Boscastle

Boscastle is a bustling little village on the north Cornish coast between Tintagel and Bude.   In August 2004, Boscastle was hit by a flood which caused massive damage - 75 cars, 5 caravans, 6 buildings and several boats were washed into the sea and approximately 100 homes and businesses were destroyed.  150 people were rescued from roofs of buildings, cars and clinging to trees by Sea King helicopters, and, amazingly, no major injuries or loss of life were reported.   It seems unbelieveable now - August would have been the height of the summer holiday season.

It seems pretty unlikely now anyway, as you wander through the lanes and down to the harbour - it all seems very picturesque and chocolate-boxey.  So much work has obviously been done to get the village looking as normal as possible.

Boscastle also has one of the few establishments where we could get gluten free wares - one of the cafes sells gluten free scones so we could take some back to the cottage for Amanda to have a cream tea later in the week.   And they sell the best Cornish pasties ever - just the thing, given the weather we were experiencing!

A Muddy Crackington Haven Walk

On my first full day (Amanda and Shannon's third) in Cornwall, we decided to go for a walk.  Shannon had bought some walk maps in the Tourist Info office so, after much deliberation, we chose a walk and set off.

The walk started in Crackington Haven and followed the Ludon river - more a stream really - through woodland.

The colours were beautiful and the woodland was carpeted in leaves from the trees.  Finn had a lovely paddle in the stream of course.  It was really warm and we were all overheating a bit anyway, but that escalated hugely at the hill that we had to climb to avoid all the mud.  It took ages to get up the hill, which is why there are no photos until we got to the top!   Once we'd got to the top of the hill, we spent quite a considerable time larking about and getting our breath - crikey!  

I love this photo!  This is us trying to keep our eyes open against the wind!

At the top of the hill, the path joined the coast road and we followed this lane down to begin with until we could get out on to the coast path.

We all fell in love with this house but Shannon said she saw it first, so it's her's.

And this is her looking daggers at me because I'd got my eye on it too!  Just past this gate, we got out on to the coast path proper which would take us back to the beach at Crackington Haven.

Amanda celebrating that we could see the tea rooms!

Love this!

Finn helping Shannon to take some photos.

Dogs are allowed in the tea rooms so it would have been rude not to go in - we were pretty cold again by this time so abandoned all thoughts of sandwiches and cake and went straight for the pea and ham soup - yum!  (And in fact, it was so good that we went back for more later in the holiday.)