Tuesday June 10, 2014

It rained during the night, but had brightened up by morning.  Again, as it is British summer time, it is starting to get light at 4:30 am.  I woke up at about 4:45 and then again at my usual time of 6:00 ish.  Out of the tent and washed up by 6:30, breakfast done and tent down by 7:45, on the road by 8:00 am.  Back into our routine of being on the road and camping.

Quite a nice ride out of Newquay to Wadebridge, although I did have a headache and not feeling 100%.  We spotted this Spitfire in this garden.

Ralf googled the info on it and it turns out that the guy built a replica Spitfire 1/1.  Recently repainted, Mr. Wallond’s ‘model’ represents a Spitfire Mk.IXC in the markings of ZF-Z of a Polish unit.  In my opinion that is taking model aircraft modeling a bit far. The garden is located adjacent to Newquay Airport, formerly RAF St. Mawgan.

We were again on an A road with lots of traffic and impatient drivers.  I am not noticing the drivers as much as Ralf as he is behind me and they have already maneuvered around him, so therefore are giving me more space.  The roads are two-lane but quite narrow.  The B roads are even narrower, but generally less traffic.

The weather was a little cool, I wore my windbreaker jacket until Wadebridge. We stopped briefly in Wadebridge to inquire about taking the Camel Trail – from Wadebridge it leads to Bodmin, which is not where we were headed.

We carried on the A39 to Camelford.  As we were leaving Wadebridge, it started to rain, then it poured and I mean really poured the rain was bouncing of the road. It was already quite a cool day (Wadebridge 11 degrees – Camelford 8 degrees!) add the cold rain and we were very cold.

We stopped at the first caravan park closest to Camelford, to inquire about staying in a caravan as they had no tent sites.  An odd thing about England, they may have sites available for caravans, but will not allow a tent to be pitched – possibly due to no shower blocks.  The other odd thing about caravan parks – they may have caravans or cabins to rent but will have a minimum stay of 3 days, and will not rent for one night even if they have availability.  Fortunately, the lady in charge was very kind and called around the area to see where we could stay.  We had very limited options.  A B&B who were not answering the phone, so we didn’t know if they had vacancies or not or the Bowood Hotel and Golf Course.

We eventually decided to break the budget and are staying at a very nice hotel at an exclusive golf course.  We turned up sopping wet, and shivering with cold, the General Manager was incredibly nice, checked us in really quickly, we had a hot shower and we very quickly turned this nice room into a laundry, with wet clothes hanging everywhere.

Bowood Park is set in 230 acres of what was the oldest deer park in the West Country.  The estate dates to the 13^th Century and is mentioned in the Doomsday Book.

Tomorrow should be nice weather.