Cornwall Camping - Episode 1

A quick turn around of laundry and a rethink of the packing strategy was required.

For France, I was expecting hot, steamy, August weather. I packed up all shorts and strappy tops/dresses/short sleeve shirts. I missed that entirely and we all froze our tooshies off.

For camping in Cornwall I wasn't going to make the same mistake. I packed only trousers (no shorts), long sleeves, jumpers. Warmth was my objective.

Plus I hadn't ever camped in the UK before. And I've never camped with children before. I camped quite a bit years ago when I was a child with my family and in my 20s when I lived in Colorado. But camping in the UK is substantially different from camping in Colorado.

We had none of the equipment we needed so had been acquiring it over the last couple months: a camp stove, camping dishes, sleeping bags, air mattresses, etc. I felt we had just about everything we needed.

We spent much of Sunday trying to fit that everything into our car. Given that we were taking our dog, Bailey, with us this wasn't as easy as we had originally thought it was going to be. But Marc managed it and by 10 am on Monday morning we were off. We made fairly good time down the motorway until the last couple hours when we were diverted off the motorway due to a road traffic fatality. The little narrow roads of Cornwall are not designed to handle all that motorway traffic especially in August. It was a nightmare.

All in all though we only arrived 1 hour later than planned at our campsite. It was blowing boots though and setting up the tent in the howling winds presented Marc with more than a few challenges!

But we managed it. And we got dinner cooked. And then we went down to the beach. We thought we could walk it but the road was VERY narrow and in August and at dusk this probably wasn't a very sensible thing to do. So we drove the 800 yards, parked at the parking lot right across the road.

We followed the little path over the sand dune and voila! We were treated to a most spectacular sunset over a gorgeous little beach. there were 3 or 4 other people on the beach but it felt like we had the place to ourselves.

Bailey and the children lost no time and got busy running about across the sand.

Then it was back to the campsite and into the sleeping bags. What is it with children and sleeping bags? Seb & Abby could hardly wait to get into theirs! The night was a bit rough because the wind continued to blow a hooley. The flapping of the tent woke Abby up but she went right back to bed. Marc & I were slightly concerned with whether the tent could withstand the battering it was taking. And poor little ole Bailey didn't have anything other than a wind block which we had set up on 3 sides that he could lay down in.

We woke in the morning to calmer winds and beautiful sunshine. Bailey was shivering so we knew we had to fix his sleeping arrangements. but all in all our first night was a success. No one peed in their sleeping bags. No one woke up in tears. OK, so I had some pretty low expectations.

After a quick breakfast, we were off. To another beach. Again.

To be continued.........