Rick's Place

Monday 3 September

We woke up this morning to a magical sunrise. The sun was up but the clouds were low and was shining through giving a fantastic mystical aura to the site. Kevin was up and at the shower before you could blink.

Today is a special day in that Petra and Kevin were married 30 years ago today. 30 years... wow and every one of them brilliant. Here’s to another 30 - ching ching...

By the time we had breakfast (two poached eggs on toast), we had cleaned the dried the outside if the van with the squeegee thing and dried it off; we were ready for our trip down to Padstow. The campsite is only a mile from Padstow (half a mile from Tesco). The beginning of the walk takes us across a couple of fields with corn on the cob in and a large grassy field. It was a bit muddy under feet for Petra’s walking shoe’s but we managed to negotiate the styles and kissing gates until we reached Tesco. Quick turn right and it’s all downhill to Padstow.

The weather as we approached the centre of Padstow was beautiful and getting quite hot. We turned the corner and Petra let out a surprised “oooh”, there in front of a ladies clothes shop (Joules) was a pile of boxes and tucked in behind was two old ‘point of sale’ banners. they were held together with two long 1” doweling. Now this might seem daft but we have been looking for something just like this to use as wellington boot sticks. It’s a camping thing that when it rains you knock the sticks into the ground and when in the van you take your wellies off and turn them up side down on the sticks. This stops slugs getting in to them and keeps them dry. A very nice and attractive girl came out of the shop and agreed that we could salvage the doweling which we did. Only problem, we now had two 5’ long bits of dowel to carry around all day!!

The town is really interesting and we enjoyed exploring all the shops and side streets. We ended up on the harbour wall and watched the ferries come and go. There was also a man shouting at the top of his voice for people to join him on his speed boat, a Reva type boat £6 a go. It turned out there was 4 of these vessels all named things like ‘Thunder’, ‘Jaws’ and ‘Hurricane’. We passed and sat on a bench with all the other oldies.

Padstow is of course well known for its association with TV Chief Rick Stein. It turns out he is more a retailer than chef as he has no less than 13 businesses in the town. He has everything from a top fish food restaurant (Egon recommends it apparently) to a fish and chip shop and a Deli to a gift shop. I am afraid as tempting as it was we didn’t indulge. Even the fish n chips takeaway was £12.50. That’s quite a lot we thought even for a treat. Anyway, Petra had made a nice lunch for us so we sat on bench by the harbour and tucked into that listening to the man from the speed boat drumming up business (only 3 places left..!) We did have the opportunity to sit on a bench nearer the the centre but there was a busking crooner all dressed up in a suit and trilby to look like Frank Sinatra (he must have been roasting).

After lunch we had another look around and decided that we would rather be back at Campy so made the climb back up the hill and back to camp. As soon as we got there we put the bus shelter up and the new wind breaker and Petra sat doing her Tapestry. Kevin made wellington boot sticks out of the doweling by cutting them in half, whittling a point on one end and lashing the other with some black para cord from the really useful string bag.