A Half Term Break

Hello, thank you for dropping in and please excuse my absence.  A few hours after I published my last post the Best Beloved and I loaded up the car and set off on the long drive to The Lizard for a half term Cornish camping holiday. 

I had booked a lovely campsite which I'd found online and it surpassed our expectations.  It was quite small and very well-kept, bordered by hedges and established trees and we were almost deafened by birdsong the whole time we were there.  Here's the view from my dining table on the evening of our arrival.

Cornwall was beautiful, in and out of the sunshine.  The hawthorn trees in the hedges were still bearing their magnificent white blossom, unlike here in Shropshire, and the lanes were lined with frothy white Queen Anne's lace and pink campion.  I really wanted to get out of the car and take photographs but the lanes were too narrow for that to be feasible.  I was almost giddy with delight.  We went to the beach on our first day there, of course we did, even though it was so misty that we couldn't see much and I had to zip my fleece right up to my chin to keep out the wind, and we sat at a picnic bench outside the café and drank hot tea and I ate a hot pasty out of a paper bag while we watched wetsuit-wearing swimmers, surfers and kayakers, hardier than us.  I couldn't have felt happier.

After that day, the weather brightened.  We went to picturesque Cadgwith and ate crab sandwiches at The Cadgwith Cove Inn and we went to Kennack Sands and sat on the beach in glorious sunshine, him napping and me reading.  We went to a pretty tea garden and ate a cream tea - and please don't be shocked, but even though I was in Cornwall I ate it the Devonian way, cream first and jam on top.  In the evenings we sat in our tent and drank wine, chatted to each other, listened to children playing and I read my book.  It was idyllic.

The main purpose of our trip was to visit the churchyard in Crantock.  My dear friend Mary moved back near there in 2011 after living in Shropshire for almost twenty years, and the last time I saw her was during our Cornish holiday in 2016.  That day, she took us to visit the church in Crantock and showed us the grave where her parents and daughter are buried; she told me that she intended her ashes to be interred there too, and showed me how she had worded the inscription on the headstone so that all that would need to be added would be the date of her death, "if anyone's interested," she said.  I told her that I would be interested and that I would visit her.  Just after Christmas I learned that she died last year,  so I felt the need to honour my promise and that's why we took this trip.  The Best Beloved discreetly and thoughtfully made himself scarce while I sat beside the grave and said my goodbyes. 

While I was packing for this trip, I found my missing book!  Typically, it was in a place which I had looked in the previous day, and the day before that, but I was obviously looking with what my friend calls "man eyes"!  So, next time I can definitely share this year's books with you.

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x