My favorite weekend by far (so far) is this one.
March 20-22, Lauren, Angela and I went to Devon and Cornwall.
Devon and Cornwall are two areas of England in the southwest. Here is a picture of England. Devon and Cornwall are pink. I have put in the dots and words to show you about where bath, London, and Devon and Cornwall are:
And here is a map of the cities you will be hearing (reading) about soon.
So. Our weekend started like this. Friday morning, I woke up early and packed. Lauren woke up early and got picked up at 9 am by Enterprise. YES. WE RENTED A CAR IN ENGLAND.
She called me at 9:30 or so and says, “We can have either a hatchback, or a convertible..”
Me “Well, a convertible would be fun”
Lauren “Yes. It’s decided”
We got a convertible.
Lauren came and picked me up. It was quite the adventure driving into town. We did come into contact with some curbs.. a left side window might have hit something..
With all the morning errands we had to run, we did not end up leaving Bath until noon.
One of the important errands was of course buying road snacks:
Lauren and I met Angela in town, and we were ready to go.
As you can see.. we are driving on the LEFT SIDE. When I first got to England, this was quite scary to see. I’d be in someone’s car or on a bus.. and turns would throw me off, because I was used to that RIGHT turns are the small easy ones, LEFT are the big ones. Here, a right turn is the big one crossing the intersection. Also, I’d be in a car.. going.. and on a windy street, someone would turn up from around the bend.. and I would think they are heading right at me, being on the right side from my view…
Anyway, my point is.. we had all gotten used to this by now. Driving on the left side was probably weird for Lauren, and having to shift with her left hand was weird.. but the hardest thing about driving in England was neither of those.
It is driving through those crazy THIN streets. They have these parts where there is only space for one car, and they have rules as to who has the right of way and who has to pull over and wait for the cars to pass. The driver must look far ahead on the street in order to not get stuck. From watching others drive, we didn’t even realize how thin these streets really are. This weekend, we learned. Lauren always drove, since the car was under her name, and I was always in the passenger seat. This was pretty funny, because every time a car would go by us, it would come really close, and Lauren would pull towards the curb, which would freak me out… a lot.. I kept going, “curb! curb!” And Lauren and Angela would laugh at me. We definitely hit more than one curb.. and luckily we had one of those side windows that folds when it gets hit, because it definitely went in once.. and I had to open my window and fix it.
As much as we made fun of her, we were so lucky to have Betty. Betty was our GPS system. (They talk.. so I say that you have to name them, and call them by name). Anyway, Betty would get confused at times, but my goodness, I have no idea how we would have survived without her. Thank you BETTY.
Here are pictures of us driving down.
Our first stop was in a town called Exmouth. Angela was born in Exmouth, Australia, and wanted to see the place her birthplace was named after. Exmouth was cute. We didn’t spend much time there, just walked around for an hour. We finally thought we found Mexican food (we’ve been searching forever) but no luck. They were not open. (They never are.. they always tease us.. and when we come closer, they are shut down for good, or only open for dinner, but never open when we need them.)
Then, we decided to head to Newquay, our main destination. We decided to drive through Dartmoor National Park. Was this a good idea? I don’t know. It was definitely interesting. We drove through our new perspective of what THIN streets are. We were scared to drive through as ONE car.. hoping that a second would not show up.
We saw a pheasant on the road. Fun random fact.
We got to Newquay somewhat late. We found a nice little B&B, and Nathan, the guy who’s family owned it, gave us a very nice room, with a great view.
We hung out in our room for a while, then Nathan took Angela and I out to a bar. Lauren had to stay home and do work L
We woke up Saturday morning with ideas of what we needed done. We knew we all had a paper due the following morning at noon, so we had to find time to do that. We had been planning since the beginning that St. Ives was a place we had to see, so we were planning on making it there. The B&B needed to know if we were staying another night or not and we needed to make a decision. We originally thought we’d spend the second night in St. Ives, but we thought, we had found a great place.. Why not make a half-day trip of St. Ives, and come back here. So we paid for another night.
After breakfast, Nathan decided to show us Newquay, and of course, we welcomed a local showing us around.
Newquay is SO cute. I LOVED it there. It was a mini Santa Cruz. It was a little surfer town. Even in March, people were walking around in board shorts and flip-flops.
We got SOO lucky with the weather. We could NOT have picked a more perfect weekend to go. It was cold, as expected in March in England, but it was so sunny the whole weekend. It was the best weather we’ve seen through our whole stay so far. We even drove with the top down!
Anyway, Nathan showed us his favorite views.
This is where the movie, “The Witches” was filmed!! (I don’t really remember the movie.. but I loved that book!!)
Walking around this cliff area, we noticed how amazing the grass is. We decided to sit/lay down in it for a minute. As soon as we sat down.. this minute turned into an hour or so. Maybe more? I have no idea how long we laid in the grass. All I know was that it was the most relaxing thing in the world.
And that was SO needed. This is the very reason why I said this was my favorite weekend. It was so relaxing and so free. We never had to worry about being anywhere on time. We didn’t have to worry about missing a train. We had our car that would take us anywhere we wanted, whenever we wanted. We had not even booked a place to stay ahead of time. We wanted to just get there and pick something. No attachments.
After lying on the grass, it was 2 or 3 pm. This was when we decided that St. Ives had to be scratched from our list. Although, I had really wanted to go to St. Ives (even before I got to England), this freedom of being able to be flexible and change our plans on impulse was so relaxing, (peaceful, stress-free), that I didn’t care that we had to cancel St. Ives.
These are our ‘amazing grass’ pictures:
Lauren braided the grass
Nathan passed out in the grass
Then we checked out the beach. It was cold, but really pretty,
Video of the English kids, trying to swim in cold water while Nathan is telling us about how tourism is terrible for his surfing
Kids in cold water & Nathan tells of how tourists ruin his surf
So, we had to go write our essays. We went back home and spent a few hours doing that.
This is Angela writing her essay under covers
Angela writing her essay under covers
At night, we wanted to go out, but were all in a mellow mood from our essay writing, (and my nap that happens often when I have to do hw).
So we decided to hang out at home. We drank the local cider that we had bought earlier that day, and ordered Chinese. It was a good night of hanging out and talking.
Lauren and I got giant eggrolls
Sunday morning we got up pretty early. By 9:30 we were packed up, had our breakfast, and went to an Internet café across the street. We had tea and finished our essays, which were due at noon. We all finished at around the same time, 11:30.
Then, that’s it. We headed home. We stopped in a little town called Launceston on the way. Being Sunday, everything was closed, so our stop didn’t last long.
A couple pics from Launceston:
We got home at a good time, 6 maybe..
Overall, this weekend was SO fun! It definitely needed to be done. After the stress of midterms, we really needed this.
With no schedule, just get up and go where ever and when ever we wanted, even with an essay we had to write, my stress vanished. It was so relaxing to just be flexible and let go of previous plans for a nice lay down. Newquay was so beautiful.
My favorite town in England.
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