Jaunted

Travel Snapshots / Vintage Travel / Cornwall Travel / England Travel / Train Train / Great Western Railway / → All Tags

Would You Believe That Cornwall is the New Italy?

Isn't it awesome? We're already past Memorial Day—when people begin hardcore planning for their summer getaways, if they're not already packed—and we haven't heard anything more about "staycations." Does this mean the economy is recovering and it's okay to take big, exotic vacations again? Let's hope so! The word "staycation," last year's favorite term amongst newscasters and traditional media, is officially over.

That is, until we stumbled into a Chicago pasta joint recently and spotted the above poster on the wall. This vintage ad for Britain's Great Western Railway dares to compare the region of Cornwall with the whole of Italy, boasting that "There is a great similarity between Cornwall and Italy. Both in shape, climate & natural beauties." Considering that this poster was made in 1907, we highly doubt that Cornwall had much over Italy, but it was probably effective in convincing Britons to take a "staycation" versus the Grand Tour.

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Worlds-Coolest-Pools / Cornwall Travel / Pools / Saltwater Pools / → All Tags

By The Sea, By The Sea, By The Cornwall Sea

Last one in's a rotten egg! We're finding the best places in the world to stick our toes in this summer (or next winter) for our World's Coolest Pools map. Know of any pools we must check out? Let us know.

Further proof nature has a sense of humor? A natural outcrop of rocks provided the inspiration for city officials in Bude, a popular Victorian seaside destination, to lay in the groundwork for one of England's rapidly disappearing "sea baths."

Before chlorine ruled the pool world, swimmers looking for a space more placid than the open ocean turned to natural pools along the coast of Cornwall to bathe -- same seawater, no undertow. Many of these sea baths have since been closed, but Bude's remains thanks to a small but dedicated cadres of locals who fought to keep the pools open (albeit with municipal lifeguards) after a 2005 study deemed them unsafe.

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