Nedster's World now featuring Ellis!

Saturday
So we awoke on Saturday after a decent lie in to the sound of distant crashing waves, and even better the rustling bags and packets of Mum and Dad unloading the monster Tesco click and collect order. Once we'd surveyed that, and supervised the military operation of putting it all away it was a bit of a meet and greet mission.  There were loads of us down this year, as well as the usual suspects Andy, Ben, Rach, Kimi, Marny, Darcey, Laura, Auntie Christine, Uncle Ian and Auntie Trish we also had Owen and Kirsty and Finlay, Millie, Chris and Kate!  Quite the invasion this year.

There were waves and sunshine so we headed for a day on the beach, a perfect way to kick things off.  We spent all day down there, pretty much until the sun went down:

Sunday
Another day on the beach, well the sun was still out and there were still waves.  With high tide around the midday mark though the beach did seem a little bit busier than we're used to:

We didn't mind though, it was lovely.

In the evening it was time for the annual barbecue, well, 'smores' event anyway:

It went down as well as ever of course, it's a real highlight of the week for us kids.

Auntie Christine had a few games lined up as well, no doubt inspired by the Rio Olympics that were going on.  It wasn't standard olympic sports though, there was the plastic cup seperate and restack race (Dad seems to have a very serious look on his face):

Owen let himself down on this one by cheating, what a low act!

There were also various bean bag themed events which were great fun:

I think I also made a new friend in Millie:

Monday
Guess what? The weather was still glorious so once again we hit the beach.  The waves had died off a touch so it was a good day to get everyone out for a swim.  Darcey and I particularly enjoyed doing an artistic gymnastics routine with seaweed that had to be seen to be truly appreciated.

We all know how Dad likes a dig in the sand but we rather stole his thunder with this creation:

It ended up as a makeshft hot tub, complete with steps down into it and fully tiled with slates from the beach.  In terms of creativity and ingenuity, my mini golf course idea was top notch:

We totalled five holes of increasingy difficulty and structural comlexity and all the lads certainly enjoyed play testing it!

Tuesday
It was still sunny......we decided to take advantage of the low morning tide by going for a dip in the pool:

It was as cold as ever!

We walked round to Constantine to meet up with Finlay and Millie who were busy fishing the rockpools.  They also had a pretty well stocked bucket of crabs from their bacon baited crab lines.

We didn't do as well with them though:

In the afternoon we had the most hotly anticipated activity of the week......the AquaPark at Retallack.  Basically it was an inflatble obstacle course in the middle of a lake.  Participating in this endeavour were myself and Ned, Mum, Dad, Andy, Owen as well as John and Sarah who joined us for the afternoon.

We had the luxury of bouyancy aids to wear, I love a bouyancy aid I do:

We got the briefest of rules outlined to us before we got to hit the water and head out to the good bits.  It was so epic, i'd been looking forward to this for weeks and it more than lived up to expectations.  I loved the balance beam (which I found much easier than anyone else), the trampoline and all the various slides.  The launch bags were quite a sucess too.  These involved a large grown up positioning themselves up a tower while a smaller projectile (myself or Ned) positioning themselves on the end of a bed sized air pillow.  Even getting yourself ready to be launched was quite an achievement and after an initial miss aligned leap from Dad, Ned was launched into a low earth orbit with a somersault for good measure before splashing down after re-entry.  My turn next afforded Owen the oppurtunity to fulfil his usual role of making one of the kids cry when he gave me a similar lift off.  It wasn't his fault though, and I did sort of enjoy it, on reflection.  There were also see saws to play on and probably best of all large floating pontoon that was quite wobbly froside to side.  This ended up being used as a giant sumo wrestling ring, with endless pushing and shoving and falling over.  Sarah particularly lost the plot and was laughing so hard she had no change of even managing to stand up.

At the end of our hour session we were all pretty much worn out:

I got to grill John for a bit as I always like to do, but now he's so tall I had to conduct most of the conversation stood on a picnic table.  Stay tuned for pictures to follow from varous other sources on this one.

We re-grouped when we got back to Treyarnon:

And then went out fo an evening group walk:

We picked up Dad and Andy on the way round as they had escaped for an evening surf at Constantine:

Wednesday
Well it had gone in a flash so far and sadly it was already time for Darcey to go home.  We made sure we took her surfing in the morning on her new board first though.

We waved her, Laura, Auntie Christine and Uncle Ian off and then I set about having a massive all day TV binge on the sofa......well it had been a pretty full on week so far, we all need to recharge.

Thursday
Well it had to happen, it turned a bit gloomy, grey, miserable even maybe?  So after a cooked breakfast we rounded up Trish, Owen and Kirsty and took a trip to Bedruthan to make the most of the low tide.

We had a lovely explore as always when we go there, it's a really cool place and always seems so remote and quiet.  We climbed, we paddled, we ate our picnic lunch and then had some afternoon sport.  First off it was gymnastics, with beams drawn in the sand.  This culminated in both Dad and Owen attempting cart wheels with varying degrees of sucess.

Next up long jump:

This was given whole new level of professionalism when Owen introduced a white and red flag system like they use at major sporting events.

We dropped into Anne's Cottage on the way back and spent a small fortune on clobber.  I did manage to secure myself a rather splendid winter coat from the sale section though, it's a beauty, i'm almost looking forward to winter now!

Again there were defectors, this time making their way back home were Kimi and Marny......

We spent the evening watching the Olympics, diving is our new favourite spectator sport.  We are all experts on splashless entry, under and over rotation.

Friday
So after a spell of bad weather we were back on form today with this surprise cloudless scorcher of a day:

Ned had a stand up surf lesson, as usual, he was annoyingly good at it, he got up first time:

While he was bending his instructors ear for extra tips and advice from his instructor we played boules:

Seeing as the weather was so good we decided to hit the youth hostel for lunch, sat at our favourite vantage point and having a good feed, perfect.

With the upcoming storm on it's way the surf was getting bigger and bigger so we went back to Harlyn for a dip with Owen in tow.  It was brilliant, I caught thousands of waves with Mum, Ned worked on his stand up and Andy, Dad and Owen got a few too.  The tide was coming in at a rate, making for some weird conditions where I was surfing (Hands behind my back) across varying depths of water before almost getting to the foot of the rocks at the back of the beach where the sand runs out.  This contributed to Owen managing to lose his flipper while taking it off and getting caught out by a sudden surging wave.  Trying to find a clear rubber flipper that doesn't float is very difficult......we didn't find it again.
Another departure with Finlay, Millie, Chris and Kate heading off.  It's the first time they've been down and I hope it's not the last, we had a lot of fun with them.

Saturday
Well the storm that was predicted arrived with a vengence on Saturday.  It was a Wet and wild day for sure.

We couldn't do much, the beach was red flagged so we took a trip to Padstow.

It wasn't actually that busy, we wandered the shops for a bit, ooohed and aaaahed over all the lovely little dogs out for a walk and ate Pasties.  I also bought myself the cutest cuddly bear ever from the utterly fantastic teddy bear shop, I could have stayed in there for hours test cuddling everything.

We went back to base to find out Kirsty had been taken ill, the poor thing!  It's not so easy to get to the doctors in Cornwall on a saturday afternoon so they had to wait until the doctor came to visit her.  She got an injection and got to ride all the way home to Newbury laid down on the back seat of the car under medical advice.  I hope ypu feel better soon.  So that left just us four and Andy, after Owen went home with Kirsty, taking Trish too.  We went out to take in the effects of the storm:

The foam being blown off the sea was like a full on snowstorm and the sea was crashing against the island, at times completely covering it with huge plumes of white spray.

We made it back to the shelter of the caravan in time to watch a good stint of rhythmic gymnastics at the Olympics, I loved it, Ned....not so much!

Sunday
It was a bit grim today too, we had a lay inthen started packing up our stuff.  The beaach at Treyarnon was still red flagged so we took Andy and Dad to Harlyn so they could get some waves.  Ned didn't fancy it for once, which was a surprise as he's pretty much surfed himself to a standstill over the course of the week.  He's been 'out the back' with the big boys and is very pleased with himself, claiming some massive waves to boot.  A yway, while they were in the sea we played a tense game of Dobble in the car......

Then it was back to pack up, tidy up and head home, another summer holiday completed.  As ever, a massive thank you to everyone involved for a brilliant week and thanks too to everyone who left us food parcels as they departed, we ate very well at the end of the week!

Monday

Although we weren't that late back last night it was good to have a lazy day at home with Mum.

We took a quick trip out for provisions and then I got creative with the cornflour:

I did make quite a mess with it.....the table and chairs, kitchen floor, conservatory, sofa, garden path and even a few items of clean washing on the line all managed to get mucked up.....oops.

We bought the film 'Goosebumps' on DVD earlier and watched that in the afternoon when Dad got home, I loved it.