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.
