As the roads were so terrible, and it was late and wet, I decided to stop off for the night near by--and went about a mile and a half to the coast and found a perfectly ideal inn. It was in a tiny bay, all by itself, or rather on the cliff above a tiny bay, on the peninsular point of which was a miniature temple. No human foot-print but mine was on the sand of the shore, and none but the maids of the house within call. I took a small room upstairs, facing the sea, where the breakers dashed on to the cliffs, and found that though inside the house, on one side it was open, because a big piece of cliff stuck right into the building. This gave a charming view of moss-grown rocks, and a hollow stone with a lake in it, all lying between me and the next-door room.
The bath-room was downstairs, and to reach it one went along a long corridor hewn out of solid rock. The bath-room itself was also built in the solid rock, and was a great vault-like place. How J---- and M---- would have revelled in it!
The food was such that my saucepan worked wonders with it, and converted stony chicken, hard rice, and half-cooked green pickle into a very tasty stew. The beds were excellent, though not of silk, and I slept splendidly. Last night we had talked till one o’clock, so to-night I turned in at 8.30 and slept till 8.15. Alternations of solitude and company are refreshing, and though I enjoyed those girls immensely, and laughed as I haven’t done since I left England, it is delicious to be alone with the grey sea in a hotel half hewn out of solid rock.
=April 6.= After pouring all night the clouds broke about 9 o’clock, and I set forth in sight of gleams of blue between the grey; the hotel people were all very polite, though all they got out of me was 2s. 8d. It is a hotel I shall note and hope to return to, I wish I could bring some of my friends there from home. In the next little bay, where the cliffs are also very steep right down to the sea, so that there is no beach at high tide, the fishermen beach their boats on a series of piles and trestles, and very picturesque and quaint they look.
The cliffs here are all limestony and sandy, and seem rather recent and unfossiliferous.
[Illustration: THE COAST ROAD ALONG WHICH WE WALKED ROUND BOSHU]