Camping Holiday — Day 3 — Wednesday 18th August 2010
This post was originally published on www.randomstoat.com on 25 August 2010.
One thing I forgot to add to yesterday’s blog was that, after dinner, we sat at the campsite bar and was accosted by a chap from York. He was a bit drunk, and pretty much started a minor argument with Tommy. Ant and myself had a laugh about the sequels to The Matrix and missed most of it. But then I was expecting a punchline. After, we watched the stars for a little bit and caught glimpses of a couple of shooting stars before, rather disappointingly, it clouded over and we all headed off to bed. Now, to Wednesday…
Wednesday was another typically slow start. I was up at my normal time, about 7, and decided to charge my phone while everybody else was gettin up and getting ready. I finished off the last 20 pages of The Road, then started reading Louis Theroux’s first book, The Call of the Weird. Managed 40-odd pages before the phone was charged enough to take my leave of the wall sockets. Also felt a bit weird standing around outside the doorway to both the male and female toilets…
We went into Newquay with the plan to visit the zoo and do a few other things in the area to make the most of the parking costs (which is where most of the loose change went all week I think). The zoo itself was great fun, but the “African plain” was very lacklustre. The best of these I’ve ever seen was at a zoo in France a few years ago, with plenty of animals and a LOT of room for them to roam. And bears. Not in the African Plain, just at the zoo generally. This African Plain had a couple of roaming creatures and a couple of zebras in the caged area. And an ostrich, similarly caged. Quite disappointing but the rest of the zoo made up for it.
Then, a minor annoyance set in again. It was decided to head to the beach instead of visiting the Crazy Golf and the nearby pedalos. As previously mentioned, I’m not much of a beach person, but I went along into Newquay and parted ways with the others when they parked up. They went to the beach and I headed into townto scout out the WH Smiths for comics. They didn’t stock the usual range I buy, so I decided to leave buying them until I got home. Quickly nipped into Poundland for some cheap Pepsi then headed over to the beach via the Links golf course, which I wouldn’t mind playing a round on one day. I diverted off before hitting the beach proper to sit on the hill between the car and Fistral beach, where they all were. I sent a general text to everyone in the hope that someone would have their phone switched on so they could find me. Luckily Adam had his phone to hand as he had gone for a walk along the coast instead of dousing himself in sea water. I met up with him on the coastal path and shortly afterwards we saw the others approaching their beach encampment. We headed down to join them and discovered that seagulls had eaten all of Ant’s doughnuts which he had jus bought (and a sandwich of Rich’s too, I believe).
After they had all lounged on the beach for a bit and redressed, we stayed on the seafront for a bit where Liz treated me to some traditional seaside fish and chips, which were gloriously nice, very tasty indeed. Then we walked into town for dinner. We initially chose a seafront restaurant that dealt primarily in seafood. Rather handily, after all the effort we spent in walking down to it, they told us we couldn’t eat there without a reservation. So instead we went back up into the street and chose the Olde Dolphin pub next to (and above) the arcades. We had a set menu which consisted of two courses for £10, which was incredibly good value for what we got. Everyone else waxed lyrical about their meals, Ant especially who wanted to take our waitress home in a box because he thought she was “lovely”. No idea where he’d keep all these boxed women if he ever got to follow up on his desires…
I decided against having a started and chose a pudding of apple crumble, which was rather nice. For my main it was a chicken curry, mostly lacking in spice and, despite everybody else praising the food as highly as they could, the best I could muster was “it’s alright”. It was nice, don’t get me wrong, but I rarely get that excited about food. Unless it’s coconut ice, which I found in a sweet shop after dinner. Glorious. We’d hoped for more stars but the clouds were not forgiving.
In retrospect it’s a good job they went to the beach that day, the weather was perfect for it and degraded considerably for our remaining few days in the area. And ultimately I got to go and do my own thing for a bit, the anti-social swine that I am.
