Falmouth, or bust

I feel cleansed of London smog after my weekend in the country. After a bit of a false start (driving the wrong way down a three-lane one-way street by the Tower of London!) I picked up the Other Half and got the hell outta town.

We sped down the M4 to Stroud, in Gloucester, to stay with the lovely Anthony and Caroline. They have a fantastic country cottage, that was built about 250 years ago. It has a fabulous view across a valley and verdant countryside.

When it got dark, we walked up a proper country lane, all mud and overhanging trees, to a pub. On the way we saw a glow worm. It was a lot more exciting than that sentence suggests! A neon green glow, the colour of old fashioned mobile phones. But under the torch light it was a mean-looking brown grub thing.

Some wine and a couple of playings of William Shatner's version of Common People, by Pulp, and we were ready for bed.

The next morning, we were up and off to Cornwall. Anthony estimated the journey would take about three hours. Ha! Thanks to traffic jams we didn't arrive at the campsite for up to seven hours later.

Why was it so bad? We passed two cars broken down in the 'fast lane' and a mashed up Land Rover, which had been towing a caravan. Luckily, it looked like the occupants survived but the car was a write-off.

After crawling across Bodmin Moor and being forced to buy fuel from E$$O, we arrived at Calamanky Farm - home of sheep, llamas (sic) and chickens, ‘which are of constant interest to children’.

Up with the tent in record time (soft ground see, not like the rock hard earth in Portugal which bent all our pegs) and off to meet Great Aunt Liz ...