Right following on from all that I think that I should fill in the gaps from when Scotty left us on Saturday evening until his return on Monday afternoon...

After having a nice fish and chips dinner in Chipenham and just relaxing for a little while in the car park there we set off for the drive down to Newquay. We thought it would be a good drive down, and as it turned out it was eventful to say the least!!!

We took things quite easy going down, with me leading the convoy which consisted of me, Micky, Stuart and Kevin(ST One). After a while on the M5 I realised that I would be needing to fill up before too long, so thought it best to pull over at a services. I thought that I'd give enough warning to people that I was doing that, but it very nearly didn't turn out that way, fortunately everyone managed to pull in before they flew straight past lol.

Now at this point I did ask everyone if they wanted to fill up then, but everyone thought they would be OK so we went on.

Everything went OK for quite some time after that, until on the A30 I got a call from Stuart telling me that a rather panicked Micky had just contacted him to say that he only had a few bars left on his fuel gauge, and needed to get to a petrol station asap. Unfortunately this had occurred just after we had passed a services!!

So the next time I saw a turn off I thought that it would be a good idea to pull off as with towns signposted there they would bound to be one, and with not having a clue when the next services would be that that would be best. But all that ended up happening would be that the road ending up taking us down a country lane, and having to pull almost into bushes to let a tractor past. By this point I decided it might not be such a good idea to go any further so we pulled over and turned round. Whilst stopped I also found out that by this time Kevin was also running short so it was a double rush to find somewhere! Luckily we managed to get back onto the main road and a bit later found a service station before everyone ran out of petrol lol.

By this time, with having to go through quite a few sets of roadworks, and with our little detour, we were getting a little bit late. So we rang the campsite and they said they would be OK with us being late, but that if we didn't get there by a certain time then the gates would be locked and we'd have to setup away from the main area from the site. Because of this, Stuart suggested that maybe we should step up the pace of the journey a little. This we did (still within the law though ), but it became a little too much for him, and we ended up losing him. The dark and increasingly rainy weather wasn't helping to see who was and wasn't still with us.

Next disaster was when we somehow completely missed the island where we were meant to turn off towards Newquay, and sailed straight past. About 20 miles down the road I realised that it was seeming to take much further than I'd thought so I pulled over at a Maccy D's where I also found out for the first time that we'd lost Stuart and he was trying to find the campsite himself. Except that he had also got lost.

Thankfully the nice people at the B&B where Kevin and his family were staying gave directions, we managed to refind Stuart, and so got to that B&B. That should have been the end of it, since the campsite was just a couple of miles from there, but somehow we contrived to still make an epic of it, taking ages to get there, getting lost another couple of times, before by chance I just managed to see a signpost for Quintrell Downs, the village just outside Newquay where we were staying, and we finally pulled in at about 11.30pm, just half an hour before the gates would be locked.. Yay!!

Just a shame though that by this time it was firstly pitch black and secondly bucketing it down. Sleeping in the car did become to look a good option, but we took the plunge and decided to go for it and set the tents up. It took quite a while but we somehow did it. And there was one good thing about getting there at that time. Whilst we were setting up the tents two girls walked past that were a) really fit and b) wearing nothing except their knickers. So at least me and Micky had something to cheer us up. Stuart missed out on the sight, only hearing their comment laughing at us doing the tents in the rain and dark, replying that "Well it just shows that men can multitask then!", completely oblivious to where the original voices had come from. Btw, before anyone ask, sorry no pics.

Just our luck though that night that almost as soon as we'd finished putting up our tents, the rain suddenly stopped. After this we just felt it time for a well earned rest and we all crashed out for the night.

The next day things were a lot warmer in our little village and we just took things easy in the morning, cooked a few bacon sarnies.

As you can see here, everyones clothes were still wet from the previous day so cars had to be used as makeshift driers.



Micky also tied one of his tent ropes to his Z-S as a clothes line. Luckily he remembered to untie it before driving off taking his tent with him.



Kevin and his family then came and met us at the campsite while we sorted out what we would be doing for the day.



That morning Micky also got out his HUGGGGE kite for us to see. Was just a shame that the conditions during the week weren’t right for flying it.



We then decided that we would set off for a random drive up the coast northwards, just seeing where things took us and seeing if we could find some nice coves along the way.

We found a nice lay-by overlooking a place called Watergate Bay, where managed to get some nice pictures of all the cars.







We also suffered the first injury of the holiday at this point when Kevin managed to fall while climbing up a bank to get a better viewpoint for his pictures, and cut his knee open!!

After that we carried on driving up the coast. The roads were great, nice and twisty, except for the odd tractor or caravan coming the other way forcing us to pull over. Eventually we came to another nice village on the coast at Harlyn Bay, where we relaxed for a couple of hours grabbing a bit to eat in the much better weather we was having after Saturday, gorgeous sunshine all day long.

Next stop would have been Padstow, but it was totally ram packed and we were unable to stop on that day. Kevin and myself were let into the carpark to try and find a place (there was only one so no good), but Stuart and Micky were sent up a narrow road up the one way system out of town, and we nearly all got lost once more. Before we left the carpark, Kevin couldn’t resist the chance to take a pic of our two cars on the harbourside though (hopefully we'll see that at one point).

Afterwards we went back down the coast to the caravan park where Cassie was staying and met up with her, her blue and her two children Jade and Levi. We then set off for a drive to another place on the coast at Perranporth - and also got to see Cassie's spirited driving for the first time.

Perranporth was really nice. There was a sundial on the hill, which cleverly is set to historic Cornish time as opposed to GMT, as these pics show:





There was also a smugglers cave in the rocks of the cliffs. Stuart was wanting me to go and stand on that little bit above the arch, literally no more than about a foot wide, to get a pic of me standing there but I bottled it.





We then went back to our cars and got a map out to see where we could go to next, when a kind man came up to us and suggested that if we wanted somewhere nice to see then he knew just the place not far away. We went there and also found a real good place high up where we got loads of pics taken, and here are a few of them:









The time had literally flew by that day, and after having relaxed down the beach for a little while, and letting the kids have a play about, it was already getting well into the evening and we thought it might be time that we actually went and got some dinner. We had another drive around and finally found what looked like a nice country pub. We were then gutted though when we saw that they stopped serving food at 9pm and it was literally 9.02pm. Back to the drawing board. Knowing that the shop at the campsite shut at 10, we decided that it would be best if we then just went back there and got something to cook. There wasn’t that much but we managed to get some more bacon and rolls, and so had them before crashing out again for an early night.

The next day (Monday morning) we just got lazy for the first time that week and decided not to do breakfast ourselves, but to head off to Morrison’s instead, where me, Stuart and Micky all had one of their big breakfasts. It was massive: 3 rashers of bacon, fried egg, hash browns, sausage, tomato, mushrooms, fried bread. I’ve probably missed something off lol, but it definitely filled up a hole for quite some time.

After heading off back to the campsite, we met up once more with Kevin and Cassie where they let us know that because they and their families were having such a great time they had decided to stay for another two days, rather than heading back home that day as they had originally intended.

We then headed off into Newquay to play crazy golf. When we arrived at the car park we went to pay, but after Micky had got his ticket out of the machine, it decided to pack in and say “Out of Use”. We went to the office nearby to ask what to do, and they said that as long as we put a note in the windscreen then we would be fine. Which left only poor Micky to have actually paid to park there.

After relaxing for a little while in a nearby park we went to the crazy golf, and had great fun there. Because there was so many of us Cassie, Levi and Jade set off first by themselves. Kevin’s daughter Sarah initially joined us but after nearly whacking Kev’s head off twice by taking a swing at things rather than just putting like you’re meant to, she joined the other 2 kids. We did get around the 18 holes eventually, though I think we were maybe annoying the group behind us by holding them up by taking so long on some of the holes. At one point also Stuart managed to nearly batter a load of flowers when his golfball got stuck there.





Rather embarrassingly, the kids managed to get about 4 holes in one between them, whereas our round – me, Stuart, Micky, Kev, and Kev’s wife Julie – didn’t manage a single one between us. We really enjoyed everything though.

We then went back to the café near the carpark, and enjoyed an ice-cream whilst waiting for Scotty to arrive. Bang on cue, there was this nice burbling sound coming from down the road, and he flew into the carpark to join us.

Right… I’ll post some more comments later on the week in general. But for now all I’ll say is that I hope this post has managed to capture a little of what went on during those couple of days.

I know that I had a brilliant time all week, met some great people, and whilst I can’t speak for others I’m sure everyone else also had a great time. Certainly everyone who was able to stayed for longer than initially planned, and I know that Stuart wanted to also stay for longer but unfortunately couldn’t.

I hope that I get to see some or all of you again, and that also I get to meet some more of the members of the site at future events.

For now…

Take care
ChrisC