Oh Henry..!

 

We’d been lucky to get even one night at Henry's Campsite given that the place is so popular... (number one on the Cool Camping guide to England if you are that way inclined)... but one night we had and we planned to make the most of it...  



It’s a spectacular place, not just because of its location as the most southerly campsite in the UK...  and not only because of the amazing view out across the sea... but mainly because it has the loveliest, friendliest, quirkiest atmosphere of any campsite I know... it's a fantastically special site run by what seemed like the friendliest, happiest and ‘least inhibited’ couple in the world, Jo and Ron. 

Pitches aren’t large, but given the type of fabulous folk that end up there, being close to the neighbours is never a problem... Peculiar looking chickens roam the place freely and cheerful little children run about the place barefoot and happy... enjoying a ‘proper’ camping holiday.... and this is where you get to have a chat with fellow campers over a bit of washing up:

The things I loved about Henry’s were the little unexpected touches that you wouldn’t usually find on even the best campsites... The place is deliberately littered with Ron’s art projects, from a wooden amphitheater with a huge, communal fire pit in the evening... to wooden bridges fashioned from miniature carved totem poles.

The Boy came back from the beautifully decorated shower block grinning like a fool, telling me that they were playing Tchaikovsky in there... later on I particularly enjoyed a few snippets from La Boheme as I brushed my teeth... Ron for his part stood the other side of the shower door this morning, bent double and laughing himself half to death as he informed us that he'd forgotten to put an out of order sign on the shower door... the water was freezing but the more we cried out, then harder he laughed...

 
The Shower Block

It wasn't all chilly adventures, however... Last night The Boy made a fire and we sat stargazing, munching on popcorn made on the brazier, sloshing cider...

 

...and thinking ourselves very lucky indeed as the sun set across the water.

Salt Slicked and Swimming with Seals...

Today...the obligatory whistle-stop tour of Lands End.... which, once you ditch the main throng of tourists and get as far away from the 'visitor attraction centre' as possible... turned out to be rather smashing... what those tourists don't seem to have noticed in their relentless hunt for sticks of rock and god-awful photo opps... is the actual End of the Land... the edge of the headland, just a few minutes walk away... (it's just round the corner, off to the left... but please, please don't tell them that...)

We lazed and lounged in the sunshine, half way up a hill covered in clover... and we hardly saw a soul... blissful!...Before long the lounging was cut short by The Boy's appointment with a surfboard... and so we headed back to Gwithian... The Boy for fun and games in the waves and me for general swooning on the beach and a sneaky cream tea at the Sunset Surf again..

The swell grew pretty impressive after a time and, watching all the action out there, I grew rather jealous of The Boy and so I hopped back into Frida to change into swimmers... Having fed the hungry little surfer once he was back on dry land, I insisted that we go back down to the beach... and we spent a pretty fabulous hour or so jumping waves... 


There was no hope of a proper swim, the water was too wild... great big breakers, crashing and rolling onto the beach... and it was as much as we could do to stand upright as the water pulled at our legs, dragging us out with each wave... but it was glorious... and I didn’t care that I was the only one in the water in a swimsuit... (grown men in wetsuits... honestly!.. man up, boys!)

Just as we started flagging from the effort... a seal popped its head up, just a few feet away from us and swam along bobbing and diving inside the waves... and so we stayed a while longer to watch it as it watched us...

Exhausted and salty all over, we headed back to the van, pulled on some clothes and drove barefoot across the peninsular to Lizard Village... to a place I’d been dying to visit for a few years now... Henry’s Campsite..


Bye Bye, Gwithian... we love you... xxx

Sunset at the Sunset Surf...

We woke this morning to the dreamy sound of rain on the roof of the van... and given that for the first time in god-only-knows-how-long there was nowhere to be and no deadlines to hit, well.. it was actually all rather lovely... 


Before long, however, the blue skies appeared and so we headed off to St Ives for pasties, fudge and cider like good little tourists... 

Later on, after ditching the holiday crowds, we met up with friends who happened to be in town and we all took ourselves off to watch the sunset over a summery jug of Pimms... in what turned out to be not very Pimms-y, everso freezing, cold weather at the Sunset Surf Cafe on Gwithian Beach...

Adventure on the High Seas... (well, the M4 really)

Poor old Frida... despite having been built for adventure, she's been treated like nothing more than a mobile cafe over the winter months since we bought her... .but now at last it was time for a proper road trip... and so, yesterday morning, with The Babbitts holidaying in Holland, I packed up Frida with goodies and camping gear, tossed a spare set of keys at The Boy and we drove west... 

It was a windy, white-knuckle ride all the way to Bristol... so windy in fact that, having deigned to let The Boy drive dearest Frida, I glanced over to see a look of total panic on his face as the wing-mirrors were slowly blown inwards.. flush to the side of the van... Yikes! I became my job to look out of the back window and tell him if anything was coming...  (and eventually to strap the roof vent down with a bungee rope to stop it from acting like a parachute...)

But today The Boy has regained feeling in his hands and... having last night been given enough gin to help him forget the whole terrifying affair... this morning we headed south, down Kernow way to Gwithian.

Ah, but it's lovely...

xx

The only way is Suffolk...

It was only as we headed north, past the sign that said 'Welcome to Suffolk' that I realised that I'd never taken poor old Frida out of the county... and she is most definitely NOT an Essex girl... While all sorts of camping and high jinx are planned for the warmer months, a week off school demanded a mini road trip... cross-county at the very least. And so I packed up some supplies, The Babbitts and Peggy Pole-Dancer and off we set for a few days in Southwold.

Having applied scarves and gloves to keep the chilly February weather at bay, we hit the streets, but after a slow trek out of town along pothole ridden lanes, through the harbour and down to the beach, we discovered that infact  the sea air was welcoming and warm for the time of year... Cue beach art, picnics...

 

 

 ...and the most astonishing sunset.

Later that evening Frida would house snacks, dominoes and even a disco, but until then and parked up at the water's edge with sunset fast apporaching, the old girl looked very peaceful and very much at home.

(...definitely not an Essex girl.)