Truro Cathedral...

Built in 1910, Truro Cathedral is young compared to most other cathedrals in England, but it is very impressive and quite the location for a graduation ceremony.

Needless to say, we took a lot of photos...

…from lots of different angles.

 

A Quick Wander Around Truro...

We had a bit of time after the bus dropped us off in Truro before the ceremony started, so we set off in search of snacks. 

Veronica thoroughly enjoyed walking around in her cap and gown. 

We settled on grabbing Cornish pasties, which was quite appropriate considering it would be a while before we were back in Cornwall. 

 

Cycling to Graduation...

Rather than take the train to Penryn, Veronica used the journey from Exeter (where she had moved back to in September 2023) as her first long-distance training ride for her planned cycle ride around England in 2025 to collect data for her PhD. She and Brett covered the 150 miles (241 kilometers) over 4 days, camping along the way. It was exciting to be with her when she was interviewed by BBC Radio Cornwall, her first ever radio interview. 

After breakfast on July 25, they cycled the final hill up to the Penryn campus of the University of Exeter, while Jimmy and I took a bus. Here’s a short summary video that she made of the trip and her blog post with a lot of photos. 

The actual ceremony would take place in Truro, over nine miles away, so Veronica traded her cycling clothes for a beautiful dress and graduation gown...

…and took a bus with other grads to the ceremony.

Due to limited space in the cathedral, tickets were limited to two per grad. We were happy that we both rated the tickets and that the school provided a bus. We had to bring our bags with us as we had a tight schedule to attend the ceremony and then get to the train station for our trip back to London. 

 

Celebrating Veronica’s 2nd Master’s...

On July 24, 2024, Jimmy and I took a train down to Falmouth...

...to go to Veronica's graduation ceremony one year after she finished her second master’s degree, which was in Sustainable Futures. 

Since we had already booked flights to Germany for a hash weekend, we had just the one night to celebrate. We took a nice walk along the coast...

...to reach Hooked on the Rocks, a very nice fish restaurant that Veronica had chosen for our celebration.
 

More Cornwall Photo Adventures...

Veronica continued to enjoy exploring the coast on her days off at the farm...

...and using her drone for some creative self-portraits.

Pirates of Penzance...

This is one of my favorite of all of Veronica’s self-portraits. It’s also one of the crazier ones as it was taken on a shipwreck. Granted it wasn’t a pirate ship, but it was near Penzance (the most westerly city in England). 

In fact, the RMS Mulheim wasn’t even an old ghost ship, as it was built in 1999 and ran aground in 2003. Luckily all six crew members survived.

On March 22, 2003, the 294-foot (90-meter) German cargo ship was transporting 2,200 tons of scrap car plastic from Cork, Ireland to Lubeck, Germany. There was fog with moderate visibility. What apparently happened was quite crazy: the chief officer on watch rose out of a chair, caught his trousers on the chair’s lever, lost his balance and knocked himself out. By the time he regained consciousness, the ship was bearing down on the rocky shoreline and there was nothing that could be done to avoid hitting the rocks.

A salvage company removed as much cargo and equipment as possible. In October 2003, heavy seas during a storm broke the vessel in two.

It’s scary to think that Veronica was wandering around this wreckage on a remote beach all by herself, but luckily she escaped unharmed and got some awesome images for her efforts.

Off to Cornwall...

After Aberdeen, Veronica headed to Cornwall to volunteer for three weeks at Bosavern Community Farm near Land’s End. Unlike her previous farm, this one did not revolve around communal living; there were only two permanent residents with the six volunteers staying in the farmhouse with the couple that run the farm. Some of Veronica’s regular jobs were to pick onions...

...and to collect eggs.

As the chickens were truly free-range, she said it was like going on an Easter egg hunt each time that she needed to collect the 200-plus eggs. Luckily her ratio of broken eggs was very low.

After collecting, she needed to clean and date stamp each egg...

...so they could be sold in the farm’s store, which she also worked in at least once per week.

This chicken was sitting on eight eggs, the record while she was there.

It was a quite a frenzy when it was time to feed the chickens.

Falmouth...

Early Friday evening we hopped on two more trains to make the scenic two-hour journey to Falmouth, in the far southwest corner of England. We dropped our stuff off at our guesthouse and headed into the small town to have dinner at a pizza place that had a separate vegan menu, which is always a big plus.

The next morning we took a taxi up to the even smaller village of Penryn to tour University of Exeter’s campus which they share with Falmouth University. We enjoyed the lectures, but were disappointed that we were not given a proper tour of the science facilities. I was also not impressed when I learned that many of the Marine Biology classes are taught by Biologists rather than Marine Biologists. 

Ashlynn liked the campus and was especially happy when our tour guide stopped at a reptile table run by some students. First she was thrilled to hold a gecko...

...but her true love was this adventurous corn snake.

As you can see, she was completely calm as he crawled all over her.

He clearly wanted her to take him home as he climbed into her bag.

We got back into Falmouth in time to go to a Cornish pasty shop that makes vegan pasties and then to the movie theater to see Black Panther, which I absolutely loved despite not being a big fan of comic book movies.