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Wandering the World

Stories and tips from around the world.

Devon Day 5

Newquay

I started the day with my second run of the week – a short run of just over 3 miles at a slow pace around the nearby area. This time I decided to try a different route and this one turned out to be quite a hilly one – for just over 1 mile I was running up hill, but it did of course mean I had to run down hill just as far afterwards.

After my run we took our time before heading out, and when we did we first needed to stop by the shops. Eventually though we were on the road and heading south into Cornwall for the first time this week – something I thought we’d be doing more regularly. Our intended destination was Newquay, an approximate sixty miles away, with the intention of stopping by Tintagel and Bude on the way back. This depended upon how long we’d stay in each place, and how long it’d take to travel there as the roads were quite a mix along the way.

As we arrived in Newquay it had just turned 12:00 so we briefly had a look around and then had lunch before going down onto what was the main surfing beach where all the schools are located. The beach is a pretty nice one and is quite large – it seems the tide goes out quite a long way and leaves rather large pools of water scattered across the beach.

What I didn’t expect to see though was on the adjacent cliff there is the Headland Hotel – the hotel that was used as the filming location for “The Witches”, a film based on Roald Dahl’s book of the same name. In the book though the hotel they stay at is supposed to be in Bournemouth. As I was taking photographs of this hotel we then saw a large aircraft fly overhead, possibly some sort of military one.

Once we’d finished spending time of the beach we started our journey back, and towards the town of Tintagel. When we got there we parked up, but soon found that it was quite a long walk to the castle – more than my sister could manage with her crutches. It was an incredible shame, but it meant we couldn’t really go to the cliffside to see the castle as I’d hoped. Instead we went to a tea room and sat with a cup of tea for a while instead.

By the time we left Tintagel it was getting quite late, but along the way from there to Bude we stopped by two villages – Weeks St. Mary and Whitstone. Both of these we were visiting to look in church graveyards for gravestones of ancestors on the family tree. The intention was that we could get photos of the stones, and if we were lucky find additional relatives we didn’t know of so we could extend the tree back further.

Having visited the graveyards it didn’t really leave us much time for visiting Bude, so as we passed through we picked up some food and carried on back to the holiday home. It was only 25 miles from Bideford so it was always an option to return there on another day. However that never came to pass as the next day we headed home, a few days earlier than intended meaning we wouldn’t get to see the Eden Project as we’d hoped either.

Tags: england europe travel trips

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© David G. Paul