What I had not expected was that in addition to all the place names that are real villages, tors, rivers, etc in Cornwall, the Jamaica Inn itself is also a real place. I'd expected that someone with business acumen had built an inn roughly at the place where the book described and named it after the fact, but the Jamaica Inn is a real place, built in 1750. It was indeed the base of many a smuggler.
Which leads me to the second discovery, which is that the place has a "Museum of Smuggling". Small, but quite informative in an entertaining way. Them smugglers sure were an ingenious group. It has been estimated that 20% of all horses in England were used in the trade, and it wasn't until Robert Peel radically lowered the tariffs in the 1840s that smuggling started to fade away.
All pics here.
The Jamaica Inn.
The building in fog, such as Mary Yellin might have known it. Had she been real, I mean.
My sentiments exactly.
Ganja, maaaaan!
Boy, have I seen a few like these in Norway.
A dramatic tableau of a shipwreck, complete with pirates and all.
One of the things I'm pretty sure about is that Mary Yellan wasn't a transvestite.
Dozmary pool. Dozmary is yet another name I remember from the book. I also passed Five Lanes and Altarnun. I believe Dozmary pool has been connected with the lake where king Arthur is supposed to have had Excalibur handed to him. You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart throws a sword at you.
The moor in October. Wild, bleak and foggy.
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