5 September 2014 (Friday) - Tintagel and Boscastle

Yesterday I mentioned that I didn't like the Lydiard House Conference Centre hotel. Perhaps I was being harsh but I now realise where I've seen the place before. It is a carbon copy of the university halls of residence in which I stayed when doing Open University courses. And not entirely dissimilar to where Alan Partridge lived. Being on holiday I was rather hoping to stay in a hotel; not a barracks.

I don't stay in hotels much, so I might be being unfair about the place but we were promised a decent Internet connection. The one at the Lydiard House Conference Centre was shabby, to say the least. And I don't expect the dustmen to start clattering about at 5am.
We got up and went down for brekkie... Oh dear. I didn't expect the coffee cups to bear the coffee stains left by the dribbles of the last person to have used that cup. Nor did I expect to find the left over jam that said previous diner didn't want.
I couldn't get out of that place quickly enough.

We set off on the next leg of our journey. Down the M4 to a motorway service station near Bristol where we found a geocache, did a munzee and hacked a portal. Heaven !! We carried on down the motorway and saw a sign saying "Welcome to Somerset" which was confusing; isn't Bristol in Somerset? So we stopped at the next service station to get another geocache just in case. One needs to get at least one per county. And bearing that maxim in mind we also stopped at Exeter services in Devon for geocachical reasons. We had intended to eat at the Exeter services, but it was heaving with normal people; far too busy for our liking. So we contented ourselves with picking up several munzees in the car park (there were *loads*) and with only one brief hiccup in navigation we made our way to the furthest part of our road trip; Tintagel in Cornwall.
Two hundred and fifty miles from home; the furthest I've been for ten years.

We've based this road trip largely on the recommendations of friends; and we'd been told that Tintagel was particularly scenic... but there wasn't an awful lot to do there. Bearing in mind the flying visits we are making on this trip, that suited us ideally.
After nearly falling off a cliff (for geocachical reasons) we went into Tintagel Castle.
Tintagel Castle... isn't an actual castle. It's a very large rock just off the Cornish coast connected to the mainland by a bridge. We spent a couple of hours looking round the place before making our way to the gift shop where we had a traditional Cornish clotted cream tea. Very nice.

We then moved on to Boscastle which we had heard was especially pretty. It was. It's one of those places that few people have probably heard of, and the entire lot can be seen in fifteen minutes, but it is well worth a visit. The harbour appealed to me; most harbours open directly onto the sea. This one had a little river leading to the sea. I risked life and limb clambering up the cliffs to get some scenic photos of that little river. It has been asked if I would have made that scramble had there not been a virtual geocache at the top. The answer... probably not. But I am glad that I did; the views were spectacular.

We then walked into Boscastle and found the Cobweb Inn where we had a rather good piece of steak pie each washed down with some very good Cornish cider.
And then, feeling suitably replete, we drove a very short way inland to Tregatherall Farm where we are currently staying.
The bedroom is lovely, the bathroom without equal. The guest sitting room (where I am typing this) is particularly comfortable. And the wi-fi, whilst a tad slow, actually works.
I used it to put up the photos of the day. There were a lot...


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