Hello again. Our last full day in Cornwall and so the last blog from here too. I honestly don’t know where the time has gone. It doesn’t seem nearly three weeks since we rolled up bleary eyed in the rain after driving through the night. The weather has been just great – like in most of the country though I see dire warnings have been uttered about covering up, keeping in the shade etc, yawn, etc, by various official doom mongerers. For gawds sake, just let people enjoy it, we’ve had to wait long enough!
Mind you, there has been a slight change – the wind got up yesterday and has continued throughout the night – should make taking the awning down interesting. I’ll let you know.
So, it’s the usual clear up today, ready for an early start in the morning. It should only be a three hour or so drive to the next site, in north Devon, but with the rest of the schools now broken up, the roads are likely to be busy. Hopefully there will be a layby near the site that we can pull up in until our pitch is ready.
Right, so what’s been happening? Well, not a great deal to be honest. Thursday morning we returned to Porthcurno; to the Telegraph Museum. The focal point of communications with the British Empire for many years there are now interactive displays and equipment to view as well as an informative talk by an ex telegrapher. Most of the museum is housed in an old bunker style WW2 fortress built to protect the (at the time) largest and busiest telegraph and cable station in the world.
There is an escape hatch – a dark and damp stairwell that takes you up to the roof through foot thick blast proof doors. I trudged up to get a view from the top.
Ironically for a place that played such a huge part in Britain’s communication, I couldn’t get a signal on my mobile, but, whilst at the top it did bleep to tell my I had a voice message. Hoping that it would the call from the solicitor we had been waiting for we finished our tour and drove off, waiting for the bars on the ‘phone to spring in to life.
Sadly it wasn’t. It was my favourite estate agent (?) advising that assurances given just a week ago were, basically, something that sounds very similar to row locks.
We’d stopped at another tiny bay – accessed by an equally tiny road – for a few pictures, but decided to head back to the site to consider our options.
Having phoned both solicitor and agent and issued ultimatums, followed up later by email, we chilled out for the rest of the day, listening to the cricket.
Friday, and a quick excursion to Redruth up the A30. Not anything obvious here for the casual tourist but we did procure some bits and bobs that we had been meaning to pick up, virtually since we got here. We drove back a different way, passing through Carnkie on the way back. The number of old brick chimneys tell you that this was once a big mining area in days gone by.
The rest of the day was pretty lazy, enjoying the sun and the cricket, well most of it. An email appeared mid afternoon from my solicitor with an assurance (yeah, another one) from the buyers solicitor that contracts will be exchanged on Tuesday – which conveniently was our deadline. I’ll believe it when it happens and not before!
So, that’s it. Your up to date. It’s been wonderful here, a beautiful site in a beautiful location and very easy to find. Cornwall is wonderful – we’ve barely scratched the surface but the coastline, little coves and harbour villages and towns are wonderful. Get yourselves down here but If you can make it outside of the school holidays, do so. It’s been fine but one can only imagine how busy it will get in the next couple of weeks.
Right, look out for Devon Delights next week, See ya!