall Triangle.

Jamaica Inn, Bodmin Jail and the Dolphin Inn in Penzance are just some of the haunted sites found there.

South West Tourism welcomed the report saying it will help add to the overall mystique of the area.

Chief executive Malcolm Bell said: "I'm sure it will add to the attractiveness of the area.


I've always said it's the sort of the place where there are plenty of strange occurrences.
Ian Addicoat, Paranormal Research Organisation

"There are people who are interested in the paranormal who would come down here but might not have gone to Swindon or Coventry if it [the spookiest place] were there."

Ian Addicoat, president of the Paranormal Research Organisation, based in Penzance, said: "I wouldn't be surprised at all. I've always said it's the sort of the place where there are plenty of strange occurrences.

"There is so much history in the area - land of legend, gritty ghost stories and there are people who come here, and places like Tintagel, and base their holidays down here."

The survey was carried out on behalf of Sky Travel.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 717719.stm
Published: 2005/07/26 13:52:33 GMT

© BBC MMV
 
Biblical error costs Church £½m
Ruth Gledhill and Rajeev Syal

An historic collection of religious books whose sale for £36,000 was approved last year by a Church of England diocese has been sold on by a book dealer for more than £500,000.

The Diocese of Truro sanctioned a deal in September 2006 to sell hundreds of old Bibles and manuscripts from its library to John Thornton in a move to clear shelf space.

The decision to sell at such a low price has astounded antiquarian booksellers, who have described it as “one of the killings of the century”.

Auction sales alone after Mr Thornton gained access to the collection have generated about half a million pounds. Mr Thornton has now closed his shop in Chelsea, West London, and has told The Times that he is planning to retire to the country.

Church officials have been left baffled by the decision to sell the collection. They are seeking legal advice to discover why the trust that owns the books did not profit more from the sale. Jeremy Dowling, spokesman for the Truro diocese and its board of finance, said that the deal was a “terrible shame” but had been done to make room.

“Those on the management committee had no idea of the value of the material they were dealing with. The decision was made in principle that the pre1800 collection be disposed of simply because in the past ten years no one had inquired about any book in it at all. Therefore, the library management committee felt that the space was being taken up in a way that was not productive.

“What Mr Thornton bought, he bought in good faith. The difficulty arises as to whether or not the trustees were sufficiently aware of what was going on,” he said.

The collection came from the Bishop Phillpotts Library, founded by Henry Phillpotts, a 19th-century Bishop of Exeter, who left 2,000 books to serve the clergy of Cornwall.

In 2004 the Truro diocesan board of finance approved plans by the trustees of the library to sell all the pre1800 volumes to a dealer. They failed to call in a recognised auction house to make a valuation. Instead, they invited a number of dealers to make offers.

There remains some dispute over how many dealers wanted the collection, but the Church concedes that Mr Thornton’s offer was the highest that they received. Two years later the library accepted it and the books were taken away in three white vans.

Experts first became aware of the deal last December as rare Bibles from the collection began to emerge on the market. Dominic Winter, of Dominic Winter Book Auctions in South Cerney, near Cirencester, sold an illustrated 400lb 63-volume Macklin Bible for £47,000 on Mr Thornton’s behalf – £11,000 more than Mr Thornton had paid for the entire collection.

He told The Times yesterday that the library should have evaluated the books properly or gone to auction.

“The fault, if there is a fault, lies with the people looking after the library because they did not cast around. We do not think that they went to any auctioneers in the first place or get any more quotes for the job,” he said.

About 50 lots with provenance from the Phillpotts library were offered in a Sotheby’s book sale in June. The story of the extraordinary sale first emerged in the magazine Bookdealer.

Alan Shelley, president of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association, said that somewhere, someone had made a big mistake. “No one knows what happened down in Truro,” he said. “Clearly, some great error has been made somewhere along the way, at what stage and by whom I do not know.”

Mr Shelley added: “We were approached some years ago to see if any of our members would be interested in providing a valuation. We know from our records that three members responded to the advertisement we put in our bulletin.”

Mr Thornton, 74, an expert in theological books, told The Times that he had decided to retire after decades as a bookseller and has closed his terraced shop in Chelsea.

A cricket enthusiast, who is married with at least one child, he said that he had offered a fair price for the Phillpotts collection. “I was invited to make an offer to clear the books and two years later I took them away. It was difficult to give an accurate evaluation of the collection when we were asked to do so in 2004 because of the dimly lit and confined conditions in which they were held.

“As for any queries on the deal, I will wait and see what the lawyers say,” he said.

More info...

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 419379.ece
 
Diocese contemplates legal action

The Diocese of Truro is seeking legal advice to see if it has any cause for redress after losing out from the sale of antique books.
A dealer bought the collection for £36,000 in 2006. However the books, some dating back to 1470, have just sold at Sotheby's for £500,000.

Prior to the sale last year, the religious books had been in the Bishop Philpotts Library in Truro.

The library was set up in 1856 for the benefit of clergy in Cornwall.

In 2002 the Bishop Philphotts Library approached the Diocese of Truro to see if the trustees would be happy for them to sell a small proportion of its extensive collection.

The trustees approved the move.

A spokesman for the Diocese of Truro, Jeremy Dowling, said: "The Library paid for a valuation in 2002 and was told the books were worth £20,000."

The spokesman added that when it was approached by a London book dealer in 2005 and again in 2006 "a £16,000 increase over three to four years seemed reasonable."

The London bookseller put in the highest bid for the collection at £36,000.

The Diocese only realised it had lost out when a single volume recently made £78,000 alone at a Sotheby's auction.

The Diocese of Truro, who is acting on behalf of the Bishop Philpotts Library, is now seeking legal advice on the situation and is unable to comment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/6988692.stm
 
Last week I actually saw, with my very own eyes, what could only be described as a truly astonishing sight. There, in the middle of Fore Street in Redruth, as bold as brass, was a woman who must have weighed less than 10 stone. I kid you not! It is a great regret that I didn't have my camera with me at the time. I expect that such a rare occurrence will make the front page of The West Briton this Thursday. We may never witness the like again.
 
The last couple of days I've taken dozens of digital pics. I've not processed them all yet, but already I've found an 'anomaly'.

Here's a view from the high ground S of Redruth, looking N to St Agnes Beacon.

IMG_2326b.jpg


But what's this white streak in the trees (apparently)?
(This is a full-size crop from the original.)

IMG_2326.jpg


Is it another plant stalk, similar to those on the LHS? But it gives the impression of being set back from the foreground. Is it a toilet roll thrown into the trees? :roll:

Anyhow, I may look at it some more later - for now I have more pics to look at! 8)
 
Just a stick I think. Either that or one of those mysterious and unravelled rolls of toilet paper you sometimes see stuck in odd places.
 
There are half-a-dozen mentions of Pengersick castle on FTMB, but somehow they'd slipped my mind every time I'd passed the place, maybe because the most recent mention was in 2004:
Mighty_Emperor said:
Bid to attract supernatural fans

Cornwall's historic home owners and tourism bosses are being urged to make more of the area's supernatural credentials.
......
There are said to be more than 20 separate presences at Pengersick Castle, near Penzance, including a ghostly 14th Century monk, a 13-year-old girl who danced to her death off the battlements and a four-year-old boy who tugs at visitors' clothes.
....
I came across a website today which has a 10 minute video about the castle and its 'presences'. Quite well done (apart from one mention of f*cking orbs!):

http://www.myCornwall.tv?bcpid=27761084 ... 4244939001

But I realise now that one time I walked past there something odd did happen - this was in early July 2007, as near as I can pin it down. (I moved house about then too.) I was walking from Praa Sands to Ashton, and I had my first digital camera with me, taking pics as I went.

At one point I took a pic of someone's gate because of some amusing detail on it, and I wanted to check I'd caught it as I wanted it - but the image was all fuzzy, and the colours were off. So I checked the previous pics, and they were all faulty, all that I'd taken that day. And, IIRC correctly the first couple of pics of that sequence were of Pengersick Castle! :shock:

It turned out that the camera's CCD was fried, and, long story short, I had to get a new camera.

So, just coincidence, or did a 'presence' put the jinx on my camera?
 
This is fun, but I suspect it was a spoof video (or film) when made (the local rag is rather flippant about it too):

The world's fastest Cornishman? VIDEO unearthed in attic shows 'land speed record attempt'... maybe!
12:00pm Saturday 3rd August 2013 in Falmouth/Penryn .

Here is a film to make you giggle, a video billed as an an "early attempt to break the motorbike speed world record".
It says that after being "locked away in an attic in Redruth for over fifty years, this recently unearthed footage shows an early attempt to break the motorbike speed world record".

Adding: "Apparently shot at some unknown salt flats during the old 'Cornwall Speed Week' event, the negative film has now been digitally remastered to show local man Chris Ryan attempting to become 'The World's Fastest Cornishman'."

Well, maybe!!

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/fp ... ___maybe_/

Ignore the video on page - watch the YouTube one, at full-screen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... PqSY#at=47

You can forget about 'unknown salt flats', as there aren't any in Cornwall - but there are lots of flat sandy beaches when the tide is out.

"Hayle Speed Shop" on the van suggests this might have been filmed on nearby Hayle Towans beach, which reaches a few miles NE to Gwithian, but the images don't really match.

I think the filming took place on the beach west of Marazion on the south coast. There are reefs just west of there which reach out at right angles to the shore, and seem to match the rocks in the film. Newlyn and Penzance can be seen beyond the rocks, on the far side of Mounts Bay.

But I doubt you'd reach 200 mph on such a beach, which is more evidence for a spoof
. 8)

(My website has a few pics of the area, about half-way down this page:
http://cornwalltidesreach.weebly.com/man-pen-2.html )

Any locals with comments?
 
rynner2 said:
This is fun, but I suspect it was a spoof video (or film) when made (the local rag is rather flippant about it too):

The world's fastest Cornishman? VIDEO unearthed in attic shows 'land speed record attempt'... maybe!
12:00pm Saturday 3rd August 2013 in Falmouth/Penryn .

Here is a film to make you giggle, a video billed as an an "early attempt to break the motorbike speed world record".
It says that after being "locked away in an attic in Redruth for over fifty years, this recently unearthed footage shows an early attempt to break the motorbike speed world record".

Adding: "Apparently shot at some unknown salt flats during the old 'Cornwall Speed Week' event, the negative film has now been digitally remastered to show local man Chris Ryan attempting to become 'The World's Fastest Cornishman'."

Well, maybe!!

...
Excellent! :lol:
 
Everything about this video screams "Hoax"!

It is clearly a digital video - not some sort of 16mm film used at the time. And the attire, the hair-dos and the girl with the camera - that's a 1970s model - mayne 60s at best.

My father was an avid 16mm amateur in that period - the camera looked nothing like that.
 
rynner2 said:
I think the filming took place on the beach west of Marazion on the south coast. There are reefs just west of there which reach out at right angles to the shore, and seem to match the rocks in the film. Newlyn and Penzance can be seen beyond the rocks, on the far side of Mounts Bay.
I've only just noticed in the credits "El Maraz Raceway, Cornwall"! 8)

We have a new uni in Cornwall now, and it's stuffed to the gills with 'meejah study' types, so I suspect the film is no more than two years old. :)

The reporter's desk-mike was a bit incongruous for location filming.

But the leading man had a certain charm, and reminded me of a young Leonard Rossiter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Rossiter
 
The whole thing is clearly modern.
Not any one thing I can pick up on, but just the general feel of it really.
 
liveinabin1 said:
The whole thing is clearly modern.
Not any one thing I can pick up on, but just the general feel of it really.
It helps if you quote the post you're replying to, especially if the page is getting long, as your reply may come out top of the next page.
 
rynner2 said:
There are half-a-dozen mentions of Pengersick castle on FTMB, but somehow they'd slipped my mind every time I'd passed the place, maybe because the most recent mention was in 2004...

But I realise now that one time I walked past there something odd did happen - this was in early July 2007, as near as I can pin it down. (I moved house about then too.) I was walking from Praa Sands to Ashton, and I had my first digital camera with me, taking pics as I went.

At one point I took a pic of someone's gate because of some amusing detail on it, and I wanted to check I'd caught it as I wanted it - but the image was all fuzzy, and the colours were off. So I checked the previous pics, and they were all faulty, all that I'd taken that day. And, IIRC correctly the first couple of pics of that sequence were of Pengersick Castle! :shock:

It turned out that the camera's CCD was fried, and, long story short, I had to get a new camera.

So, just coincidence, or did a 'presence' put the jinx on my camera?

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 667#921667
Castle to reopen to public for first time in four years
1:00pm Wednesday 21st August 2013 in News

Pengersick Castle at Praa Sands is to re-open its gates to the public for the first time in four years this bank holiday.
The Pengersick Historic and Education Trust is inviting people into the castle and grounds on Monday, August 26, giving them a chance to view the improvements to the gardens, including the award-winning Medieval Garden, and see plans for the Angela Evans Memorial Tudor Knot Garden.

The Medieval Garden, designed by Dan McLaughlin, provides an education resource, linking living history with education, and has been used by various local schools and so reinforcing the original purpose of the Pengersick Historic and Education Trust.

Visitors on Monday will be able to stroll around the four acres of garden, take a tour of the Tudor tower, described as the most haunted location in the UK, see the progress made in repairing/restoring the castle and learn more of the Trust’s plans for further stages of the renovation.

Entry on Monday will cost £4 for adults and £2.50 concessions and Friends of Pengersick, with family tickets also available at a cost of £10 for two adults and two children. The site will be open between 10am and 4pm and there will be refreshments available and a variety of stalls to view.

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/10 ... rs/?ref=mr
 
Tax case win for Cornish religious beekeepers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-24612485

A couple have won the right not to file online VAT returns for their honey business after claiming it was contrary to their religious beliefs.

Beekeepers Graham and Abigail Blackburn, from Cornwall, are members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church and they reject using computers at home.

A tribunal ruled that by refusing an exemption the government had breached their right to manifest their religion.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs said it was considering an appeal.

'Protect children'
Mr Blackburn told the First Tier Tribunal, at Bodmin Law Courts, that he and his wife rejected the use of computers, the internet, televisions and mobile phones in their home.

The contents of some TV programmes and websites were "contrary to the Bible's teachings" in his view and he wanted to "protect his children from bad influences".

The couple believe Christ's second coming is imminent and view the internet as an intrusion of "worldliness" into their lives of "righteousness".

Most businesses are required by law to file their VAT returns online, and HMRC lawyers argued the couple's refusal to do so was a personal preference and not part of their religion.

Human Rights 'breach'
However, Tribunal Judge Barbara Mosedale ruled that by refusing to exempt Mr and Mrs Blackburn from online filing, HMRC had breached their right to freely manifest their religion under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

She said: "I find that, by entirely shunning computers, they considered they were acting, as the Bible required them to do, in accordance with their religious conscience.

"They were manifesting their religious beliefs by refusing to use computers."

Justifications put forward by HMRC for refusing to exempt the couple were "clearly insufficient", she added.

The tribunal found in favour of the couple who run Cornish Moorland Honey, in Bodmin, 2 October but judgement was only released earlier.

The tribunal verdict means the couple will now be permitted to file their VAT returns on paper, subject to any appeal by HMRC.
 
ramonmercado said:
It's hardly fair to file this under Weird Cornwall though - it's about religious fundamentalists, and Seventh Day Adventists are hardly typical of religious folk in Cornwall. They only have about four churches in Cornwall, as far as I can tell from their website:
http://adventist.org.uk/

Which raises the question: If "The couple believe Christ's second coming is imminent and view the internet as an intrusion of "worldliness" into their lives of "righteousness", why does their church have a website? :twisted:

No doubt we have a few Bonkers Religions threads... ;)
 
rynner2 said:
ramonmercado said:
It's hardly fair to file this under Weird Cornwall though - it's about religious fundamentalists, and Seventh Day Adventists are hardly typical of religious folk in Cornwall. They only have about four churches in Cornwall, as far as I can tell from their website:
http://adventist.org.uk/

Which raises the question: If "The couple believe Christ's second coming is imminent and view the internet as an intrusion of "worldliness" into their lives of "righteousness", why does their church have a website? :twisted:

No doubt we have a few Bonkers Religions threads... ;)

I was really wondering where to out it. Feared you would tell me to buzz off.
 
Only in Cornwall: The odder side of life in the Duchy (according to Twitter)

We all know life in Cornwall can be, well, slightly different at times.

From the more relaxed approach to life, to the occasional challenges of our rural roads, something surprising is normally just around the corner.

To prove the point, a quick search on Twitter for the hashtag #onlyincornwall, brings up some real gems.

The first impression you get is the sheer number of cows we appear to have on the roads:



Read more: http://www.westbriton.co.uk/Cornwal...tory-27729851-detail/story.html#ixzz3kfrb7B3P
Follow us: @westbriton on Twitter | westbriton on Facebook
 
Why Bodmin Jail has taken over from Yarmouth’s House of Wax as the best worst tourist attraction in the UK
By
angrypiln
-
June 24, 2017
0



To Bodmin Jail in darkest Cornwall, led on by promises of a spooktacular experience in supposedly one of the most haunted buildings in the south west.

And it contains this unintentionally hilarious gem, more of which later:

0000-51.jpg

You will SOIL YOUR UNDERWEAR WITH TERROR!!!
Also, it’s the place where Derek Acorah was mercilessly trolled by the Most Haunted team by getting him to “talk” to a completely fictional South African ghost called Kreed Kafer.

The name is – of course – an anagram of Derek Faker, and the medium’s days on the best worst ghost hunting TV programme that never found an actual ghost were numbered.

0000-49.jpg

“It’s worse than that, Sam. I’ve followed through.”
So how does Bodmin Jail stand up to the previous worst tourist attraction in the UK?

Here’s what it’s up against: Great Yarmouth’s late lamented House of Wax, where the visitor could gaze upon not-quite likenesses of the world’s greatest celebs. And Noel Edmonds.

gy-kylie.jpg

Kylie and some other bloke (really)
gy-becks.jpg

Posh and Becks looking like they hang around laybys looking for a good time.
gy-nicknick.jpg

If you see any of these people, call the police
Bodmin Jail, then. It’s clear they’ve spent a lot of money on it in recent years, and parts of the building are top notch – the restaurant, the shop, the cafe, for example – but it is clearly (and I’m going to be charitable here) a work in progress.

00000-33.jpg


Such a work in progress, the only mention of ghosts are a few newspaper clippings on a wall in the basement. The paranormal exhibit is still being built (June 2017).

As soon as you step through the door into the “exhibit”, you know you are going to be entertained. But not in the way the owners intend.

It’s room upon cellar room containing dioramas of bad mannequins in terrible nylon wigs, most of whom are demonstrating many unusual ways to commit murder or to bugger farm animals.

00000-34.jpg


This man has just buggered farm animals, and were it not for the fact that his glasses were steamed up and that it was taking an age to but his pecker away, he would have escaped the clutches of the law, and not dangling on a rope in the execution shed.

00000-35.jpg


Here is Bjork. She has been tied to a piece of wood because the locals in Cornwall don’t like that kind of Icelandic whooping and hollering.

Don’t do it again round these parts, Bjork. Not even in the Eden Project where those devilish ways are tolerated.

00000-36.jpg


[Eddie Izzard voice] “Look, I’m sorry, we ran out of hoods. I would have brought more if I knew there was going to be such a rush to get hanged”

00000-37.jpg


[Prince] “Take that!”

[Young Robbie Williams] “Ouch that really hurt… why?!”

[Prince] “Only one of us can have hair this good, Robbie.”

[Young Robbie Williams] “I… I… I’m seeing angels”

00000-38.jpg


This important presentation on the first floor shows the young Cornish lads who invented Astroturf in 1855. They were locked up in Bodmin Jail, sentenced to a life of hard labour, for their part in the Devil’s work.

Their spirits are said to walk the exhibits during opening hours, saying “God, this is terrible”.

Thankfully, this one (from Psychic World website) appears to have been removed from display:

0000-50.jpg

“Yewtree? Never heard of it”
But despite promises of ghostly attractions, the only thing that haunted me was the bloody awful grammar and spelling on the information boards.

00000-39.jpg


This one deserves the rope.

00000-border-18.jpg


We’ll be merciful for this one. At least it’s not in Comic Sans MS, The Font of Champions.

As Mrs APILN said: “If I was a ghost, I’d be embarrassed to haunt this place”.

Also, we found a toilet.

00000-40.jpg


THEY LOCKED A TOILET IN A CELL.

There is no indication as to what it did to deserve this fate. Something shit, I should think.

But we leave the very best of Bodmin Jail until last.

What – I ask you – is this young lady cowering from, a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut in her hand, a tin of full-fat Coca-Cola by her side?
Full story here
https://apiln.co.uk/why-bodmin-jail...-the-best-worst-tourist-attraction-in-the-uk/
 
Men-an-Toll is quite a way west of here. It would require several buses to get anywhere near, followed by a yomp of several miles across the moor. My knees have not been up to that kind of thing for years now - consequently I've never even seen M-a-T... :(
 
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