4(Click on any image to go to the relevant gallery.)

Cornwall.

We flew back from Ireland with no bother, but also with no view this time. Picked up the hire car, and drove to Cornwall. There we met Sennan from Sennen, who gave us the keys to our digs, the lovely Ivy Cottage. I’d lived in Ivy cottage for six months in 1991, and it was just strange/fantastic to be back there.

That night I met up with Matt Abbot and Howard at the First and Last, Lee-Anne stayed home as she was somewhat knackered from the journey. Matt god bless him, had dragged his whole family down to spend their  half term break in Sennen, just to catch up with us for the last two days of their break. He had threatened to stay with us on the last night, as their caravan tennacy run out on the Friday, but, (and I stil find this hard to believe,) he had paid for another night in it. (Or, more probably, Helen had.) We had a bit of a night of it, hit the whisky. Howard was last seen heading off  vaguely in the wrong direction to get home.

First and Last is now a bit odd. It looks like they’ve tried to make a “gastro pub” of the place, but not got the hang of “gastro”, and were still selling bog standard pub grub. Also it was full  of strangers.

Bit of bad news from that evening was that Howard’s wonderful wife, Janet, would be away in Manchester looking after a sick relative for all the time we were in Cornwall. Bummer.

The next morning we had Matt, Helen and their two lovely kids Danny and Gina, over for breakfast, and then hit Chysauster village for an explore.

Matt left us too it after a while as there was a soccer match on TV at the pub. For some reason he wasn’t up for a walk that evening, so me Helen and Gina did a trip to Nanjizal. Just as we approached  the footpath to the headland we were stopped by an old farm hand, who warned us of the risk of going t0o far down to the coast, as; “A storm is brewing, and if you do not know the area it can be very risky.” I pointed out to him that he was actually parked outside my house, and I’d lived here for 11 years. He left us in peace.

The next day I took myself off with my camera, to do my favourite walk in the world; Sennen, Trevilley, Nanjizal, Pordenack, Lands End, Sennen watch, back home. It was so beautiful and nostalgic and life affirming, I damn near cried. (Ok, I did shed a tear, but don’t tell anyone.)

That evening Lee-Anne did her magic again, cooking a three curry meal, plus rice, plus naan breads. We hosted, not only our local chums, Rob, Linda, and Howard, but also Jamesy and Rachel, who were down for the week from Llanelli, and Nicol, who had come down in  his supercampervan from Devon. What a great night, tales were told, gossip caught up on and complete strangers made acquaintance. It turns out that Linda and Nicol grew up in the same area, and attended the same pubs and discos as kids, small world.

Lee-Anne was ill that night and the next morning as she had eaten some of the haloumi curry she had made the night before, and had had her usual reaction to non-cheddar cheese. This didn’t stop her though, and she had driven herself off to Padstow. There, at the famous “Rick Stein’s seafood School,”  she was doing her two day fish cooking course, my birthday present to her for her 50^th.  She came back really enthused, as, not only had she learned LOTS of technique and  skills, but half way through the day, guess who popped his head  around the door and stayed for autographs and photos?

Right, that’s Heston and Rick stalked, Ramsey next.

The next day Nicol had promised me he’d take me up in his tandem paraglider.

Unfortunately there wasn’t enough wind to keep just him up on his tandem, let alone with a fat bastard like me in tow, so we knock that idea on the head and did a walk. I don’t suppose you need telling which walk we did. We did it the other way round this time. We stopped off at The Old Success for cheesey chips and a pint, before Nicol had to drive back to Devon.

Tuesday and Lee-Anne was off on her second day of her course, so me Jamesy and Rach went to the Sennen farmers market. Bloody hell fire, how I got out of there without bankrupting myself was anyone’s guess, brilliant bloody produce. I did buy some rather lovely local cheeses. Also there were loads of people who I had known in my time living in the village, and some of them were still talking to me too. We rounded this off with a walk to Lands End, during which Rach berated me for being; “under Lee-Anne’s thumb.“  I don’t know what gives her that idea, and seeing as Jamesy has a huge thumb print on his head, who is she to talk? 😛 The evening was Guy Fawkes night, and to be fair, the First and Last put on a grand display.

We took Jamesy and Rach a drive to Porth Issac the next day, just to see Doc Martin’s house.

While looking about Porth Isaac we noticed that Nathan Outlaw had opened a cafe there. We’ve always fancied trying his stuff, but had promised Jamesy and Rach fish and chips at Rick Steins’ chip shop in Padstow, so we turned that  idea down. We drove to Padstow. Rick Stein’s chipper was closed for refurbishment.  We ate at a glaring pub called the Customs House Inn instead. As a consolation for missing out on both Stein’s and Outlaw’s grub, that night Lee-Anne cooked me one of the meals that had formed part of her course; “Smoked haddock on potato curry with a poached egg.” It was sublime, better than anything Outlaw or Stein could have cooked.

As Lee-Anne hadn’t done the famous walk,  the next day we set off to do it. Passing through Trevilley, we stuck our heads into “Fortress Trevilley”, as I now call my friends Aidan and Patrick’s place.

The enclosed garden is wonderful,. I was snapping off shots of it, when Aidan, disturbed by our intrusion obviously, caught us. (I had knocked mate, honest!) He showed us his the courtyard, and took us to the writing shed where Patrick was head down over a word processor. He does a bit of writing does our Patrick. (I don’t think he was hiding from us.) Great to chat with you again boys, and we must arrange things better next time. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see  Sara, nor Graham, our old friends who live there, nor did I get to meet our new tenant Adrian.

That night we ended up at the Old Success again, as there was a quiz night on. Kindly, Dave, who I’d worked with in Penzance, and not seen for 14 years,  had came down and booked into the pub to catch up with us. Grand to see the old bugger, and boy has he been about the bushes since we last met, is it five wives you’ve had now Dave? The quiz was a hoot, and the crowd we eventually generated; Rob, Linda, Netty, Paul, Dave, Howard, Rach, Jamesy, Lee-Anne and me, ended up split into two teams. I asked the bar people if I could get a commission, or at least a free beer, for dragging such a crowd in.

Leaving the next day was utter hell. (More on this later.)

 London.

We had booked into the Alviva apartments in Hammersmith, London. Very good place highly recommended.

The next two days were spent gift hunting and eating. We had a fish curry at “London’s best Indian fish restaurant”, the Shipla in Hammersmith, where we had a conversation with some deaf geezers, which was interesting. We ordered, as is compulsory in Indian restaurants, far too much food.

We saw an enormous blue cock, plus a hawk in Trafalgar Square, and took a walk along the Thames. If we’d have been better organised we’d have caught up with Alan Midwinter (sorry mate, ) and seen a couple of shows.

 

We wrapped up a our UK visit with dinner at Dinner by Heston. Gawd, wearing  pair of DM’s I’d bought second hand from a charity shop for twenty quid, and a Marks and Spencer polo shirt, I felt somewhat under-dressed to be entering the “Mandarin Oriental, in Knightsbridge.” But I needn’t have worried. The staff and service were all on par with that at the Fat Duck, I didn’t feel like a Llanelli boy at all. The bar was full of very interesting people, no one famous unfortunately, but the staff found us a table to ourselves and plied us with drinks and nibble. We were escorted to our table, with each and every member of staff we passed greeting us warmly. We were blown-a-fucking-way to find that we had a view of the kitchen from our table, and it was a real treat to watch the chefs at work.

Our wait staff were friendly, knowledgeable and made a special night perfect, by balancing attentiveness with common sense. (Our waiter had an air of a young Basil Fawlty, which amused us no end, bless.) Our three courses were faultless (I had four I HAD to have the cheese plate too.) The wines for each course, recommended by the sommelier for Lee-Anne, were exquisite. Being a pleb I stuck on the Scotch. Believe it or not, and  despite Lee-Anne encouraging me too, I couldn’t bring myself to order the best Scotch they had there, despite it being a rare Laphrohiag, my favourite, (the fact that it was eighty quid a measure may have influenced this.

After our meal we sat in the bar and chatted long into the night, but we still didn’t spot anyone famous. I had some more very fine scotches to wrap up the evening

A perfect ending to our trip.

The next day Jamesy phoned me, his first question? Not; “how was your meal,” nor  “did you have a good time,” no the question, which every other bugger asked us too , was “how much did it cost?” Funnily enough it was cheap as chips, (ok not as cheap as the fish and chips a pint and a wine we’d had for £15.00 the day before in a Weatherspoons. ) It all came to a tadge over £300.00, including three courses for Lee-Anne, four for me, (I had to have the cheese,)  Lee-Anne’s wines and a bucket of Scotch, plus tip.

Doing our final shopping, on our last day, (I wanted 4 litres of Scotch, our maximum allowance,) we were in Sainsburies in Knightsbridge, I bumped into Jimmy Page! I didn’t have the heart to ask him for an autograph or photo, he was there with a basket with eggs milk and yogurt in it, and I’m sure he didn’t want me dribbling all over him. (God the years have not been kind to him.)

The journey back was  hell as you can imagine, all the shite of flying over, without the holiday to look forward to.

Postscript.

Oh god, you may have noticed that this travel tale lacks something of the usual joie de vivre, of my normal reports, it’s missing a certain jollity. Sure I could have included some more reports on the cock ups I did, (scratching the car was a great, if very expensive, one.)  I could have gone into far greater depth, and rhapsodised even more greatly about time spent in good company, days trudging on the moors, or even the feeling of “coming home”, that being back in Sennen gives. I could have eulogised my friends, and the importance of them in my life.

But I haven’t, and the reason is simple. Each time I come back it gets harder, and less fun, to have to leave again. Even the process of writing this crap gets emotional, and so, not fun. I have a book  of notes which I wrote while there, but I’ve ignored big sections of it. (You may be pleased with that.)

All my friends are either retired now, or on the verge of retiring, or at least planning for retirement. So are we, our worst case scenario is that we have to work another eight years before packing it in. While we were there Lee-Anne got notification of her retirement superannuation fund. She should, if she sticks it out be able to retire on 75% of her current wage, not a bad screw. (I’m way ahead of you.) I’ll be able to top that up with my fund. So there is light at the end of the tunnel. We’re even now tossing up ideas like; “should we live in Devon/Dartmoor and buy a campervan for regular trips to Cornwall, or live in Cornwall and do regular trips to Devon/Dartmoor?” We did chew over the idea of doing a Chas and Babs, but I cannot help but think that moving back to Wales would be too much a retrograde step for me, my heart is in the South West.

So there is light at the end of the tunnel. But, I’m still sat in my sodding office in Canberra, the sea is fucking hundreds of miles away, and there isn’t a friend in sight, let alone a decent boozer. Ah well; “perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim,” as they say.

Thanks to everybody who made our holiday so wonderful, you know who you are. Special thanks to Chas and Babs, and Catherine and Clarkie, for giving us beds, and a roof over our heads. Thanks to everyone who cooked for us.

Appologies to those who we missed this trip, The Harness crew, Kelv and Claire, Alan and  Janet Midwinter, The Golding family, Sara B, Graham Rowe, Pete U, Keith and Bethan.

Apologies to anyone I missed out of the apologies.