As the sun continues to bathe this soggy little island, people keep telling me “you brought the good weather with you”. I don’t have the heart to tell them it’s probably single digit degrees, slanting rain and gloomy mornings over in Canberra. The marketing people have done such a good job through ads for Fosters (the Australian beer!), Home and Away and Crocodile Dundee that the very thought of wearing a coat down under seems nonsensical.
My ethos has been very much to make hay while the sun shines, knowing all too well that the dark clouds are always on the horizon! This week has encompassed a couple of contrasting trips to the seaside. First up was St Ives down in Cornwall, known as the St Tropez of England, complete with palm trees and exotic flowers, art galleries, sandy beaches and fine cuisine.
My ethos has been very much to make hay while the sun shines, knowing all too well that the dark clouds are always on the horizon! This week has encompassed a couple of contrasting trips to the seaside. First up was St Ives down in Cornwall, known as the St Tropez of England, complete with palm trees and exotic flowers, art galleries, sandy beaches and fine cuisine.
It’s not without the more typical English seaside attractions though – buckets and spades on the beach, colourful windbreaks, purple skinned Northerners. And, of course, being Cornwall, you can’t move without bumping into a pasty shop or teahouse or ice cream parlour. Having already eaten a small pasty for lunch it was with some dismay that Mum and I stumbled upon Pengenna Pasties, famous for being exceedingly scrumptious and posing on rocks in Tintagel in 2007. The only solution was to buy one and bring it home for dinner… I’m thinking that this is the first time in my life I have had two pasties in one day (that’s quite surprising really!). Credit goes to Mum who safely transported the prized specimen back on the train and home to Plymouth.
St Ives is the kind of place where you amble. Narrow streets lined with cottages meander in a haphazard fashion before, without knowing it, you turn the corner and face a sweeping stretch of sand which if you squint could almost be Coogee. A sandy beach no less, much to the dismay of my Australian friends. You amble along the sands, you amble around the headlands and, if you are brave enough, you amble with your feet in the water!
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The second trip to the seaside followed the day after, and this time it was Devon’s turn to show me what it had got. To be fair, Devon is absolutely beautiful but Dawlish Warren isn’t the most scenic of spots, despite an interesting coastline made up of red rocks and cliffs. The convenience of this place is the accessibility by train and amusements to keep young monsters, well, amused. Whilst it was still bright, a stiff breeze made it much cooler and, still wearing shorts, I think both Mum and I both shivered now and again. My sister Cheryl meanwhile, who is more akin to the English weather thought it was just perfect!It wasn’t really beach weather so we made use of the amusements, plying pound coins into the scammer grabbers for soft toys and going crazy shoving 2p’s into a big pile of even more 2p’s in the hope that some of them may fall over the edge and into our pockets. At least it kept my niece Bethany amused… six year olds seem to take some amusing but thankfully she likes crazy golf (which we can all take part in) and trampolines (which is effectively like putting her in a cage for a few minutes to wile away some energy!). It was nice to see Bethany doing this though since – sign I am getting well ancient – it brought back childhood memories of me doing the same, ah.
1 comment:
err - two pasties in one day. Did you not ever have two ron dewdneys from the end shop? Perfect for that teenage appetite after a morning's slave work cleaning windows or carpets!
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