Sarah

I miss my cottage in Corwall.

I miss going to the beach before breakfast and looking for seals and popstars. Rachel was the only one to spot a seal but we all saw Thom Yorke wearing wellies on the beach.

Saturday
We went for lots of beachy walks and I bought some Smash hits pop stars top trumps in Bude. We decided to take the scenic route to Bude along the coast road but the map didn’t really say there was a 30% hill round a hairpin bend which was like driving up a corkscrew. The map also didn’t tell us it was raining so when the car started going crazy up the hill and there was a horrible burning smell we decided to turn round.

In the evening after a lovely meal by John, plus a big coal fire we played a few rounds of the trumps. By the end of the evening we had adapted it to so each person had to ask for advice from all the others and we had to decide who would give the best advice. Questions ranged from something to do with a sausage dog (I can’t remember it exactly) to “I am thinking of getting into cross-dressing. Can you advise me?”. I scored the topest of top trump cards ever in that round by having Marylin manson.

Sunday
It was gales and rain today so we lit a big fire and got the papers. I cooked roast beef and an apple and blackberry crumble using berries we had picked the day before.

Monday
We went to Padstow which is totally Rick Steined. We caught the little boat to Rock and walked on the amazing sandy beach. Some of the sand was so deep so we spent a good while papping ourselves. Tom Smith papped himself so hard he went up to his knees in sand and then he lost a shoe.

We then decided to embrace the Stein and had fish and chips in his shop back in Padstow. They were delicious and apparently cooked in beef dripping.

Food was vegetable soup, fresh bread and cheese and a really nice sunset.

Tuesday
We visited the Lost Gardens of Heligan today. Highlights included the vegetable garden and the potting shed and the ghost woman who was so frigtening Tom Smith and I couldn’t look at her. We think she had been there slowly working away since the gardens had been lost in about 1920 and for a while it was so convincing as no one spoke to her or even acknowledged her being there.

Tom Smith made Cottage pie, followed by loads of alcohol. The night ended with him leaving the pub suddenly and Paul and I coming back to the cottage and dancing which made us think his major back surgery he had had two weeks earlier had been successful. I then went to bed to find Tom Smith snoring like a lion growling and it made me have hysterics.

Wednesday
My parents visited us for lunch. They arrived when the others were off in bude buying more top trumps and I was cooking in the kitchen. I really felt like I lived there that day. We went to Trebarwith Strand in the afternoon and visited the Mill House Inn for dinner. I had potted cornish crab for starter and Sea bass with braized chickpeas and chorizo for main and it was all so good I think I had a little scream.

Thursday
I want to stay in this cottage we found in Port Quin. I don’t really want to stay in Port Isaac as they use the beach as a car park, though it does sell very nice fish with which Rachel made a delicious fish pie.

Friday
I made a Coffee and Walnut cake and we took it on a walk along the coastal path which goes next to our cottage. It was very steep and slippy in places which wasn’t so good for a very pregnant person and a post surgery person but it was all good in the end. Trifle was the food highlight of the day from Paul. The game hightlight of the day was semiotic guess who. You have two teams and pick your character in the traditional way then you take it in turns to ask questions about the character without using traditional questions such as male or female or are they ginger? So we were asking questions such as “is your character secretly gay?”, “Does your character ride a bike?” or “Does your character have a picture of Margaret Thatcher in their bathroom?”. The most unsucessful question was from Rachel “does your character listen to electronic music?”. The answer to that is that None of the people in Guess who listen to electronic music except for Robert who we think is the person who goes to all the electronic music gigs in bristol and dances in a really scary way.

Saturday
Tom, Paul and I decided to go on a bus so we went to Wadebridge. It took over one hour to get there. We had 2 hours there and then we had to get the last bus back to Crackington haven at 3pm.

So I really miss it all. I miss the Crackington rock formation which is so unique it has been named the Crackington formation.

I don’t miss Tom Smith’s creaky bed or getting up really early to wash before they have to switch the water off for the morning because everything needs to be fixed after the floods.

I will move onwards and particularly upwards however as next weekend I am going to the other end of the country. Tom can give you the finer details.