single sleeper cabin

wife planned the cornwall trip & the journey to penzance.^^

we took the sleeper train from paddington at 23.45pm on 8.5.2015 & arrived next morning 7.55am at penzance, cornwall. 🙂

it was a good plan. penzance is a great base to explore cornwall. we walked-

the minack theatre, porthcurno, porthgwaraa, sennen cove & land’s end on 9.5.2015;

cape cornwall, botallack mines & dined at gurnard’s head restaurant on 10.5.2015;

the lizard peninsula, starting from kynance cove to lizard point to lizard village & back kynance cove 11.5.2015;

st michael’s mount in the morning before driving to st ives on 12.5.2015.

after day we spent 2 nights at st ives.^^

the advantages are that –

(1) the day journey london to penzance takes 5hrs & cost £215 while the sleeper takes 8hrs, we arrived fresh & no time lost & it cost £100 more per trip (i.e. per night). we had separate cabins (connecting cabins onward journey non connecting return journey). the double bed sleeper cabins were full otherwise the cost is £70 a night no more than a B&B. 🙂

breakfast – croisant

breakfast – bacon sandwich

breakfast was like irrelevant.

penzance station

europcar VW Golf

 (2) we did not want to drive long distances & picking up car from penzance, we drove less than 200miles in 6days, very short distances & quite perfect for us at our age.

we picked up a VW Gold at europcar located right at penzance station. it was a manual car. the automatic cost like 2x more!

we booked the car from rental cars.com which is like a broker/consolidator. the actual rental company was keddy (euorpcar). we guess keddy is like a second brand for europcar.

the car rental price was not that much different, however the waiver of excess insurance by rental cars.com was like 1/2 of keddy & europcar. actually we can claim excess from our usual travel insurance, but usually we just took up the insurance anyway to have less hassle. in this case we found out only at keddy that it does not actually, so it served no purpose to take up the insurance. this was because it was not excess insurance by keddy but by a third party rental cars.com so we would have to pay excess of £1000 & still claim from rentalcars.com. might as well claim from amex.

anyway, journey was smooth & not a scratch. i made sure i took all the photos for record when we returned the car & dropped the key at penzance.^^

c.h.e.f andy