Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Cornwall, dude.
Saturday October 16 at 9 a.m. I was at Bristol Temple Meads station to meet Grash's train from London. Outside the station we found her housemate Mal, and Mal's friend Guy. And Guy's falling apart car: a Volvo he got last spring in exchange for a bottle of whisky. It runs okay, but the rear passenger door only opens about 10 cm, and you can't open the front passenger-side door without it falling partly off the hinges. This was demonstrated several times Saturday and Sunday, on our way to, around, and from Cornwall.
Over the course of the previous week Grash had convinced me to come surfing in Wales. But Mal had checked the weather or surf or tide report, and we didn't have any accommodation booked in Wales. She convinced us the waves would be better in Cornwall. So off we headed to Cornwall, after stopping at the Services near Portishead to get breakfast and travel sweets.
Guy drove, Mal and Grash slept when they weren't navigating, and I looked at the pretty green hills and rain and windfarms. By 1:30 we were in St. Agnes, just west of Newquay on the northern Cornish coast. We drove down to the local beach, hopped out of the car, got rained on, and discovered the rental shop on the beach wasn't renting. But we'd passed a surf shop in Peterville (1 minute away by car, less than 5 minutes walk -- I love how in small towns walking two minutes up or down a hill gets you to a different neighbourhood or village), so we headed back there.
The woman running the surf shop was very laid-back and friendly and chill, much like everyone else we met in St. Agnes. She assured Grash and I she'd find some sort of wetsuit to rent us, even though in the off season they mostly just rent boards, and then she helped Mal shop for a winter wetsuit while Guy, Grash and I figured out where we'd be sleeping. There'd been talk of "the dreaded camping" but, due to the rain and cold wind, Grash and I made a bilateral decision that we'd be staying in a B&B. Guy and Mal jumped on the B&B bandwagon.
We walked up to St. Agnes the long way around, and a very helpful local man gave us directions to the St. Agnes tourist information office/video store. The woman there was super helpful, pulling out her binder of B&Bs and then filtering on which ones might meet our "we're all friends, no couples, but Mal and Guy can share a room and Grash and I will share a double bed if there's no twins available" requirements. The third place she called had two rooms, one double and one with two twins, and it was just across the square and around the corner.* For £25 each for the night, we were very comfortably sorted. Angus and Julie were just as helpful and friendly as the surf shop and video store women. As Angus showed us the rooms, he even offered the use of the 9 foot surfboard he had hanging in the entrance hall.
Back at the surf shop, we learned that Mal wanted to check another shop 10 minutes' drive away that might have a suit that fit better. Guy, wanting to get in the water ASAP, resisted but Mal's will to power is strong. While they went to the other shop, Grash and I got respectively fitted with a men's winter wetsuit and an XL Junior summer suit, with a rash vest under it for insulation. When Mal and Guy and Mal's new wetsuit, gloves and boots got back, our bags were up the hill in our room at the B&B and we'd "negotiated" a great deal of £20 for the wetsuit hire. In fact, the guy at the surf shop talked himself down: "So you want the two suits until tomorrow afternoon... that'll be £25... or £20 is reasonable... and you want three boards, yeah, how's 20 quid for the lot?"
The 9 foot surfboard from the B&B was too long for the Volvo so back at the beach, once we'd all changed, I chose to body surf while the other three attached the board leashes to their ankles. My hands and feet were starting to be painfully cold after walking across the wet, windy beach. Wading into the ocean seemed like a profoundly bad idea. It truly was warmer in the water, the wetsuit kept the rest of me reasonably warm, my swimcap kept the wind mostly out of my ears, and the swells were great -- strong enough that a few surprised me and gave me a noseful of salt water. I love the ocean.
After I'd jumped waves for awhile Guy offered me his board. Grash gave me a few tips. I was reluctant, but once I'd caught a wave I was hooked. I thought about trying to stand up, but the waves were so frequent that that just seemed too ambitious. We traded off who was surfboard-less until we were all properly exhausted from almost two hours in the water.
On the way to the beach Mal and I had carried a surfboard along the road, but now we were all freezing and walking uphill was unappealing. I figured out a configuration by which all three boards could fit in the car. The surfboards took up the entire left half of the Volvo, so Guy shuttled us back to the B&B in two loads, me first because I was shivering most. I got into the shower in the ensuite as quickly as I good, and it took at least five minutes in the hot water for my hands and feet to stop feeling they were burning. After Grash showered, we devoured the rest of our travel snacks and started reading on the bed. The Economist article about McDonald's was good, but not good enough to keep me awake. At seven o'clock I woke up, ravenous. As soon as Grash woke up, she was starving too, as were Mal and Guy who'd also conked out in their room.
On Angus and Julie's recommendation we walked down the hill to the Tap House, a bistro/bar next to the surf shop. During the long wait between our shared nachos and our mains, Mal wondered whether the surfboards on the walls were actual boards, since that would be rather expensive. We finished up around 9:30. Guy and I tried to convince the other two that they weren't too knackered to check out the biker bar back towards the beach, but Grash refused: "I know where I'm not wanted." So back to the B&B, and Wilde with Stephen Frye and Jude Law on TV.
I slept very soundly, and was up just in time for delicious breakfast (yogurt, grapefruit, toast, poached eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, juice, tea) at nine. Julie and Angus told how they'd ended up in Cornwall as they fed us. By ten we were packing our stuff. Mal, Grash and I managed to squeeze ourselves into the 1.5-seat-wide space in the back seat for the short ride to Trevaunance Cove. But the tide was out, which made it no good for surfing. On the advice of a local guy who was also checking out the waves, we squeezed ourselves back in the car for an it-felt-much-longer-at-the-time 7 minute drive to Porthtowan beach, with a quick stop at a lookout.
I took a picture there, and really, the rest of the day is best summed up photographically. We surfed for another two hours, I still didn't attempt to stand up but caught a bunch of waves and enjoyed the hell out of being in the ocean. Whenever the sun came through the clouds (quite frequently), the surf was icily, creamily, strikingly white against the dark greenish blue water. Post-surfing, we changed under our towels by the car (Mal: "I love getting naked in carparks"). Mal and Guy made some pot noodles while Grash and I looked unsuccessfully for chips, settling for Cornish pasties that were thoroughly satisfying consumed as they were on a dune looking at the ocean with wind blowing sand at us. Then it was back to the surf shop to return everything, back to the B&B to pick up our bags, up to the motorway and back to Bristol where we got caught in a downpour looking for a pub but the sun cut through the rain photogenically and there was a lovely sunset.
Speaking of pictures, I uploaded ones from my trip to France the weekend before my trip to Cornwall, and am particularly pleased with these three:
*Julie & Angus's B&B, 8 Churchtown, 01872 552716. Highly recommended.
