Inclement Weather

If a forecast like this were to appear for the Sonoran Desert, it would portend floods of Biblical proportions. 90% and 100% chance of rain? All day? For days on end? At monsoon rates, that could be inches per hour.

But in the British Isles, it's only autumn. It's the drizzle and just plain overcast with occasional squalls and sunbreaks that keep everything green. It's the weather where hourly forecasts have little meaning.

View from King Arthur's Cafe.

Yesterday was forecasted to be a 90% rain all day. We got sunbreaks enough to enjoy a light lunch at King Arthur's Cafe, near King Arthur's Car Park and King Arthur's Arms Inn, all in the crowded village that lives off of the almost one-quarter of a million annual visitors to Tintagel Castle.

We got a window seat where we could enjoy Brits with their pet dogs, young families, tatooed and pierced Gothic folks, Arthurian enthusiasts, and German, French and US tourists.

Sunbreaks continued as we visited the English Heritage site, craggy Tintagel Castle ruins on the rugged north Cornwall coast.

Then as the rain set in, it was time to leave.

The ascent, footbridge visible in back.

Visitors to the site, and there were plenty on a rainy Sunday, wore an assortment of different dress. Some in shorts and T-shirts, others in hooded rain parkas.

As the squall set in, people continued filing down the steep path, then up to the footbridge leading to the shale-rocky promintory with its ruined medieval fortifications associated with Arthurian lore.

One woman climbing the narrow steep path that clung to the cliffside (only occasional guard rails) wore Wellington boots. Another flip-flops. Both were headed in, not out.

The footbridge (English Heritage website)