Innit?

19^th September 2011 – 1pm

We set off from Torquay, Devon yesterday morning and headed south west to Cornwall which is the south western area of England. We had been told by a few people to make the trip as the area is beautiful. We are glad we didn’t miss it, it was really lovely. We ended up stopping at a town on the North Coast of that area called Newquay. As we drove into town, Matt got a message from his English mate telling him how nice Newquay is, what timing! We had a Cornish Cream Tea and it was pretty bloody good. We upgraded to a deluxe, without really knowing what it meant, and we were a bit peckish so we ordered some cake too. Turns out a deluxe Cornish Cream Tea includes 2 scones (each) with, you guessed it, CLOTTED CREAM. The lady was kind enough to cancel our cake order and refund our money when she saw our eyes pop out of our heads.  Anyway I suppose that’s enough about scones.

ROLLING GREEN HILLS OF CORNWALL

NEWQUAY, CORNWALL

After our little pig out, we waddled down to the “beach” and even though it was cold (like really cold) there were people in the water everywhere surfing. There were a lot of surf shops in the town which seemed bizarre to me, walking around in 5 layers of clothes!

NEWQUAY BEACH, CRAZY PEOPLE SWIMMING!

NEWQUAY AGAIN

We were debating whether to drive further south to a town called Falmouth. I designed a logo for a catering van in a park there and wanted to see it but also didn’t want to dawdle. In the end, it was a 40 minute drive to see my work on the other side of the world so off we went to Falmouth and it was a bit exciting to see it, even though the van was closed.

THE NARROW STREETS OF FALMOUTH, CORNWALL

MY LOGO ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD! (IT'S A COFFEE SHOP)

Our next stop was Bristol. It’s a small city with a lot of old buildings, which I’m starting to think describes most of England! Everything is just so… cute! Except for the homeless guy I saw weeing in the garden. That was gross.

Anyway, Bristol... There’s a lot of really cool street art around which is not normally my thing but what we saw was incredibly impressive. Other than that, there’s nothing much exciting to report about ol’ Bristol, we just walked around the streets and found somewhere for dinner. We had Chinese, which had the most confusing buffet I’ve ever seen. We had to fill in a form, 3 choices each, per round, list quantities, solve a Sudoku and learn Mandarin.*

FLOATING HARBOUR IN BRISTOL'S CBD

SOME OF THE AMAZING STREET ART, MORE PHOTOS TO FOLLOW!

The coolest thing about Bristol was probably the guesthouse we stayed at, about 15 minutes from the city. It was a 300 year old house surrounded by a farm and the people who ran it were so friendly and welcoming. There were probably 6 or so rooms with a shared bathroom. It didn’t prove to be much of an inconvenience, and I didn’t come across any other guests, even though I’m fairly sure the house was close to full. People must have been shorter back in the day because we had to duck to get into our room. It was cute until I bashed my head on the door frame this morning. On my way down, I also bashed my knee on the side of the door frame and the pain is still there, to remind me of my clumsiness! 

Anyway, they had breakfast out waiting for us and they sat down to eat with us. There was the owner, Richard, and his wife (I think) Alison, a Scot called Scott (we think, Matt says yes it was Scott, I say no Matt is confused) and the Pirate. I don’t know his name but he looked like a pirate to me. More the Geoffrey Rush type than the Johnny Depp type, unfortunately. They seemed genuinely disappointed when we said we had to hit the road, and I was too! They were so lovely we could have stayed all day just chatting!

Right now, we are driving to Liverpool. It has started to rain a little bit so we might have to invest in an umbrella to explore Liverpool. We are going to go around and see all of the Beatles sites, like the Cavern and Strawberry Fields. We really cannot complain about the weather as so far, we really haven’t been affected by it much. It’s mostly been raining when we’ve been driving and clear when we’ve be walking around. We’ve been so lucky. Matt is negotiating many, many motorways and confusing triple-lane, seven-exit roundabouts** so I think I’ll wind this up and give him a hand navigating to our next stop, Strawberry Fields.

Amy

*Half of this sentence is bullshit.
**No bullshit.