The final episode!

Tuesday

So it was the last day of the summer holidays for both the Park House kids and the St Barts contingent.  In light of this i'd been rather pro-active on the various group chats to try and pull everyone together for a day at the park.  The organisation went well and there were loads of us down there, I also packed myself a bag with a few supplies and the picnic blanket which was widely admired.  It was a lovely day out in the late summer sunshine with a few visits to Best One of course.

Last day of the holidays fever had obviously spread as far as Mum and Dad too, so it was off to Pizza Hut for tea.  It had been a while so was warmly received by Ned and myself.  We had a lovely evening, lots of laughs, fun, reminiscing and looking forward to my new school.  Ned as surprisingly warm about the whole situation which made a welcome change from his usual antics (which we all know are just a front) he's almost as glad as I am that we'll be back at the same school again.  He was almost looking forward to going back to school himself in some ways I'm sure.  Those lazy lay ins and long days on the XBox must be taking their toll.

We took a group family walk up the hill to school when we got home so I could time my walk to school.  Well Ned took his bike and wheelied pretty much all the way there and back.  There was quite a complex plan of meeting up with a whole raft of us (Iyah, Amelie, Amber and Weasel) in the morning so it needed working out well in advance.

I went to bed as excited as I do on Christmas Eve or the day before a hot holiday.

Wednesday

From the moment I woke up Mum said my smile was so wide i'd need a bigger head.  I'd been looking forward to this day for so long and it was finally here and I was loving every minute of it.

The grand meet up got off to a bad start with Iyah running behind schedule but we clawed it back and we all managed to get there on time.  

On the way up the hill we passed Harrison and Max on their way down the hill to St Barts.

We also caught up with a new year 12 who's new shoes had ripped her feet to bits and was desperate for tissues to mop it up a little the poor girl.

We met up in the hall before making our way off with our new tutor, who we remembered from the induction day luckily.

I went out of my way to mingle with all my new classmates and made friends quickly with Scarlett and Lola amongst others so that was a good start.

All this without the obligatory new school uniform picture? That's bad form, sorry, here it is:

Note skirt rolled over a little bit to shorten it but nicely fitting blazer which can be unusual in these sort of pictures so I understand?

So one of the lads managed to get himself a bad behaviour point on his first day which was quite an achievement and Amelie had a comedy willy drawn on one of her chairs which was a real highlight of the day.  I also got Mr Wilder as my history teacher, Ned's tutor, I didn't let on and neither did he....... 

After our first day was done I walked home with Leo, one of his Falkland friends and the two ex John Rankin Aidan's amongst others so that was a nice bit of integration.

Ned came down from his lair to see how i'd got one as he didn't start until tomorrow.  He was actually very interested, understanding and took a lot of time going through my timetable over tea giving me the lowdown on all the teachers i've got.  He was overwhelmingly positive on the hole as well which as nice to hear.

Thursday

So day two and school was noticeably busier as the full school was back not just year's 7 and 12.  This of course included Ned and all his friends who couldn't wait to acknowledge his little sister and make sure he heard all about it too.  Like water off a ducks back for me.

I sat next to Leo in English which as cool.  Somehow in the middle of the day I managed to pick up a decent size lump of discarded chewing gum that I managed to smear right up the back and side of the heel on one foot and across the top and laces of the other one.  It played on my mind all day and I couldn't wait to get home and get Mum to help me sort it out.  Sadly she wasn't in so it was down to Me, Dad and Google.  We got it sorted out in no time (thanks to gentle hand soap and a wet wipe, top tip for you there everyone).

Friday

The last day of the short school week didn't start well with a monumental Spanish/French class mix  up which saw me mistakenly sent to Spanish even though I should have been in French.

It got resolved.....eventually and I got back to my French class in time to interpret our teachers opening French statement for my classmates that didn't understand it.

Oh and another thing, having a surname that starts with A is rubbish when establishing the ground rules with new teachers.   Some of them insist on a full and formal response when calling the register and as i'm first I get it wrong and get corrected with out having the benefit of copying the established protocol.

Saturday

Well after a three day week, I needed a lie in.

Followed by a big old cooked breakfast and then a trip to the Newbury Real Ale festival.

There was a good turnout again, Nate, Joel, Alan, Hayley, Andy, Owen, Kirsty, Nick and Chris were all there and set up for the day quite nicely when we arrived.

Joel loves his beer:

But he coudn't hack the pace:

We also found these two, once again in the posh VIP area, they did lower themselves to talk to us though and it was lovely to see them:

There were a lot of people here this year:

As is the norm at the moment, I got my human stepladder to get me a good view of proceedings:

We hung out all day, it was great fun playing with Nate and Joel, throwing the small foam American football MILES with the lads and dipping in and out of our picnic supplies.

There was music going on pretty much all day, none of which I was particularly familiar with except for a few tunes here and there i'd heard around the house now and again.

We stayed until the end of course and I had a great day, thoroughly enjoyed it even if a small group of drunk teenagers were having a little too much enthusiastic fun with a camping chair launching it into the air which I didn't much care for.

We said our goodbyes and went back to our bikes to ride home.  We made sure we didn't make the same mistake as last year and had plenty of lights to help us home.......sadly there wasn't plenty of air in Dads rear tyre so that was him walking home as we sped off into the darkness.

Sunday

Football season is back....boooo. So Ned had the first game today, anyway match in Basingstoke.  We dropped him off for warm up and team talk and god knows what else they do before the game and headed into town for a rapid mission to Sports Direct.

Basingstoke mercy dash, on the shopping list....some school uniform appropriate base layers for our PE kits and a proper American football for me and Dad to throw about after yesterdays success at the beer festival.  We managed it in time to get back to the football in time for kick off. Ned has seemingly upped his efforts at football and after receiving a lot of positive feedback during pre-season training he made the starting line up.  This of course meant we had to watch more of the game rather than launch the new American football as far as we could across an adjacent vacant pitch. It was a good bit bigger than the weird little foam one but I got to grips with it nicely after a few goes.

The match ended up 4-3, so they only just lost, I think they were reasonably pleased with their season opener.

We took off pretty rapidly so fortunately missed the post match talk and just about got me to Lilly's birthday party on time.  It was the first time I'd really seen any of the St Barts lot since we started our new schools and I was the only Park House representative there.  She had a bouncy castle and a sumo suit thing for entertainment which was great fun. I should advise anyone reading though not to go on a bouncy castle in a sumo suit. By the time I had fallen over in the back corner of the castle I was unable to get up or indeed get out of the sumo suit.

Monday

So back school and still having new subjects and classrooms on the timetable as we hadn't been through a full week yet. 

In the evening Owen came over and we finally got to do our indoor Skydiving that he got us for Christmas.

We warmed up with something to eat first, I was outvoted so it was KFC although I went next door to the golden arches and smuggled it back in to eat with everyone else.

Once that was done we moved onto the skydiving place, it looked pretty cool from outside...the tube in the middle looked very high though and I was beginning to get a little nervous if I'm honest. We watched the previous groups efforts for a bit before it was our turn which put my mind a little more at rest, it looked a lot of fun.

We watched the video then got kitted up in our flying suits (snug), goggles (tight strap and prone to steaming up), ear plugs and helmets before moving into the seating area right next to the tunnel.  It was pretty noisy and not surprisingly rather windy.

Ned was first out of our lot, and pretty much nailed it straight off, looking like he'd done it all before.  He did go a little more wobbly after his composed start so that was reassuring and after a quick reassuring snuggle up to Dad it was my turn:

I think my gymnastics based flexibility was an initial hindrance but I soon got on top of it:

We had two goes and on the second did the proper high fly right up to the top with the instructor which was brilliant fun and also managed a very long and high fly flight without the instructor having to drag me back at all.  Mum, Dad and Owen also had a go of course, with varying degrees of success and resulting injuries.  Thanks Owen and Kirsty!!

So that's it, we'll go out on a high quite literally.

As with Ned, once secondary school starts the Blog comes to an end. 

Thanks to everyone who's bothered to keep reading this long, all the way back to 2005 in fact if you've been following from the start.

So this can stay here now, to embarrass us with long forgotten photo's and videos, all the cringey stories, clothes, haircuts and all the rest of it.

Unlike Ned, I am a little more concerned about this whole enterprise coming to a halt so you never know if I might dig out the old login and password one day, but it's pretty unlikely.

I'd like to thank everyone who has helped both of us develop, grow, interact, have fun, sing, dance, compete, relax, be entertained, listen, care, learn, appreciate what we have, eat, drink, ride, fly, surf, drive, swim, skate, run, walk, crawl....you get the idea.

I'm sure there's going to be a few turbulent teenage years to come, hopefully we're  all equipped to deal with it.

See you around.

Tuesday

Went to the Pool with mum again this afternoon. Ned obviously didnt want to come and Dad had already gone to the bikepark.  What a pair of fools, it was boiling hot and we pretty much had it to ourselves too.  We even got to squeegee the changing room floor which was very therapeutic, I can't resist a good old squeegee session.

After tea we went to try out the new trim trail in Penwood.  We went to the wrong woods at first but did have a nice walk, enjoying the tall trees and having a chat.

After a brief google we found the right woods and the trail.  It wasn't the best thing in the world but it was entertaining enough.

We did end up in some rather thick undergrowth at one point which took some effort to get through.  We also managed to find a seriously cool treehouse and a chicken coop which was a bit of a surprise.

A fallen tree is always good for a climb:

Best of all was the cropped of rope swing, a bit of a stretch to reach and hard work to hold on to but a lot of fun and it swang out a good height over the slope below.

Wednesday

Uniform stuff today, my new shoes arrived, very smart too.  I did don my whole new ensemble but I think i'll keep those sort of pictures for next week when i'm officially a Park House pupil.

Thursday

Mini Golf today, a trip to Tidal Bay in the not very coastal Basingstoke, well Sherfield on Loddon anyway.

It was really good too, well, except for Ned being a pain in the neck with his 'jokes'

The course was fun, quite tricky in places though but there were some massive carp in the ponds ans some really cute turtles in another pool too.  I wasn't in contention for the win but did play a lot better than I usually do.  We sat and totted up the scores in the clubhouse over a fizzy drink:

Rather boringly, Dad won.  

Friday

I rediscovered my Lego today, and obviously roped Dad in to help not that he took much persuading.

Saturday

Lazy morning with a bit more Lego (we're making a plush villa, not one of the instructions driven sets) and then a trip to the Pub with all the gang.  We hadn't been out there yet this summer despite the on-going good weather so it was time to put that right:

Sunday

Outdoor Pool again.  Ned was going with his mates too so it was all a bit awkward but it worked out okay in the end.  Obviously anything a group of teenage boys try to do takes about 3 times as long as anyone else so we had plenty of dive time at the deep end before they all turned up. We'd packed the water pistol thing which was great fun until Dad squirted me right in the eye with it . We managed to successfully avoid the boys by setting up our blanket near the changing rooms knowing full well that they would head to the far side.  He did come over to tell us that they were leaving and was very pleasant. When we got home he even thanked us for giving him plenty of space down there which was nice.

Monday

So with the holidays drawing to a close it's time to cram a few more activities in. trampolining today at Red Kangaroo in Reading. I had been here before so was desperate to show it off to the others.  I think they liked it too!
Like all these places it has it's own unique features that make it fun, like this total wipeout inspired sweep game:

There was also an airbag as well as the more standard foam pits that Dad and Ned seemed to enjoy.

These barriers between trampolines were great fun (and much higher in real life than they look on these pictures)  It took me a while to get over this one even though Ned made it look incredibly easy:

The light up button press game thing almost finished off Mum and Dad I think.  Having said that, by the end of the hour we were all pretty much done.  With very pink faces.

Mum had made tonight's spaghetti Bolognese, the memory still lingers from last time she made it (albeit years ago) with the salt overload but she redeemed herself with tonights effort.  Even Ned finished his plateful with zero whingeing which is unheard of.

he must be in a good mood actually as I was even allowed to talk about how excited I am to be starting school on Wednesday, a subject that was previously banned in his presence.....

Tuesday

So back from holiday and with a thousand odd Whatsapp messages it was a minor miracle that I managed to pick out the meaningful efforts to arrange a get together down the park today with Amber and Jess.

Wednesday

More old school friend catchups today, a morning with Sasha.  We did hair styling (the hours put in on the head dummy have really paid off), a bit of makeup and all the rest of it but the real highlight was the perfume making.  You chose certain components based on aspects of your personality to give you your unique fragrance. Sasha's smelt really nice, mine ended up not being quite so pleasant (a bit like a cleaning product actually) but it was a lot of fun.

Thursday

With Hayley laid up for  bit, Alan was flying solo with the boys so he got us out for a picnic in Victoria park (three Colin the Caterpillars for pudding).  It was great fun, I took Nate up the big tower slide without Alan for the first time and introduced them to the sheer joy of using the mini ramp as a slide.Park picnic 

We also made ourselves ridiculously dizzy on the roundabout which Joel was very reluctant to get off of:

After we were done playing I went to pick up my Park House PE kit, now fully emblazoned with my initials. How exciting, looks really cool on too.

Friday

Alan bought the boys around in the afternoon, perfect excuse to get some of the long forgotten toys out of the conservatory.  Hex bugs and the rev-up motorbikes were a massive hit.

Saturday

Basingstoke for a shopping trip with Mum and Dad.  Got some more bits and bobs for school, four t-shirts and a huge strawberry squashie.

In the evening it was out with the Halfords for a curry and then back to their house to watch the KSI vs Logan Paul boxing match with a load of Max's friends which was pretty good, even if six sounds was a bit of a long time to watch for me.  We all thought KSI was robbed.

Sunday

A wet bank holiday Sunday, what to do? Well Ned went to watch Fulham with Andy (They beat Burnley 4-2 so they were happy).  How about another outing with Alan and the boys?  yeah, why not!  First we tried the Aquadrome in Basingstoke which turned out to be a total waste of time.  All the good stuff was closed for some reason leaving only the boring square pool and one slide operational.  Not worth the bother then.  JJ's is nearby and despite Nate declaring that he didn't like soft play we went there.  I reckon he actually does like soft play:

And so did Joel once he had warmed up as long as Alan wasn't too far away.

We hadn't been for a while so I really rather enjoyed it even if the slides weren't running as fast I might have liked.

Andy and Ned got home just in time for a roast dinner.

Monday

Todays activity, forced family bank holiday fun, whatever you ant to call it was a bike ride.

Actually there wasn't any real resistance from either of us so that was good, we were ready reasonably early too which was something of a minor miracle.

The Meon Valley trail was our route for the day, once again a disused railway line and a rather ambitious 10 miles there and 10 miles back between West Meon and Wickham.

We'd probably done about a mile before I started asking if we could have our picnic, I had to wait another 4 miles before we did finally have it. 

It was quite a densely wooded route so there wasn't much in the way of views along the way.  There was a few nice river sections though:

And some dramatic looking fallen trees which I always find interesting:

We made it to Wickham, there wasn't much there, the highlight for us girls at least was the toilet!

Then it was time for the long trek back:

The last five miles were certainly the hardest, there were some tired legs and some sore bottoms for sure:

So that was that, certainly our longest ride to date at 20 miles, it pretty much felt slightly up hill all the way there and indeed all the way back but it was nice to get out for the day.
I'd worked up quite an appetite that's for sure, I was still owed a 'treat' for my glowing final school report so I called it in. Three double cheeseburgers from McDonalds.  Lovely, I managed them all too.

Tuesday

Well the weather has been hot for so long now we've all got used to it pretty much.  So it was yet another routine trip to the outdoor pool today again.  I really do love going though and never get bored of it.

Wednesday

A day with Auntie Christine and Darcey, a trip to Four Kingdoms for a load of animal bothering, sliding and bouncing.

After lunch we went to Auntie Christines golf club and had a go on the driving range...it was brilliant and I loved it.  We'll have to go again for sure.

Thursday
I hassled Ned to bake us a cake instead of wasting yet another morning on his Xbox.  I managed to get him moving and he did indeed bake us a cake.  He was an egg short though so improvised to the best of his ability.  

We were off to Cornwall once Dad was finished at work, so I did some packing and sorted out the toiletries.  The electric toothbrush heads can be quite confusing with regard to who's is who's so I hit upon the ingenious idea of elastic banding mine and Ned's to our toothpaste tube.

Dad came home with a nice present from the lads at work, a plastic trumpet.  It didn't take long before Mum threatened to stick it somewhere unpleasant if I carried on playing it or attempted to take it to Cornwall with us.

We put a few bits and pieces in the car and headed west with great excitement.

Being a Thursday afternoon the traffic was much more kind than our usual Friday night so we were dowthere in no time, swinging by Fryer Tucks for a chippy tea.

We then attempted to assemble Ned's cake which was still attached to the baking tin.....it had a rather more crumbly texture than we might have liked. 

Mum and Ned found it hilarious, Dad got a bit of a 'cheffy' strop on about the whole sorry debacle.  It tasted great though.

There was still plenty of daylight left so we suited up and got in the sea for a family surf session.

I found a bouy attached to a long length of rope at the waters edge and as I dragged it up to the bins it caught the attention of a rather playful little dog who loved it as I dragged it along. Dad wasn't quite so enamoured with it when I managed to wrap it around his legs and trip him up in a rock pool though...ha ha.
We rounded the day out with a good old telly slump under my duvet.

Friday
The first major undertaking of our lengthy Cornwall stay is always the shopping order collection.  The Wadebridge branch has this very fancy computerised terminal.  We entered our name and waited for our goods to appear, discussing whether or not we could guess someone elses name and claim their shopping too?

The lady wheeled out a massive tower of crates and said she wasn't actually allowed to stack it any higher than that before disappearing back through the doors to get the rest of it! It took ages to pack it all into the car, filling the boot, the footwells and any other spare places we could find.  Of course this meant it took ages to unpack and put away once we were back to the caravan.

It was great to see everyone once we were back, already onsite we had Darcey and Laura, Auntie Trish, Kimi, Marney, Ben and Rach as well as Owen and Kirstie.  Finlay, Millie, Chris and Kate turned up mid morning too.

The sun was out so we all hit the beach, it was lovely to be all down there, playing in the sea and chatting.  The lifegaurds dog was seriously cute, if a bit deranged.  We got chatting and it turned out  she liked chasing stones thrown across the sand and ignored her ball alltogether.

It was high tide and it was getting higher which caught a few people out with their makeshift beach camps getting flooded with one tent getting completely saturated. 

There was a lovley sunset in the evening, we spotted it from our high up vantage point:

So wandered down to the cliffs en masse.

When we got back Ned and I got put to work washing up, which I did with surprising amount of enthusiasm.

Saturday
Well it was a bleak, wet day today.  Ned and Dad went surfing, Mum and I stayed in and played Jenga amongst other things:

When the boys come back we had lunch and then watched the film Coco that we took with us specifically for such a wet day.  We all enjoyed it even though it wasnt the best thing we had ever watched.

By mid afternoon the weather had lifted enough for us to go crabbing with the Enevoldsen's. They hadn't  been before so we took them to our favoured hunting ground at Constantine Bay:

We tried a new bait this year, sliced up Frankfurters.  The crabs couldn't get enough of it and were pretty much throwing themselves into our bucket!

Andy finally arrived later in the evening after foolishly going to watch Fulham in the afternoon, he should have come straigt down if you ask me. 

Sunday
The final piece of the puzzle arrived today in the shape of Auntie Christine and Uncle Ian to join in with the fun, the weather was great again so it was a beach day.
We took another trip down the gap:

But it was a bit more lively in the water and a much lower tide than last weekend.  We had a quick jump and then made our way back to try the low tide swimming pool on the other side of the beach instead.

We dug the yoga ball in for a bit of bounce fun:

We did some net fishing and caught a few super quick fish and some massive shrimps too.

I bottled out of the big rock jump again:

As it was low tide there was plenty of oppurtunity to damn up a stream and enjoy an increasingly large rock pool.  Once we'd had enough fun with the pool we decided it was time to bash the damn down.....it went with a heck of a gush too, sweeping down the beach in a raging torrent which was brilliant to splash about in.

We had a nice evening walk and took Owen along with us too. 

Monday
Pancakes for breakfast today, lovely start to the day.

Another beach all dayer today.

Sand castles were made:

Yoga ball was bounced on again.
And there was a lot of fun to be had surfing with Finlay:

The real trick to a holiday in Cornwall is reacting to the weather, so wehn it's sunny and nice of an evening you have to have a barbecue.  A proper good get together and a perfect oppurtunity for Auntie Christine to take one of her photo's:

We had a great set up this year:

And it was a lovely evening, finished off with yet another lovely sunset that we actually missed while walking down to the cliffs:

Tuesday
We took a morning walk with the Enevoldsens, up onto the headalnd the other side of the beach which was very nice.  Things look so different from over there.

It was the beach again in the afternoon, and it was a happy birthday to Uncle Ian too!

Owen and Chrissy started off a fishing party, but they soon lost interest once we deployed our stinky frankfurter crab lines and emptied the rock pool of crabs.  Andy and I then spent ages honing our fishing technique using a net and the manky hot dogs to snag a mighty haul of good sized fish:

There was high drama in the afternoon when the air ambulance landed on the beach right in front of us to help out an old chap who'd had a bit of a fall on the rocks near us.  Hope he gets well soon.
That wasn't the the only sad event of the day, Andy and I were having a game of headers with the yoga ball.  One wayward header from Andy sent the ball up...and then down right on the corner of the open caravan door....making a massive tear in it.  It went down very rapidly.
We had an early tea as we were off out to the Donkey Derby.  We'd heard all the stories from these events in Cornwall back in the olden days before we were born.  Some of the methods apparently employed to increase the donkey's speed seemed a bit dubious.
Fortunately we arrived in time to signup to compete too, so race six would comprise of me, Ned, Marney and Finlay.

It was a little while until the racing started so we indulged in the other activities on offer.
First up, welly wanging:

I did pretty good and was actually winning the ladies cometiton for a good while.

Chrissy had a go and put in a good show until Ned beat him, putting him a good way ahead in the childrens category.  So he had a nervous wait to see if he was going to be toppled.

We also tried our hand on the coconut shy, but only Andy managed to win himself a coconut that he didn't actually want.

The racing then kicked off and it looked mad.

We made some bets, we won some and lost some and the serious gamblers amongst us got agitated at the way the tote was being run.

In no time at all it was time to take to the centre if the track, get kitted up and get intoroduc d to the crowd by the commentator.  The race was brilliant fun, even if the track was a bit bumpy.  I made a decisive move towards the end of the race to snatch the win: 

While poor old Ned didn't even complete a single lap due to his donkeys intetrest in the grass in one particular corner of the circuit.

I was presented with a winners certificate and everything:

There was good news from the welly wanging too, with Ned being crowned Cornwall childrens champion with a hefty prize of £5.  We're not too sure how legit the title might be, but the fiver was real.  So it was a very sucessful night out for us two.
When we got back to the caravan we had a visitor waiting for us.  John had popped over fresh from his trip to Honduras.  It sounded amazing, living in the jungle, scuba diving with turtles and picking your own coffee beans for a cup of coffee.  We also got the lowdown on the cool hangouts in Newquay to as well as some quality film recommendations.

Wednesday
A lazy morning fry up started proceedings off today.

We took a trip to the Pit surf shop in St Merryn to hire a big surfboard for the grown ups to have a go on, inspired by Ned's progress and promise of some top quality instruction from the lad himself.  The thing was enormous and dwarfed the car when it was put on the roof rack.  We took it back to the beach and I immediately took it out in the waves, it was a rather unruly beast to keep hold of.  I did let dad and Andy have a go with mixed success, they blamed the waves.
We had another nice day on the beach with everyone, all the usual stuff.  Auntie Christine and Uncle Ian headed home once we were done for the day.  The start of the gradual drift back upland is a sad time every year with Laura, Darcey and Auntie Trish following later in the afternoon.
There was another lads surfing trip to Harlyn, Ned, Dad, Andy and Owen headed off with the enormo-surfboard leaving Mum and I to have some much needed peace and quiet.
They came back with fish and chips and very high spirits after all the adults managed to get at least one claimable stand up wave and Ned got hundreds.
We spent the rest of the evening watching some very high quality Channel 5 shows about car parking Armageddon and the worlds worst flights (which can't have been the actual worlds worst flights as the passengers were seemingly alive enough to be interviewed about their experiences).

Thursday
It was time to bid farewell to the Enevoldsen's as well today as they made they way home after their week.
The rest of us still clinging on to the Cornish dream made the trek over to Mother Ivey's bay: 

We went for a swim as soon as we got there, no wetsuits required!

Dad and I have developed quite the acrobatic double act over the week as you can see in the above picture.  Diving from his shoulders into the incoming waves is great fun.
We threw a ball about, Ned jumped off the rocks into the water and I think we all got swept off our feet in the crashing waves.
We dried off a bit and went for an explore up the end of the beach:

Millie and I loved playing in the surging tide:

Before we got a bit more creative and made this rather imposing sea dragon:

At this point Owen and Kirsty also succumbed to the trip back home.  Next time they come down things will be very different for them, how exciting!

We made our way back over the headland, via the ice cream van and headed back to base. to recharge before our evening visitor, Connie! (and Mark, Amy, John and Sarah of course)

We took her for a walk down to the beach, we threw her ball for her over and over again and she loved paddling through the incoming tide to fetch it. When we got back to the caravan Andy tried to feed her up on anything he was allowed and she enjoyed being made a fuss of by us all.

Friday

Dad had agreed to me doing his make up on the way down in the car and he could put it off no longer. I did a great job on him too, i'm not sure he was looking for a bit more of a pantomime dame but I was all about the understated look with my muted colour palette. he reckons it took ages but it really didn't.  He kept it on for a while before using half a pack of wipes to get it all off.  He did say his skin felt nice afterwards though.
We played Frisbee for a bit, which obviously ended up morphing into head hoop-la before moving on to headers.  I set a record of 7 with Andy which remained unbeaten.
The rental board had sustained a little damage to the nose at some point so we took it back to the shop and they changed it for another one for us, slightly shorter but a good bit wider.  We took it to Harlyn and I was off on it to try it out despite my protestations that I didn't want to go in the sea all the way there. I got up on it dead easily, rode a few waves in and then went off to play with Mum on the Bodyboards instead, leaving Dad to struggle with it.
I did a bit of beach gymnastics as we watched Ned struggle with the new hire board too despite easily being the most accomplished surfer of all of us.
Crystal Maze followed by the Last Leg was the evenings entertainment before bed.

Saturday

Boules and football on the beach this morning:

Followed by some sand art:

Then a trip up to Constantine Bay stores by skateboard (complete with compliments from a teenager about how cool our longboards were).

After lunch we had a long walk across the dunes of Constantine Bay:

With some gymnastics thrown in, a front flip from a high dune section, landed successfully I might add:

As it was low tide we made our way across to Boobies Bay and explored the rock pools and sections of quick sand:

We eventually started to make our way back, collecting masses of beach litter as we went.  Bits of rope, drinks cans, sweet wrappers, coffee cup lids, all the usual sort of stuff, we had a right bagfull by the time we got back.

We had an ice cream from the van down at Constantine before heading back up for a bit of a recharge. Finlay, Millie, Chris and Kate had left by the time we got back, sorry we didn't say goodbye chaps.

So the sun was out, it was a lovely evening, better get down to the youth hostel for tea.

Sunday
Our last day after a very extended stay this year. It was pretty gloomy and no one much fancied going in the sea except Andy of course.
Ned had hinted a few times that he would like to re-invest his welly wanging winnings in the Cornish economy by getting himself some fudge from Padstow.  So off we went.  It was a nice walk round, I love the teddy bear shop and couldn't help but spend some of my money on a seriously cute polar bear.  we had a Panini on the harbour wall:

Ned got himself some fudge and some new clothes (much needed, he's growing fast and shopping slow) before we headed back to pack up and go home. I pitched in with the cleaning too, which I actually quite enjoy.

Dad tried to pack the car, fortunately there was enough room for me inside:

We set off for home, stopping at the golden arches for something to eat before bidding Andy a final farewell for the week.

So another epic trip to Cornwall completed, thanks for the good times and great memories everyone.

Monday

Well there wasn't much happening today, lay in's, you tube and nail polish were the order of my day.  I did make myself pasta for lunch though as I'm getting rather self sufficient these days.

I also spent a good portion of the day organising my social calendar for the week now everyone seems to be getting on again despite our differing secondary school destinations.

The farmer has been muck spreading up the field so it really stinks outside.  I managed to convince Dad to play me at swingball though and I gave him a comprehensive beating.