extreme motorhomes

matthew and i went out for sunday lunch last week, after failing to secure a lunch in st columb minor (meals from 12-3 but they were out of food by 2!) we drove on round the coast to st merryn where we had a cavery.

after the meal we went to constantine and went down to mother ivey's bay the site of some of matthew's childhood holidays, on our way back to padstow we got stuck behind this monster of a camper van. it did seem a little extreme for the cornish lanes that we were traversing, especially as we had to stop every few hundred yards to allow cars coming the other way to get past. this meant that we spent a lot of time looking at the hydraulic bike rack on the back! it was austrian registered, but it does beg the question of what foriegners make of our road system that someone was prepared to drive that all the way from austria for a holiday in england?

it reminded me of the large motorhomes i saw at the royal cornwall show which could be yours for a mere £260,000 and an hgv licence. trouble is you definately wouldn't be able to take one of those down the small lanes, which means your holiday would be spent at motorway service stations.

anyway not long now until our weeks holiday in the yorkshire dales, so looking forward to it!

lejog

i've been meaning to post about this all summer, but failed. as indeed i've failed to put much on here recently, so much so that there is a bit of a backlog of postings, which may or may not appear in one fell swoop...

anyway back to lejog, don't worry this isn't about exercise or anything similarly strenous, it is the shorthand for land's end to john o'groats, should one attempt the journey in reverse it is apparantly jogle. once the days started to lengthen the number of cyclists seen on my journey's too and fro from truro also increased, and it took a little while to sink in as to why. but essentially these idiots, sorry brave folk are attempting to travese the full length of the country. a little internet research shows that the a30 is only attempted by the truely foolhardy and those who aren't interested in breaking records tend to use more minor roads to get through cornwall. i also discovered that coming through st austell is one recommended route with an overnight stop somewhere between par and lostwithiel.

therefore in the morning i often see those attempting the jogle as they set off on their last day in the saddle and in the evening i see those attempting lejog, no doubt a bit weary after their day in the saddle and contemplating all the days ahead!

i did see this group, who were very distinctive, alas they were not cycling at the time but had pulled over to the side of the road.

another namesake

following on from my previous blog entry, i saw another namesake on my way back from truro today. not mine but for my mother. it was an eddie stobart lorry, with the name angela jane, my mother's forenames. haven't yet seen an elizabeth sarah, but i will be looking out for it from now on.

how to work out if someone is an emmet

following on from my previous post on how to work out if the car in front is from 'up country' this post is dedicated to helping you establish if someone is an emmet (cornish term for someone who isn't cornish).

are they...

1. wearing a Lifeguard hoodie, when they clearly aren't

2. in a family group with two grumpy teenagers in tow

3. wearing shorts, welly boots and a kagoul

4. eating a full english breakfast at 11am in a cafe

5. wearing something from the Boden catalogue

6. carrying a Kath Kidston bag

7. showing too much very pale/ sunburnt skin

8. wearing a hairbraid

9. just left an expensive art gallery

10 ambling along in the middle of the road

11. loudly mispronouncing cornish place names

this isn't quite as easy as the car one to pin down on paper as there are various types of tourists. you have your Boden wearing, Kath Kidston sporting types through to your stag/ hen do parties. however it is generally very easy to spot an emmet, you can usually just tell.

in relation to the previous post on cars, i had some responses on facebook that included more suggestions for the list, generally involving behaviour on small, narrow, cornish lanes. and yesterday during my drive to penzance i was surrounded by easily spottable up country cars, i was clocking up points by the bucketload.

my namesake

when i go to the gp surgery for an inr test, the nurses use a special programme on the computer to monitor your results and tell you what dose of warfarin you should be taking. i've noticed that there is another patient on warfarin with the same surname as me, but he is an older gentleman, so there should be no confusing of results!

well today i saw him. i came in and gave my name at the desk and was told to sit down, and as i walked over to the chairs, i noticed this older man looking at me. i didn't think too much of it, picked up a magazine and sat down. (i picked up a camping and caravan magazine - what has come over me? all this camping must be going to my head! do i need treatment? can you have several sentences in a bracket?)

engrossed in my magazine (!?) i suddenly heard my surname, so jumped up and as i was doing so registered that it had been a mr the nurse had called for. and sure enough it was this gentleman who had got out of his chair and was walking towards the nurse. then i realised why he had been staring at me, he had heard my name as i came in and registered. no doubt, this being cornwall, he was trying to work out where i might fit in in his family tree! i don't think we are related, but i could be wrong.

on another note, my inr has dropped, no doubt due to a recent increase in immunosuppressant, i shall be back at the surgery next week...

holiday from hell?

after the first hour or so* i can report that the weekend's camping trip went reasonably smoothly. the tent stayed up - although it took longer than the 12 mins that vango say to put up - you can stand up in it and cook in it, the campsite was lovely with a good sea view and the weather was extraordinarily kind. so much so that i can plan the rest of my greenbelt trip in reasonable confidence knowing that i can always hide in my tent if things get too wet and muddy (my previous two experiences of greenbelt).

there was a lot of comparison's going on on the campsite - tent sizes/ styles/ cooking arrangements and so on. it was also quite fun guessing where people had come from and realising just how brave young romeo opposite was, coming camping with his girlfriend and her parents - and they were all in one tent!

we cooked on our new barbeque (ask matthew about barbequed toast), visited the tea rooms at Heligan, had a kip on saturday afternoon and had friends around for a barbeque on saturday evening. sunday morning was lovely and sunny so we revisited dodman point (picture above), which was only about a mile and a half away. it was here about 18 months ago that matthew proposed to me, then we had it to ourselves for a long time, this time we had to share with, amongst others, mr 'i love talking' from goran haven. we then packed up our tent and were home within half an hour. really quite civilised.

however on my way to work on tuesday morning i saw a family on their holiday. it was mizzling and they were about to tackle the hill outside tresillian on their bikes. dad had panniers and a pull along buggy thing on his bike (couldn't see if there was a child in it or if it had equipment), mum had panniers on her bike, eldest son (11ish) had panniers on his bike, and younger son (8ish) didn't. all i could think was - this is so not the kind of holiday that i could ever go on. camping might just about be doable, but a cycling and camping holiday - now way!

* within the first half hour, my choice of pitch was dissed. my suggestion re direction of tent was dissed. my guy rope directions were dissed (later proved to be right). when we got the direction of the ground sheet wrong i really was ready to go home.

holiday makers?

how to work out if the car in front is from 'up country' (on holiday in Cornwall).

is it/ does it have...

1. a foreign number plate

2. a VW campervan

3. a campervan (any make)

4. a roof box

5. a roof rack with surfboard(s)

6. a roof-rack with bike(s)

7. a roof-rack with boat

8. a roof-rack with canoe(s)

9. a shiny clean 4x4 with tow-hitch

10. towing a boat

11. contain any of the following - body boards/ windbreak/ cool box/ wetsuit/ picnic rug

12. being driven between 30- 40mph on a 60mph road

13. driver has just worked out he is in the wrong lane at the roundabout/ traffic lights

i actually saw just about all of these on the way into work this morning, so i am now thinking of a points system so i can start to rank my journeys too and fro from Truro. just how many points could i award for a foriegn plated vw campervan with a boat on the roof in the wrong lane at the trafalgar roundabout?

you will note that i have excluded caravans as they are just too easy to spot, as is in fact any car that is in the queue at Temple on the A30 on a friday or saturday.