Jon Seah on June 9th, 2009

The UK can be a really beautiful place when it wants to be. I’ve been here a little over a year now and the weather has been mostly doom and gloom but occassonally you get those sunny days. Cornwall is one of those places which is extremely beautful when it’s sunny. As a last minute thing, I decided to drive up to the Cornwall region for the May bank holiday.

I was so under prepared for this trip it was not funny… ok maybe it is… The car was booked the night before and accommodation hadn’t been sorted out. I didn’t even know where Cornwall was! I thought it was going to be a 2 hour drive until I punched it into google maps and it said 433km!!! All I knew was to pick up the car after work and start driving the next morning following tomtom to the dot.

Picking up the car was an ordeal itself. I haven’t driven a manual car for almost 10 years so you can imagine the pain there. All the way from Heathrow to Barons Court… I think every stop I had, I pretty much stalled the damn thing. I understood the mechanics of it but in practice not so much. Eventually my memories and practices came back to me the next morning! So my road trip started and oh boy it was a long drive but it was fun doing 90-100mph (145-160 kph) on the motorway! :)

After 5 hours when I eventually got there, I needed to fill up the fuel. From memory I had requested a diesel car so I assumed it was diesel. There was no indication of the type of fuel except the fact that the nozzle didn’t fit. Having never driven a diesel I just thought it was weird but continued pumping anyway. The car started alright but after 5 meters it clonked out like it ran out of fuel (trust me, I know how that feels). You can’t imagine the panic that went through my mind. The sense that Hertz was going to charge me a bomb to fix the damn vehicle and having to be stuck in Cornwall until Tuesday… Grrr!!! But never fear, I sucked my pride, embarrassment and fears and called hertz. Surprisingly enough they gave me a free tow but no replacement car. Luckily the driver of the emergency vehicle knew a dodgy mechanic that could drain the car and for the cheap. Woohoo!! No hefty bill

So there I was in Newquay, Cornwall after 2 hours at a pub waiting for my car to drain, I met up with a friend to have a look around the area. Newquay reminded me so much of freo and at times Scarborough beach… It was full of derros and bogans!! I thought I left Perth to get away from them but no looks like this country has them too, though they call them chavs.

As I didn’t have accommodation, I slept in my car after a night out on the piss. Oh it was not a comfortable night at all. It was cramp and worst of all it was cold! Newquay is known for hosting Stag and Hen nights so you can imagine the type of people there. I actually drove out of Newquay cos it was so loud damn loud at 4am.

So there, that was my trip down in Cornwall… I’d highly recommend staying well away from Newquay and stay in B&Bs in Cornwall instead. Go and visit Tintagel Castle aka King Arthur’s Castle, Minac Theatre and possibly the Eden Project. I reckon I had a few good shots of the area but wished I did a little more.

_MG_0599 _MG_0617 _MG_0621 _MG_0634 _MG_0635 _MG_0637 _MG_0645 _MG_0661 _MG_0663 _MG_0664 _MG_0665 _MG_0668 _MG_0681 _MG_0682 _MG_0683 _MG_0686 _MG_0693 _MG_0696 _MG_0698 _MG_0708 _MG_0723 _MG_0753

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Tags: ,

Leave a Reply