"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again..."

There's a lot of archaeology in Cornwall. In a day driving round only a small part of the peninsula, we looked at ancient standing stones, a standing stone put up around 500AD to commemorate a fallen warrior, and the ruins of the tin mining industry.

All very much to my taste.

While it might have been more comfortable to have done all of this in sunshine, much of our sightseeing was done in a gently blowing mist. But this certainly gave the distinctly Romantic remains of a tin mine, with its nearby chimney , a charming ghostly quality as it loomed over us out of the mist.

Later, parking by the road, we walked up a country track then out onto the moor to find Men-an-Tol. This is the relic which looks like 101 - three standing stones in a line, the two end ones straight upright, the middle one round, with a round hole in it.

The very worthy and interested Victorians messed around with these stones, as they did with many others, so it's unclear whether there was any astronomical alignment. It did cross my mind that it might be digital machine code, but the vision of Erich Von Daniken leered at me and I dropped the idea.

Legend has it that a sick person passed entirely through the hole will be cured. Both Buddy K and I stuck our feet through but I'm here to tell you that it didn't work. This is not a cure for planta fasciitis. But then we didn't actually pass bodily through the hole, so who knows...

Further up the track and in another field, is Men Scryfa. It's an eerie feeling standing in the middle of a field in a dense fog, with nothing but each other and a tall inscribed stone for company.

The stone is said to be the height of the fallen warrior whose death it commemorates, but considering some of it is below ground such that the inscription is partly hidden, he must have been quite a giant. Buddy K and I are about 5 ft 9 and the stone rose almost a foot above us.

Back on the road, there was another site not too far away. The probably very famous Lanyon Quoit. The Victorians stood these up too, and one was broken, so the monument is no longer as tall as it once was. But it's still a very impressive construction.

Roving Gallery Report No. 309

I've often wondered what it would be like to live in an artists' colony. Having been to St Ives I'm still not in a position to know the answer, because I went as a visitor, of course.

I can't imagine what it was like for Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Bernard Leach, Bryan Wynter, Peter Lanyon, Terry Frost et al, to hang out in 1950s St Ives, and mix with an international art set there.

"In St Ives you could walk into a pub or go to a party and see Rothko or Motherwell and eminent critics, American and British. At the time it all seemed natural but in retrospect it was an extraordinary and exciting period."
Tom Cross, Catching the Wave

That's all gone now, of course, but St Ives still retains a little of the aura of what once was.

A lot of that is in the visitor's head, however. I found myself wandering round an exhibition by the St Ives Society of Artists and being surprised to find that some of the work was at best average. Why should I be surprised? There's no reason why Newcastle should have more average artists than St Ives.

What I think helps artists living in St Ives is that they're in an atmosphere where art is expected to be found and where ill-informed visitors assume that what is on display must be good because it's in an "artists' colony." In fact, my visits to quite a few local galleries and artists' open studios showed there was an awful lot of distinctly average art about, and that's being kind.

Better by far were the exhibitions we found in The Great Atlantic Map Works Gallery in St Just. The show coming down and the one going up were both really good, and the profusion of red dots, even on works as yet unhung, showed there are people about who value good work and are prepared to invest in it.

Of the two Tate institutions in St Ives, I got most out of the Barbara Hepworth Museum. Like the Baltic in Gateshead, the Tate St Ives is an interesting building conversion with not a great deal in it. A small selection of Nicholsons, Naum Gabos and Peter Lanyons in the permanent collection and, currently, a pretty good show of wood sculpture by David Nash, but also some indifferent stuff like a sound installation purporting to demonstrate how much the streets of Mumbai sounded like St Ives. OK, there was too much traffic in St Ives, but Mumbai it is not.

The Barbara Hepworth Museum was a whole nother thing. The little Sculpture Garden attached to its house and studio, is almost exactly the garden I have in mind for my house. All I need are the big bits of sculpture and lots of bamboo.

Tiddy Oggy

The Saturday hanging went very well indeed. We were done within about an hour and a half. And I have to say the show looks pretty damn fine.

Only the press release remains to be done (by me, tomorrow). The posters are done and look good and the invitations to the Private View have been posted.

If you're in the area (BykerSink?), do please look us up! Bring your cheque-books!

There's no release for me from fun, it seems. On Tuesday I'm flying to Bristol, where I'll be picked up by Buddy K and Suzie who are in Swansea even as I write.

From Bristol we drive onwards to the ends of the world, or at least St Ives. After Desperate Cornish Fun, including no doubt the Tate St Ives, it's back to Bristol and a return flight to Newcastle.

Speak to you then.

Until then stay sweet and fresh.