We're Home

We're back home after a wonderful fortnight away. The first week was spent in a lodge near Bude in Cornwall, and the second week was in a cottage near Exeter in Devon.

The weather was mixed, we had some gorgeous sunny and hot days but also some rainy ones, though it didn't matter as there was plenty to keep us occupied.

This is the lodge which we stayed in for the first week, if you look closely you can see Archie looking out from behind the door wondering what I'm doing.

The place where we stayed was in Kilkhampton, a lovely little village which is about five miles away from Bude. There were ten lodges and two cottages on the site, and the amenities were fantastic. There were tennis courts, an indoor swimming pool, a games room, outdoor games, a playground and three fishing lakes. This is the view which we had from our lodge. One of the lakes is behind the trees.

The first place we visited was Padstow which is a fishing port. Rick Stein has restaurants, cafes and shops here. We didn't eat in there but the cafe menu looked very reasonably priced. There's lots of little gift shops to look round which we enjoyed.

Later that same day we took our first trip to the beach at Bude where Archie had his first taste of the sea, quite literally.

Another fishing port which we visited was Boscastle. We've been here before, but it's such a lovely little place that I wanted to have another look around. This is the harbour, though the tide was out when we were there.

On this very day, 16th August, in 2004, Boscastle suffered flash floods which caused extensive damage. You can see an arrow on this building which indicates the flood level. It's hard to imagine.

To say that Archie had never seen the sea before this holiday, he certainly took a liking to swimming in it. The only problem was that once he came out of the sea, he tried to dry off by rolling in the sand, which makes for one very dirty dog. This was Black Rock beach at Widemouth Bay and it's great for dogs as they can be let off their lead here.

All that swimming was exhausting though, as you can see.

Another thing which Archie took a liking to was ice cream, as you can see.

Each evening, Mick, Daniel and Eleanor went off for a spot of fishing. They managed to catch 103 fish between them in the first week, some were only little, like the one that Eleanor's holding, but some were considerably bigger. They were all put back in to the lake.

That was our first week in Cornwall, and I think I've written enough for one day. I'll risk boring you to death with more tales of my holiday and tell you a bit about Devon in my next post. In the meantime, I'm still catching up with all the washing and ironing which we've brought home with us, and I shall be catching up with all the blogs I read too.