Wednesday, January 30, 2013

A Visit Overseas

When Caitlin chose Mowzer's name, she harkened back to a book our kids enjoyed when they were young, called "The Mousehole Cat". I talked about this in one of my earliest postings, but alas the YouTube video has been removed so it is not quite so informative as it once was.
Recently, we had the opportunity to visit with Caitlin while she is away studying in England. On a week off, we asked her where she would like to go while we had a car at our disposal and she selected the village of Mousehole in Cornwall, down at the south-western tip of England.
Land's End in Cornwall

It turns out the book is almost like a travel guide for the village; it was as if the paintings had lifted themselves from the pages and appeared before our eyes. There was the protected harbour with its massive break walls, surrounded by homes and shops, linked together with impossibly narrow lanes winding up the steep hillsides. Being the only visitors in town on that grey January day, we cozied up to the fire at The Ship Inn for a warm pub lunch and could easily imagine one of Mowzer's line curled up on the hearth.
In the final spirit of exchange, we even found Caitlin's namesake tucked away for the winter. The circle seems to be complete.