Cornwall 2007 - Monday 9th July 2007

Woke up a couple of times in the night to the sound of yet more rain hitting the tent. These showers were quite heavy though not long lived.

When i was finally able to drag myself out of bed (mostly thanks to the ubiquitous mug of tea!) it was lovely and sunny. We headed off to the shower block, me complete with another mug of tea. After a refreshing shower, when i came to leave the shower block, i found that it was absolutely hammering down with rain. A few of us waited in the entrance to the block for the downpour to pass, and once it had it brightened up again.

Today we decided to head into Truro. It was an easy journey and fairly quick to get there too. We parked in the "viaduct" car park, which, amazingly, is a car park in the shadow of a viaduct! It was a short walk into the city centre from there. Sally bought herself a book and a bag at a charity shop, and we also bought some fold-up shopping bags in a gift shop as presents. I got a new sun hat at Marks & Spencer.We wondered around the city for a couple of hours or so. There were some nice shops, but have to say that there were too many of the "usual suspects" in the shape of the big chains for my liking - i suppose it is one of the major shopping places in Cornwall though, so it is hardly surprising that so many of the multiples want a presence there. Some of the independent shops were excellent, including a jewellers that had a huge range of Rolex watches in the window including one of those hideous tiger effect Cosmographs. We did treat ourselves to an apple corer/slicer from Lakeland Plastics, so that was a pleasing multiple shopping experience.

 Truro Cathedral.

It is our last full day here today. We are going to start "breaking camp" tonight as much as we can to save some time in the morning. Salad baps for dinner (we had jacket spuds while in Truro for lunch), and are basically finishing bits and pieces of food off where we can.

After we washed up, Sally cleaned the cookers and "kitchen" down and we packed them away - one less thing to do in the morning. Quite a few showers this evening, and windy again. Hope it stops before we get up in the morning - it always seems to rain while we are packing the tent away, and it is a real pain as our garden isn't big enough to put the tent back up in to dry out when we get home.

Sally had a slight mug of tea mishap in the bedroom this afternoon, which meant that the towels got wet mopping it up. They still haven't dried out and it is almost bed time. It could be entertaining in the morning if they haven't dried overnight.

Just got back from the toilet block, and despite the noise of the rain on the tent, it isn't actually raining that hard, it's the wind battering it against the tent that makes it sound worse than it really is. It is rather chilly outside though. Glad of the snuggly sleeping bag.