Where the sun shines brightly?

Well, we're back, and rather sooner than planned. The journey down was as expected and we got the tent put up in fine weather, which was lovely. So we took a little evening stroll down to the beach local to the campsite so Beattie could stretch her legs. The beaches down there are wonderfully dog-friendly, which makes a pleasant change.

Next day we got a couple of caches under our belt to break ourselves in for what we planned would be a mighty effort. The first required a fair amount of pushing and shoving and squeezing to retrieve ... but only minimal DNA was left behind on the thorns, so that was all right.

The Cornish have a different idea of what 'hedge' means - an awful lot of stone is involved.
Then it was back to the tent for a rest. Honestly, you'd have thought that for two people and a dog that two chairs, a double airbed and a dogbed would be fine, wouldn't you? Well that's wrong. You need spaces for three, because obviously Beattie isn't a dog, but she kindly allowed me to sit on her chair sometimes
and was willing to let me share the bed. Ned and I both fell off several times each night when she turned over or stretched.
Next day was fine and not too blowy, so we went caching in Boscastle. Guess where the cache is in this picture?
Some of the houses there are obviously only suitable for thin people with flat-pack furniture. This doorway is regular-sized, but the doors most definitely aren't!
Boscastle is still having reconstruction work done after the flood of 2004 but it's very much a thriving village again, which is good to see. We first went there in 2003 and I fell in love with this 14th-century building
which was totally washed away in the disaster. In the picture you can see the end of the building behind. The owner managed to salvage much of the stone when they cleared the harbour of cars, trees and assorted rubble and has rebuilt it. Sadly it's lost a lot of its charm.
A short drive down the narrowest lanes imaginable, where the car was scraping the undergrowth on both sides at once, and the grass growing in the middle of the road needed mowing, got us another couple of caches. Then the weather closed in.

And stayed closed in. The gales blew, the rain lashed down across, the tent rocked madly in the powerful gusts. And the forecast was for more to come. After a wakeful night waiting for the sound of ripping fabric as the tent was buffetted from side to side and groaned like a ship foundering on the rocks we decided discretion was the better part of valour and disappointedly packed up and came home. It was a shame because we'd been so looking forward to the break but we'd have been too afraid to leave the tent to visit anywhere in case the tent left as well!

Maybe we'll go back to finish the holiday in September - hopefully not coinciding with the equinoctial gales!

PS. It appears from the TV news that Boscastle has today been hit by a similar, though thankfully smaller, inundation. Perhaps we'd better not go back there ever ever again.