Wednesday 1st of August 2007 – Holiday in Cornwall
I took you to Manchester on Monday, for the summer, but before that the three of us hired a bigger car and went camping for a few days in Cornwall.
We hired a Ford Focus from Hertz and went to pick it up on Saturday, 21st of July, from the shop in Victoria. What a nightmare! It was very busy and we queued for about an hour!
Day One: We drove off on Sunday and spent our first night with J’s aunt & uncle, Tish & Richard. They cooked a nice BBQ for us, let us stay in their lovely cottage and you played on one of Richard’s tractors, he restores them:
Day Two: Tish & Richard live near St Giles on the Heath. After a comfortable sleep we drove off to Bude, to our first camping site – Upper Lynstone Caravan Park. That day, the Monday, it rained a lot, a lot a lot, so we bought waterproof hats and trousers and went for a coastal walk from Bude to Widemouth North beach, about 2.5 miles – in the rain. Brilliant fun that was. There were massive black slugs coming out of everywhere and I called them whale slugs because they all had a whole that looked like an eye on a whale, and they had whale like skin patterns on half of their body:
We got to the beach and there were amazing rocks on Widemouth North beach, and I mean amazing! We promised to get back the next day so we could collect some to bring home with us. As we were super water proofed we stepped into puddles, went in the sea, jumped over little waves… It was very windy though! We then walked back, it rained like mad for an hour, but the tent didn’t flood thankfully. When rain stopped, at around 8pm we went to a pub/restaurant and had dinner. I had steak and ale pie – you spent most of the time having either fish fingers or chicken nuggets with peas and chips, or pizza. Not very adventurous, the palate of a child…
We went to ‘sleep’ but I didn’t get much sleep that first night. It was raining LOOOOTS and it was very windy, so I’d fall asleep and wake up whenever the wind blew, which was quite often. You and J seemed to sleep like babies though. Although you could have had your own room, you chose to sleep with us, no matter how much I hinted that you might want to sleep on your own, you were a little scared, fair enough, so we all shared a room, and the other one had our things in.
Day Three: The next day we got up early, and the sun was out!!! So we packed up our things and went down to North Widemouth beach to collect stones. After that we headed off to Boscastle, we were heading towards Perranporth, but thought it would be good to stop there. Boscastle was devastated in 2004, by a huge flood. What a lovely place – the walk to the sea on the rocky path is quite breathtaking. Prior to the walk we had breakfast sitting by the river, and a seagull joined us for a bit and had its photo taken. We drove off towards Perranporth – J and I took turns driving and he was driving that day. We got to Goonharven, and after going round a few times we finally found Penrose Park Touring Farm.
We were given pitch number 10 and we had to park very carefully as there was a rabbit just lying there, which was quite magical, you spent the next 40 minutes or so playing with it while we put the tent up again. We had decided that this taking down/putting up tents was a bit too much work, especially with rain – so we decided to stay on the same spot for the rest of the hols and travel to wherever we wanted to go from there.
On what was the busiest day of the holiday, we just drove off to Perranporth, it was such a sunny day, it had been raining for so many days, the country was being flooded – including Tewkesbury, which is where J’s friend, Ema, lives. And we needed sun! Ema was ok, J texted her and she said her house hadn’t been flooded but the river was still rising… We didn’t hear from her again, so assume all is well. We couldn’t find a place to park in Perranporth so ended up driving up a hill, and getting these amazing views of the beach:
We finally got a parking space and went down the beach via some very cool stone steps and just had a great late afternoon on the beach. Then we went to eat something at a restaurant by the beach, then wandered around Perranporth (not much to see, very small) but we bought a spade for you and some beach shoes. We then went back to the beach and you played with the spade for ages (the beach was empty by then) and the seagulls and found a bodyboard with a drawing of a frog in it which we brought home with us. I think I slept like a baby because it wasn’t raining that night and it wasn’t windy.
Day Four: Rained a lot in the early morning until early afternoon, we were planning on going to Eden Project anyway, so off we went.
It got sunny in the afternoon and I took photos. Bit of a nightmare getting lunch as it was so busy! We had the most fun on the tropical dome, despite the heat:
Sadly the Eden Project closes at 6, even in the summer, so I bought lots of plants. We bought a plant for J’s dad, as a birthday present. We drove back to Perranporth and had dinner there. J had shark meat (it seemed too watery though, we don’t think it was cooked properly), we had delicious desserts, you had the clown ice cream, I had syrupy sponge with ice-cream, J had mint ice cream with some minty liqueur at the bottom.
Day Five: Our last day, rain arrived with daylight, about 4 in the morning, and it rained hard! We were planning on going to Lizard’s point, but the rain was so bad we had to change plans and go to the National Maritime Museum, recommended to us by Tish and Richard, in Falmouth. The rain was incredibly hard by the time we got there. Very scary!
The weather improved in the afternoon and we headed off to Pendennis castle. You weren’t very keen on going and were again complaining a lot in the car park, and being moody (don’t know where you get that from!), but oh boy, when we got there, you were so excited! We had a good afternoon there, we looked out into the sea from an observation post used during the war and watched a rescue helicopter in training, we walked around bunkers, and cannons, and the views were stunning! You and J dressed up as soldiers:
I then had enough of not being able to take any photos, and deleted 40 odd photos to make space for more and was back in business, this enabled us to take this photo (which was done on a timer, the camera was resting on a cannon), which I really like:
We went back to Perranporth and had our last dinner in Cornwall in another pub/restaurant by the beach. It was windy and a bit chilly, but not raining, so we wrapped up and wandered on the beach, on the rocks, to say goodbye to the sea. I’m not sure how long we were there for, lost track of time, but I think it was about 2 hours. The sunset was amazing, the best one for the whole time we were there. You made drawings on the sand, you’ve drawing characters with six packs lately, so you drew a huge muscle man with his six pack and square pectorals.
Day Six: We got up early on Friday and packed up pretty quickly, luckily it wasn’t raining, it was sunny, so our tent dried up. When we set off it got cloudy, which was cool, it would have been harder to leave if it had been sunny. The ground was completely soggy though, it’d been raining so much that, even after a good 18 hours without rain, the ground hadn’t been able to soak up the rainwater. We left the site at about 10 and spent most of the day travelling, we got in London at around 6pm, what a long day in the car that was! The traffic was bad, because everyone was going on holiday or getting back from it. Either way, the opposite side of the road to ours seemed a lot worse than our side. There was an accident on the road too, and that messed things up a bit. Driving the Ford Focus was interesting, we’d be doing 90mph and it felt like we were gliding. The Micra, well, going at 50 miles an hour, it feels like there’s a machine there, one that might be about to explode with exertion! The wheels shakes and it feels very intense!
I need to go home now, still at work, will write more later. But that was our lovely holiday! Our first family holiday. We felt great, rested and relaxed when we got back.
More photos:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/plasmatika/sets/72157601041083884/