Morning time to go, checked all the rooms, packed away the toiletries, prepared a small breakfast and ready to go by 9;00 until disaster struck. Deb came to say that she couldn’t get the car to start and she thought the electrics in the boot had shorted out again. Bang went any idea of an early start and Deb went to reception to ring the RAC while I sorted out the kids etc. Deb returned to say the RAC had said they’d be about 45 minutes. They turned up sooner and the mechanic was there at about 09:25. Deb was concerned we would need to get the electrics replaced and it seemed like the extra money I’d earned to get a Nokia N8 might be disappearing into the black hole that is keeping a car on the road. What a fantastic end to our holiday; I was so pissed off at the prospect that I immediately got reception to send round two peasants who I then ritually disemboweled to relieve my frustrations. The RAC man eventually got the car running and confirmed the problem was with the electrics but that the problem was due to them getting wet during the torrential downpour over night. He was hopeful that everything would dry out as we drove and I, for one, kept my fingers crossed that he would be proved correct. Eventually we were sorted and we left the Estate at around 10:00 an hour later than we had planned to.
This wasn’t too much of a delay and it looked as if we could keep to Deb’s journey home plan. She wanted to drive up the west coast parallel to the Celtic Sea passed New Quay and Wadebridge up into Devon eventually arriving at the Atlantic Shopping Village located near the town of Bude.
As we began our journey the weather also began to improve and within an hour it was quite sunny, the clouds had lifted and when we were in sight of it we were able to appreciate the coastline as it passed by on our left.
In the car I kept attempting to get a GPS fix ion both the N82 and the N95 but still wasn’t able to do so. The best I could get, when there was a cellular signal was an approximate position on Google Maps based on the nearest cell tower’s location (note the following day at the Vipers Rugby Ground I got a GPS lock on in less than one minute so the phones were OK).
We arrived at Atlantic Village around mid-day and after discovering the location of and making use of the toilets we went inside. It was a bog standard enclosed shopping mall but with one notable exception. In all of the walk ways, between the shops, there were stalls set up selling local products. Pasty stalls (Devon not Cornish pasties there’s a fearsome rivalry), stalls for local cider and beer producers, exotic cheese stalls, home made soups etc. I’d never seen it’s like and the stalls were fascinating. I sampled pumpkin soup, venison stew, another even nicer stew I can’t recall the name of, samples of cheese and so on. Yes we did go in the actual stores and we did buy some things but the stalls were by far the most interesting thing about the entire place. I managed to get the book of the TV series Geniuses of Britain for £3.99 instead of £20.00. We got some end of line/seconds from the M&S outlet for the kids and me, sweets to take to work, it never happened they all got given away to trick or treat callers on Halloween; however it’s the thought that counts. The giveaways were clever sales tricks; just like at the Cyder farm we ended up spending a fortune of the things we’d tried.
We stayed at Atlantic Village for about two hours before setting off again on the long, by UK standards, trek up through the West Country and back over to the East Midlands. The only notable thing that happened during the rest of our trip was spotting, possibly, the most beautiful fully formed rainbow it’s ever been my fortune to observe. Magnificent, I managed to grab a few photos and a few seconds of film but these don’t do it justice. There weather fluctuated greatly for the rest of the journey from heavy rain to sunny skies. Eventually we made it safely home at about 18:00. Don’t think we did much else so that was…
THE END OF OUR CORNISH ADVENTURE
Showing posts with label Bank Holiday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bank Holiday. Show all posts
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Sunday 30 May – Tuesday 1 June : Bank Holiday Weekend
Nothing, basically we have done absolutely nothing over this Bank Holiday. This was in part due to the weather in the main was due to a lack of cash. We did have a small BarBQ on Monday afternoon but that’s about it. Stayed up too late and slept in too long. Deb managed to get an hour in at the allotment on Sunday morning whilst the rest of us slumbered in the arms of Morpheus. I did post some stupid jokes to Facebook and Twitter based on different European Countries Terror Alert Status’s and these picked up a few likes on FB. Other than that Sod All … aren’t we a Fricking Boring Bunch of Barstools!
Whoopee; Deb’s just bought me The Hanged Man as my present “from the kids” for Father’s Day! I keep telling Nat that I expect his Blog entries to be a minimium of two hundred words. it would appear that at present I’ve not lived up to my own standards! What on earth am I to do, should I stop now in the hope the the day will provide more to say later or should I waffle on to the two hundred repeating words unnecessarily repeatedly whenever the opportunity to repeat them presents itself. That would seem to be a very underhand strategy especially if I used it repeatedly! Hold on; the last word in that last sentence was the Two Hundred and Twenty Fourth Word so the debate is moot! I’m so glad I didn’t have to cheat, I mean what kind of impression would that have made?
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