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Saturday
Everyone got up at about 5:30am due to nerves. My stomach disagreed violently with breakfast, summarily rejecting the half-bagel I tried to feed it, thankfully through the more convenient of the two ends. Mostly travelling during the day; got some very nice 'kiddies' fake-ham and cheese spread sandwiches to replace breakfast, which were much more acceptable. We found a nice little place for lunch, which was subsequantly invaded by the Mayflower Motorcycle Club, but they didn't stay long. One of them was smoking something that most definitely was not tobacco, though. There were some very narrow roads, if only at the end; even though flat in town, town's roads must get narrower and narrower, in order to preserve grand holiday tradition. Flat very nice. Have own exclusive view of the prettiest cliffs in Mevagissey, nice furniture, lots of pretty artwork. (Honourable mentions are the fishies in my room, which are a painted doily, and the weird green boat scene with what looks to my biased eyes like huge sprawling cyberpunk cities colonising the hills.) Balcony, garden furniture. Gulls. We debated whether there were more accidents here due to the nonexistant safety-ness of the roads and the absence of guard-rails on most of the very high harbour wall. We then proceeded to stay up almost all night playing Gazillionaire. This turned out to be a Good Thing, because there was the most amazing firework display to celebrate the end of 'Feast Week', which we were very glad we'd missed - the week, not the fireworks. We had the absolute best viewing position, from my parents' bedroom window; could see all the fireworks right from their shooting point, it was in the warm, and it wasn't too loud (for referance, the fireworks were at least 200m away and shook the flat so that things fell off tables). Lots of very large, very pretty rockets and stuff; nothing small and weedy, and went on quite a while too. We then played some more Gazillionaire; Julia lost due to lashings of bad luck, and went to bed just before midnight, and we followed her at 12:30.
Sunday
We wasted most of the morning on account of having spent far too long awake the previous day; eventually we got organised and went off to hunt for leaflets, due to all the ones at the flat being at least two years out of date. The information office was shut with a notice saying 'shut due to last night of Feast Week, back in the morning'. We wandered around Mevagissey for a bit, looking mostly for some trousers for me, because I hadn't packed enough (it wasn't warm enough for skirts as I'd thought, although I had planned to pack another pair of trousers and then been debating between several pairs, not eventually packing any of them). We found some very pretty clothes in one shop, I tried a load on, and we went out with nothing, because none of it was quite right. We then went back to the office which was now open, and collected half a ton of leaflets, despite the best efforts of this annoying lady who kept cutting across us and making us feel as if we were in the way. Getting them home, I made a big list of what we wanted to do, and we chose an itinary for the week. That included the National Seal Rescue Centre that afternoon, so we set out soon afterwards.
Went to a nice little pub for lunch; after I'd spent five minutes struggling to choose something from the menu, we were informed that they didn't serve anything but roasts until 2pm on Sunday, so we all had some very nice roast pork and stuffing, with beautiful creamy roast potatoes and the obligitory fake carrots, of which I had everyone's portion in return for my beans because I love fake carrots. We all liked the look of the desserts but the potatoes were so nice that we couldn't bring ourselves to leave them in order to manage dessert.
The 'National Seal Rescue Centre', at a little place called Gweek, was quite a challenge to find; this time we had the full-on 'winding country roads' experience, complete with high banks so no-one could see a thing and fast oncoming cars we almost lost the wing mirror to. Thankfully once we got to Gweek it was actually signposted; we were getting rather nervous. It was quite good once we were there, some very cute baby seals, some reasonably impressive full-grown ones, and one heck of a massive sealion (along with a couple of only slightly less impressive specimins, one of which looked like Stalin on account of the moustache). There was also 'Otter Creek', which was down a medium-length path into the woodland with lots of otter facts along the way on wooden otters, which consisted of two very small Asian otters. They were very cute, though, especially when the keepers chased them out of the house for feeding time. For some reason, the centre also kept a couple of ponies and goats; two of the goats were busy having one of those interminable stand-off fights, which we watched for a while, but got bored after they'd locked horns and stepped away again and it all seemed to be pretty much over.
We had decided that we were not playing Gazillionaire again, so some book-reading and some cheese and biscuits ensued, and then I was very tired indeed and so I went to get some sleep in fairly short order.
Monday
We were meant to be doing the Carnglaze Caverns and Enchanted Dell in the morning, and the Coastal Walk in the afternoon, so that's roughly what we did. The Carnglaze Caverns were basically a few caverns cut out through slate mining, one of which is used as a concert venue (which looked like it could be a pretty cool venue, no pun intended but the temperature was quite low), one of which contains a bunch of springs which they use to supply water to the venue, and one of which contains a freezing underground lake lit from below, which was appropriately pretty. lots of 'wasn't it terrible about how these mines were worked' was said. We actually did the Enchanted Dell first; it was quite nice, actually, a little wooded patch with lots of metal statues of fairies around. The fairies had very pretty iridescant/opalescent glass wings and mostly sported very mean expressions; *proper* fairies. There were also little fairy houses. We still had some time before we needed to go for the cavern tour so we went on the woodland walk too, which started off with a chinese-ish water dragon and carried on through a couple of less mean-looking fairies; it then got silly, with cardboard cutout hobbits and Gandalf, and a replica hobbit home which little kiddies could and had been in.
I'm sure we didn't have much trouble finding lunch, but I can't remember what we did.
Then we came home and I decided I was too ill to go do the coastal walk so my parents went off to do it themselves, but then came back to report that they'd already done the interesting bit of it the other night and it was too steep, so would I be interested in wandering around Meva instead. I was, or more accurately I was interested in an ice-cream and not sitting around all day, so we set off. I had a very nice strawberry icecream in a tub, and we walked up the side of the town, but eventually it seemed to just all be residential places and dusty roads, so we turned around and went back a slightly different way through the one bit of park-like land we'd found and down some steps onto the harbour, then across that.
We'd decided to watch Dr No, so we had a snacky supper of stuffed pork from the Tesco hot counter and some nice bread, then settled down to watch. It was truly awful. Very highly disrecommended.
Tuesday
We'd planned to go to the Birds of Prey Centre in the morning, but then we discovered that they didn't have the flying displays until the afternoon, so we decided to do the Aquarium in Newquay first. we got into Newquay and then struggled our way to a little parking lot which I was convinced was wrong, but it turned out the only closer carpark was the station one and even that wasn't very much closer. Newquay was predictably awful, being the seaside town to end all seaside towns, but thankfully the aquarium wasn't as far away as we'd feared. There were lots and lots of pretty fishies. Highlights were the Humpheaded Wrasse, which is pretty and blue and looks like it has circuit boards on it, and the massive octopus that looked very much like Cthulu in the manner it was sleeping on the rock, the right way up to be a face. I tried to take some photos of it but I'm not sure they'll have come out because you weren't allowed to use the flash on it and the pool was dark and there was a light behind it, which normally messes up the white balancing. (The flash would probably have reflected awfully from the glass anyhow.) On the leaflet it said that we could touch the rays but there were signs up saying we couldn't because they'd discovered that stuff on people's skin dissolved the fish's skin and made them get infections. People were still touching the rays. We didn't. The last tank of fishies was a tank of very pretty coral reef fishies, and we spent a long time staring at the fishies there. The journey back was slightly trying, especially as I was flagging and my dad wanted to get some sunglasses.
We were planning to eat somewhere on the way to the Birds of Prey centre because it had been easy everywhere else to find places, but predictably there was absolutely nothing between Newquay and the centre. Eventually we decided to settle for the Airways Hotel's restaurant. On the way down that road, we saw a sign to 'The Falcon Inn', which turned out to be a very nice pub at which I had a lovely chicken, apricot and brie pie.
The Birds of Prey centre was quite good fun; there were lots of pretty birdies there, owls and hawks and buzzards and falcons, and even peacocks and hens and geese too; they also had an emu and a couple of Shetland ponies. Before they did the flying display they chased all the geese and hens into shelters so that the birds of prey didn't eat them. Then we were sitting there for ages waiting for them to start.
All of a sudden, there was a hawk (Harris Hawk or something) half-flying, half-walking towards us down the path. Even more alarmingly, it then took off and landed on Paul's shoulders... and began to climb up his head! Julia was asking 'does it hurt' in a worried voice and Paul was saying 'not really', and then the handler came running down and ordered the hawk off Paul's head, at which point it flew up and landed on some poor lady's head and messed up her hair, before flying off to the perch it was meant to be on. The handler 'apologised' in a typically gung-ho manner, telling us that it happened because these birds were 'a lot of fun'. She threw some meat around for the hawk, which swooped around impressively, and showed it off a bit, then took the hawk back to these things that looked like broken down garages.
Next up was an Eagle Owl, which thankfully didn't try and land on anyone's head, because he was enormous. Very fluffy and pretty though; even fluffy feet. Wingspan well over a metre, probably over 1.5. He wasn't particularly interested in some of the meat being offered, feeling such small morsels to be beneath him. He did, however, swoop on and eat a small frog, which was quite amusing.
The third and last bird was a falcon, a cross between a Pereguin and something else. She brought it out with a hood on, and it was practically asleep; she loosened the hood and it started looking around; she took the hood off and it stood on her arm with wings outstretched for a bit, which was quite impressive, and then took off. And, well, that was about it; whatever she tried, she couldn't get the thing down again. Eventually he went down over some hills, and they had to get the radio recievers out to see where he'd gone. We were all very British and waited patiently even though we couldn't see a thing, and eventually she told us we could all go. We went up to the tearooms and had some cake and got my mother some caffine because she was suffering from having had no coffee at lunchtime.
We'd decided to eat out in the evening, so we booked a table at the Sundeck Restaurant as it was very close by and had a nice terrace. I wanted crab, so I had crab, and it was very nice indeed; crab and massive atlantic prawns, with salad (and some peas-in-pods courtesy of my mother). For dessert I had a mango and pineapple pavlova, plus some clotted cream (again courtesy of my mother). We got home and tried to play Gazillionaire, but I was very tired indeed and just went to bed in fairly short order. I proceeded to spend most of the night having a weird semi-dream about not being able to find a house I liked, inspired by not being able to find a comfortable position to sleep in. Eventually I realised I needed the loo and proceeded to have diahorria. Glorious. I shouldn't eat rich food when I'm taking about five different tablets a day and more than one a day of some of them (Marvelon, Zantac, mephemic acid, Paramax, Neoclarytin - yup, that's five).
Wednesday
We went to St Michael's Mount, which is basically a castle on a rock. We went out to it in little motor-boats which were quite nice; I seem to like most strange methods of transport, because I like trains too. Because they cut through the water quite fast and it was quite calm anyway it wasn't even very bob-y, and so my mother was fine too. We'd got on different boats because the first one would only take two people and the second had a dog on board, so we got our photo taken by Paul when standing waiting for his boat to get in, which it did on the other side of the harbour to us. We met in the middle by the ticket office and got ourselves ticketsies, and then we were about tomake the ascent to the castle when we realised it was about quarter to twelve and we'd need feeding soon. So we went to the 'Island Cafe', where we originally meant to eat sandwiches and ended up with Cream Tea, which was very nice, if somewhat sicklish. We then made our ascent, which was very hot indeed, as the sun had unexpectedly come out. We had a minor row at the top about it being too hot (there was an actual thing we were arguing about but neither of us could remember directly afterwards), but that ended when we got our photo taken bickering (by Paul). We took some photos of the view, and then went into the castle.
Mostly it was just set out like a big house, but there were some cool things. There was an armoury full of interesting weaponary which I worried my parents by talking about at length, and some suits of armour too; there were also some very pretty maps. One of the rooms was called the Chevy Chase Room and we can't work out why. (It was the dining room, and had flags and suits of armour on the walls.) There was also lots of artwork, a history of all the battles the castle had been involved in, and gardens we weren't allowed in but could gawp at from the castle battlements.
Then we went down to the bottom of the island/hill again and found some seats in the shade (the only seats in the shade), and ordered ourselves some cake; I had chocolate cake, Julia had a ginger cookie thing, and Paul was going to have an icecream. The 'rich chocolate cake' wasn't, so I handed that off to Paul, who confirmed it wasn't stale but it was kind of light and not far too sweet, and gave it to Julia; the ginger cookie thing was hence offered around, but although it was quite nice I liked the idea of an ice-cream by then; so in the end I got a strawberry icecream with a flake (which I waited quite a while for; service was quite slow and the two little boys in front had to run off for some more money for their icecreams), Julia had non-rich chocolate cake, and Paul had most of a nice ginger cookie thing.
After we'd finished doing the 'All Change, All Change' thingamy, we went and got another boat back to the mainland. There were about four dogs on the jetty on the way back, which was annoying, especially as one of them was a nasty wet dog that shook itself everywhere. We headed onwards to Land's End, which apparently had been renamed The Legendary Land's End and re-launched as a theme park. My mother finally found some sunglasses she was willing to wear in one of the shops, though, although she hated them soon after she'd bought them, but she's stuck with them now.
We had a lovely Chinese takeaway in the evening, although my mother was worried that I'd eat too much and feel ill again. I was fine, though, maybe because I'd stopped having to take quite so many pills. We then suddenly remembered that we'd brought the Winnie the Pooh book all the way up with us, so we had two stories: In Which Kanga And Roo Come To The Forest, and Piglet has a Bath, and In Which Pooh discovers a New Game, and Eeyore Joins In. Second title approximate. The first one my dad mostly read, because my mother likes his voices a lot for things, and I did Piglet and Roo; the second one my mother read most of the voices, I narrated and did Piglet and Roo again, and my dad read Eeyore because his Eeyore is better than either of our lousy attempts. Then I decided I'd better go and get some sleep because I had a long weekend ahead of me.
Thursday
This morning I mostly played Gazillionaire, on my own, to stop panicking; inbetween washing hair and self and packing tons of junk and running around worrying I hadn't got everything.
Got to St Austell station in plenty of time and shooed parents off before buying 'lunch' - a pistachio nut bar (nuts stuck together with golden syrup stuff) and a banana flapjack, which I still haven't eaten (the latter only) at 2:47pm. Felt sorry for the people on the other platform whose train was 50 minutes delayed, informed someone that this indeed was the train they were looking for (correctly, thankfully), ate my pistachio bar, and listened to the announcements of the other train's lateness, then the immanent arrival of both; after the one minute warning it was about five minutes before either turned up. Our train was a pathetic little two-carriage thing. There were no completely free tables so I chose one with only one other person on it; at the very next station the train filled right up, although thankfully the guys who got on and sat on my table were nice and understanding about my luggage and everything. Eventually people have got off and now I have my own table.
So, that's the holiday in just over three thousand words.
Everyone got up at about 5:30am due to nerves. My stomach disagreed violently with breakfast, summarily rejecting the half-bagel I tried to feed it, thankfully through the more convenient of the two ends. Mostly travelling during the day; got some very nice 'kiddies' fake-ham and cheese spread sandwiches to replace breakfast, which were much more acceptable. We found a nice little place for lunch, which was subsequantly invaded by the Mayflower Motorcycle Club, but they didn't stay long. One of them was smoking something that most definitely was not tobacco, though. There were some very narrow roads, if only at the end; even though flat in town, town's roads must get narrower and narrower, in order to preserve grand holiday tradition. Flat very nice. Have own exclusive view of the prettiest cliffs in Mevagissey, nice furniture, lots of pretty artwork. (Honourable mentions are the fishies in my room, which are a painted doily, and the weird green boat scene with what looks to my biased eyes like huge sprawling cyberpunk cities colonising the hills.) Balcony, garden furniture. Gulls. We debated whether there were more accidents here due to the nonexistant safety-ness of the roads and the absence of guard-rails on most of the very high harbour wall. We then proceeded to stay up almost all night playing Gazillionaire. This turned out to be a Good Thing, because there was the most amazing firework display to celebrate the end of 'Feast Week', which we were very glad we'd missed - the week, not the fireworks. We had the absolute best viewing position, from my parents' bedroom window; could see all the fireworks right from their shooting point, it was in the warm, and it wasn't too loud (for referance, the fireworks were at least 200m away and shook the flat so that things fell off tables). Lots of very large, very pretty rockets and stuff; nothing small and weedy, and went on quite a while too. We then played some more Gazillionaire; Julia lost due to lashings of bad luck, and went to bed just before midnight, and we followed her at 12:30.
Sunday
We wasted most of the morning on account of having spent far too long awake the previous day; eventually we got organised and went off to hunt for leaflets, due to all the ones at the flat being at least two years out of date. The information office was shut with a notice saying 'shut due to last night of Feast Week, back in the morning'. We wandered around Mevagissey for a bit, looking mostly for some trousers for me, because I hadn't packed enough (it wasn't warm enough for skirts as I'd thought, although I had planned to pack another pair of trousers and then been debating between several pairs, not eventually packing any of them). We found some very pretty clothes in one shop, I tried a load on, and we went out with nothing, because none of it was quite right. We then went back to the office which was now open, and collected half a ton of leaflets, despite the best efforts of this annoying lady who kept cutting across us and making us feel as if we were in the way. Getting them home, I made a big list of what we wanted to do, and we chose an itinary for the week. That included the National Seal Rescue Centre that afternoon, so we set out soon afterwards.
Went to a nice little pub for lunch; after I'd spent five minutes struggling to choose something from the menu, we were informed that they didn't serve anything but roasts until 2pm on Sunday, so we all had some very nice roast pork and stuffing, with beautiful creamy roast potatoes and the obligitory fake carrots, of which I had everyone's portion in return for my beans because I love fake carrots. We all liked the look of the desserts but the potatoes were so nice that we couldn't bring ourselves to leave them in order to manage dessert.
The 'National Seal Rescue Centre', at a little place called Gweek, was quite a challenge to find; this time we had the full-on 'winding country roads' experience, complete with high banks so no-one could see a thing and fast oncoming cars we almost lost the wing mirror to. Thankfully once we got to Gweek it was actually signposted; we were getting rather nervous. It was quite good once we were there, some very cute baby seals, some reasonably impressive full-grown ones, and one heck of a massive sealion (along with a couple of only slightly less impressive specimins, one of which looked like Stalin on account of the moustache). There was also 'Otter Creek', which was down a medium-length path into the woodland with lots of otter facts along the way on wooden otters, which consisted of two very small Asian otters. They were very cute, though, especially when the keepers chased them out of the house for feeding time. For some reason, the centre also kept a couple of ponies and goats; two of the goats were busy having one of those interminable stand-off fights, which we watched for a while, but got bored after they'd locked horns and stepped away again and it all seemed to be pretty much over.
We had decided that we were not playing Gazillionaire again, so some book-reading and some cheese and biscuits ensued, and then I was very tired indeed and so I went to get some sleep in fairly short order.
Monday
We were meant to be doing the Carnglaze Caverns and Enchanted Dell in the morning, and the Coastal Walk in the afternoon, so that's roughly what we did. The Carnglaze Caverns were basically a few caverns cut out through slate mining, one of which is used as a concert venue (which looked like it could be a pretty cool venue, no pun intended but the temperature was quite low), one of which contains a bunch of springs which they use to supply water to the venue, and one of which contains a freezing underground lake lit from below, which was appropriately pretty. lots of 'wasn't it terrible about how these mines were worked' was said. We actually did the Enchanted Dell first; it was quite nice, actually, a little wooded patch with lots of metal statues of fairies around. The fairies had very pretty iridescant/opalescent glass wings and mostly sported very mean expressions; *proper* fairies. There were also little fairy houses. We still had some time before we needed to go for the cavern tour so we went on the woodland walk too, which started off with a chinese-ish water dragon and carried on through a couple of less mean-looking fairies; it then got silly, with cardboard cutout hobbits and Gandalf, and a replica hobbit home which little kiddies could and had been in.
I'm sure we didn't have much trouble finding lunch, but I can't remember what we did.
Then we came home and I decided I was too ill to go do the coastal walk so my parents went off to do it themselves, but then came back to report that they'd already done the interesting bit of it the other night and it was too steep, so would I be interested in wandering around Meva instead. I was, or more accurately I was interested in an ice-cream and not sitting around all day, so we set off. I had a very nice strawberry icecream in a tub, and we walked up the side of the town, but eventually it seemed to just all be residential places and dusty roads, so we turned around and went back a slightly different way through the one bit of park-like land we'd found and down some steps onto the harbour, then across that.
We'd decided to watch Dr No, so we had a snacky supper of stuffed pork from the Tesco hot counter and some nice bread, then settled down to watch. It was truly awful. Very highly disrecommended.
Tuesday
We'd planned to go to the Birds of Prey Centre in the morning, but then we discovered that they didn't have the flying displays until the afternoon, so we decided to do the Aquarium in Newquay first. we got into Newquay and then struggled our way to a little parking lot which I was convinced was wrong, but it turned out the only closer carpark was the station one and even that wasn't very much closer. Newquay was predictably awful, being the seaside town to end all seaside towns, but thankfully the aquarium wasn't as far away as we'd feared. There were lots and lots of pretty fishies. Highlights were the Humpheaded Wrasse, which is pretty and blue and looks like it has circuit boards on it, and the massive octopus that looked very much like Cthulu in the manner it was sleeping on the rock, the right way up to be a face. I tried to take some photos of it but I'm not sure they'll have come out because you weren't allowed to use the flash on it and the pool was dark and there was a light behind it, which normally messes up the white balancing. (The flash would probably have reflected awfully from the glass anyhow.) On the leaflet it said that we could touch the rays but there were signs up saying we couldn't because they'd discovered that stuff on people's skin dissolved the fish's skin and made them get infections. People were still touching the rays. We didn't. The last tank of fishies was a tank of very pretty coral reef fishies, and we spent a long time staring at the fishies there. The journey back was slightly trying, especially as I was flagging and my dad wanted to get some sunglasses.
We were planning to eat somewhere on the way to the Birds of Prey centre because it had been easy everywhere else to find places, but predictably there was absolutely nothing between Newquay and the centre. Eventually we decided to settle for the Airways Hotel's restaurant. On the way down that road, we saw a sign to 'The Falcon Inn', which turned out to be a very nice pub at which I had a lovely chicken, apricot and brie pie.
The Birds of Prey centre was quite good fun; there were lots of pretty birdies there, owls and hawks and buzzards and falcons, and even peacocks and hens and geese too; they also had an emu and a couple of Shetland ponies. Before they did the flying display they chased all the geese and hens into shelters so that the birds of prey didn't eat them. Then we were sitting there for ages waiting for them to start.
All of a sudden, there was a hawk (Harris Hawk or something) half-flying, half-walking towards us down the path. Even more alarmingly, it then took off and landed on Paul's shoulders... and began to climb up his head! Julia was asking 'does it hurt' in a worried voice and Paul was saying 'not really', and then the handler came running down and ordered the hawk off Paul's head, at which point it flew up and landed on some poor lady's head and messed up her hair, before flying off to the perch it was meant to be on. The handler 'apologised' in a typically gung-ho manner, telling us that it happened because these birds were 'a lot of fun'. She threw some meat around for the hawk, which swooped around impressively, and showed it off a bit, then took the hawk back to these things that looked like broken down garages.
Next up was an Eagle Owl, which thankfully didn't try and land on anyone's head, because he was enormous. Very fluffy and pretty though; even fluffy feet. Wingspan well over a metre, probably over 1.5. He wasn't particularly interested in some of the meat being offered, feeling such small morsels to be beneath him. He did, however, swoop on and eat a small frog, which was quite amusing.
The third and last bird was a falcon, a cross between a Pereguin and something else. She brought it out with a hood on, and it was practically asleep; she loosened the hood and it started looking around; she took the hood off and it stood on her arm with wings outstretched for a bit, which was quite impressive, and then took off. And, well, that was about it; whatever she tried, she couldn't get the thing down again. Eventually he went down over some hills, and they had to get the radio recievers out to see where he'd gone. We were all very British and waited patiently even though we couldn't see a thing, and eventually she told us we could all go. We went up to the tearooms and had some cake and got my mother some caffine because she was suffering from having had no coffee at lunchtime.
We'd decided to eat out in the evening, so we booked a table at the Sundeck Restaurant as it was very close by and had a nice terrace. I wanted crab, so I had crab, and it was very nice indeed; crab and massive atlantic prawns, with salad (and some peas-in-pods courtesy of my mother). For dessert I had a mango and pineapple pavlova, plus some clotted cream (again courtesy of my mother). We got home and tried to play Gazillionaire, but I was very tired indeed and just went to bed in fairly short order. I proceeded to spend most of the night having a weird semi-dream about not being able to find a house I liked, inspired by not being able to find a comfortable position to sleep in. Eventually I realised I needed the loo and proceeded to have diahorria. Glorious. I shouldn't eat rich food when I'm taking about five different tablets a day and more than one a day of some of them (Marvelon, Zantac, mephemic acid, Paramax, Neoclarytin - yup, that's five).
Wednesday
We went to St Michael's Mount, which is basically a castle on a rock. We went out to it in little motor-boats which were quite nice; I seem to like most strange methods of transport, because I like trains too. Because they cut through the water quite fast and it was quite calm anyway it wasn't even very bob-y, and so my mother was fine too. We'd got on different boats because the first one would only take two people and the second had a dog on board, so we got our photo taken by Paul when standing waiting for his boat to get in, which it did on the other side of the harbour to us. We met in the middle by the ticket office and got ourselves ticketsies, and then we were about tomake the ascent to the castle when we realised it was about quarter to twelve and we'd need feeding soon. So we went to the 'Island Cafe', where we originally meant to eat sandwiches and ended up with Cream Tea, which was very nice, if somewhat sicklish. We then made our ascent, which was very hot indeed, as the sun had unexpectedly come out. We had a minor row at the top about it being too hot (there was an actual thing we were arguing about but neither of us could remember directly afterwards), but that ended when we got our photo taken bickering (by Paul). We took some photos of the view, and then went into the castle.
Mostly it was just set out like a big house, but there were some cool things. There was an armoury full of interesting weaponary which I worried my parents by talking about at length, and some suits of armour too; there were also some very pretty maps. One of the rooms was called the Chevy Chase Room and we can't work out why. (It was the dining room, and had flags and suits of armour on the walls.) There was also lots of artwork, a history of all the battles the castle had been involved in, and gardens we weren't allowed in but could gawp at from the castle battlements.
Then we went down to the bottom of the island/hill again and found some seats in the shade (the only seats in the shade), and ordered ourselves some cake; I had chocolate cake, Julia had a ginger cookie thing, and Paul was going to have an icecream. The 'rich chocolate cake' wasn't, so I handed that off to Paul, who confirmed it wasn't stale but it was kind of light and not far too sweet, and gave it to Julia; the ginger cookie thing was hence offered around, but although it was quite nice I liked the idea of an ice-cream by then; so in the end I got a strawberry icecream with a flake (which I waited quite a while for; service was quite slow and the two little boys in front had to run off for some more money for their icecreams), Julia had non-rich chocolate cake, and Paul had most of a nice ginger cookie thing.
After we'd finished doing the 'All Change, All Change' thingamy, we went and got another boat back to the mainland. There were about four dogs on the jetty on the way back, which was annoying, especially as one of them was a nasty wet dog that shook itself everywhere. We headed onwards to Land's End, which apparently had been renamed The Legendary Land's End and re-launched as a theme park. My mother finally found some sunglasses she was willing to wear in one of the shops, though, although she hated them soon after she'd bought them, but she's stuck with them now.
We had a lovely Chinese takeaway in the evening, although my mother was worried that I'd eat too much and feel ill again. I was fine, though, maybe because I'd stopped having to take quite so many pills. We then suddenly remembered that we'd brought the Winnie the Pooh book all the way up with us, so we had two stories: In Which Kanga And Roo Come To The Forest, and Piglet has a Bath, and In Which Pooh discovers a New Game, and Eeyore Joins In. Second title approximate. The first one my dad mostly read, because my mother likes his voices a lot for things, and I did Piglet and Roo; the second one my mother read most of the voices, I narrated and did Piglet and Roo again, and my dad read Eeyore because his Eeyore is better than either of our lousy attempts. Then I decided I'd better go and get some sleep because I had a long weekend ahead of me.
Thursday
This morning I mostly played Gazillionaire, on my own, to stop panicking; inbetween washing hair and self and packing tons of junk and running around worrying I hadn't got everything.
Got to St Austell station in plenty of time and shooed parents off before buying 'lunch' - a pistachio nut bar (nuts stuck together with golden syrup stuff) and a banana flapjack, which I still haven't eaten (the latter only) at 2:47pm. Felt sorry for the people on the other platform whose train was 50 minutes delayed, informed someone that this indeed was the train they were looking for (correctly, thankfully), ate my pistachio bar, and listened to the announcements of the other train's lateness, then the immanent arrival of both; after the one minute warning it was about five minutes before either turned up. Our train was a pathetic little two-carriage thing. There were no completely free tables so I chose one with only one other person on it; at the very next station the train filled right up, although thankfully the guys who got on and sat on my table were nice and understanding about my luggage and everything. Eventually people have got off and now I have my own table.
So, that's the holiday in just over three thousand words.
