Yesterday I mentioned
that I didn't like the Lydiard House Conference Centre hotel. Perhaps
I was being harsh but I now realise where I've seen the place
before. It is a carbon copy of the university halls of residence in
which I stayed when doing Open University courses. And not entirely
dissimilar to where Alan Partridge lived. Being on holiday I was
rather hoping to stay in a hotel; not a barracks.
I don't stay in hotels
much, so I might be being unfair about the place but we were promised
a decent Internet connection. The one at the Lydiard House Conference
Centre was shabby, to say the least. And I don't expect the dustmen
to start clattering about at 5am.
We got up and went down
for brekkie... Oh dear. I didn't expect the coffee cups to bear the
coffee stains left by the dribbles of the last person to have used
that cup. Nor did I expect to find the left over jam that said
previous diner didn't want.
I couldn't get out of
that place quickly enough.
We set off on the next
leg of our journey. Down the M4 to a motorway service station near
Bristol where we found a geocache, did a munzee and hacked a portal.
Heaven !! We carried on down the motorway and saw a sign saying
"Welcome to Somerset" which was confusing; isn't
Bristol in Somerset? So we stopped at the next service station to get
another geocache just in case. One needs to get at least one per
county. And bearing that maxim in mind we also stopped at Exeter
services in Devon for geocachical reasons. We had intended to eat at
the Exeter services, but it was heaving with normal people; far too
busy for our liking. So we contented ourselves with picking up
several munzees in the car park (there were *loads*) and with
only one brief hiccup in navigation we made our way to the furthest
part of our road trip; Tintagel in Cornwall.
Two hundred and fifty
miles from home; the furthest I've been for ten years.
We've based this road
trip largely on the recommendations of friends; and we'd been told
that Tintagel was particularly scenic... but there wasn't an awful
lot to do there. Bearing in mind the flying visits we are making on
this trip, that suited us ideally.
After nearly falling off
a cliff (for geocachical reasons) we went into Tintagel
Castle.
Tintagel Castle... isn't
an actual castle. It's a very large rock just off the Cornish coast
connected to the mainland by a bridge. We spent a couple of hours
looking round the place before making our way to the gift shop where
we had a traditional Cornish clotted cream tea. Very nice.
We then moved on to
Boscastle which we had heard was especially pretty. It was. It's one
of those places that few people have probably heard of, and the
entire lot can be seen in fifteen minutes, but it is well worth a
visit. The harbour appealed to me; most harbours open directly onto
the sea. This one had a little river leading to the sea. I risked
life and limb clambering up the cliffs to get some scenic photos of
that little river. It has been asked if I would have made that
scramble had there not been a virtual geocache at the top. The
answer... probably not. But I am glad that I did; the views were
spectacular.
We then walked into
Boscastle and found the Cobweb Inn where we had a rather good piece
of steak pie each washed down with some very good Cornish cider.
And then, feeling
suitably replete, we drove a very short way inland to Tregatherall
Farm where we are currently staying.
The bedroom is lovely,
the bathroom without equal. The guest sitting room (where I am
typing this) is particularly comfortable. And the wi-fi, whilst a
tad slow, actually works.
I used it to put up the
photos of the day. There were a lot...
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