Cornwall in the rain

Rare breed Manx Loughton and Leicester Longwool flock raised on the Lizard Peninsula near Manacan by Sue and Geoff Howarth.

Today as forecast it is raining! and it seems that the forecast for the South West of Cornwall and in particular the Mounts Bay area was correct, it often is completely wrong but not today. Here we have a micro climate which seems to stem from the fact that there are only some twenty plus miles across the peninsula from the English Channel and the Gulf Stream on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other side. It has been known that on hot windy days in the Summer we can get a red desert dust all the way from the Sahara Desert and then the next day we can get the coldest of winds from over the Atlantic Ocean and beyond. Sometimes it is full sunshine in Penzance with mist and rain in St Ives, quite bizare in fact. An old Cornish saying is that it can be 'a coat colder in Camborne' - often very true.

My dogs Sharna and Layla have not yet had their long morning walk across the cliffs and they are getting fed up with waiting, I can see that there will be nothing for it but to put on full waterproofs and get going, it seems there will be no rest until we do.



It is too wet today for any work to be done on the fleece sorting which is still going on - we have to fit this job in and around running our other business 'Village Crafts of Perranuthnoe' http://www.perrancrafts.co.uk a craft shop which my partner Kevin and I have run for the last five years. There are not many people around today, although it is the first weekend of the Summer season, yesterday was the last day of school this year for many children.



Earlier this week Kevin managed to find a break in the weather to get into the tractor shed to sort fleece, the fleece is now piled high awaiting sorting and it is quite a daunting and strenous task. He did manage to decant five huge wool holding bags (holding around 25 sheeps fleece in each) in to smaller more managable bags and away from vermin, moths and the weather. This is the start of the process, then the next job is where I am involved, as chief fleece sorter, to check each fleece for quality and to remove unwanted fleece, vegetation and the grotty, claggy bits. At this stage the fleece is full of lanolin and it makes for a very greasy job, but its very good for the hands, excellent hand softener.







Cornish Wools also produces Alpaca yarns and right at the moment we are putting together the next shipment of fleece to go off to the Mill. Here are Bev's boys, I took this photo of them in their field near Helston when they had recently been sheared and were looking rather trim. Their fleece is now waiting to go off to the Alpaca Mill where it will be processed into wollen yarn. 100% natural Alpaca knitting wool, a wonderful deep tan colour, undyed and so beautifully soft. Later this year the finished yarn will be available to purchase from our Cornish Wools e-commerce website (more news on this later).





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