Cornwall March 2001

From ICCC

People

• Simon "Screw you, I'm going home."
• Sam "sundays off"
• Harriet "Toothie"
• Paul "Shrubbery"
• Stella "Sandpiper"
• Harry "Brown eye" (well that names got to be good for a couple of trips yet.)
• Hugh "double back loop"
• Tom "Have my house and my food"

Trip Report

It was a dark and stormy night...

Well it was the afternoon, noone knew who was where. By evening we actually had managed to blag a minibus, grab some food, and generally faffed to the extreme. We hit the road. The long journey down to cornwall involved some interesting feminine grunts from Sam relayed over the minibus stereo, folowed by groans of some massive beast. Garth next to him? No it was actually Garths laptop. We arrived at Tom's place at 3ish? and settled down for a drink. Somehow tom managed to sleep through our banter, and by 4.30 we had wandered off to bed/sofa/floor.

The following morning Paul got up at some obscene hour. We all followed later, slowly. Breakfast was eaten. We finally hit the beach, 200 yards from Toms front door, at 12.30. Surf was up, though a bit small it seemed OK.

The wind up Hugh rigged some windsurfing kit, then wandered down the beach to find the headland sheltering the whole bay. Windsurfing was pretty futile. Meanwhile the surf was building on the rising tide. Surfing was enjoyed by all, even Garth who had avoided getting wet as long as possible by giving Tom a lift to get his forks fixed! Seals played in the surf as we seemed to piss off the boogie boarders. Probably because we had big paddles to get beyond the breakers. On the other hand none of them seemed to be getting the same kickings we were getting as the waves built more and started to dump straight onto the sand. We gave up after being humped onto the sand from 6' up several times each. Garth tried to land on Sam but apparently even Sam was agile enough to escape. We retired to Tom's gaffe for showers and beer, then Risotto with exotic bits hurled in by Stella and Hugh.We dragged ourselves away from south park, and playstation to go to the pub. Some spirited attempts to fit in with the locals included trying Rum and Shrub. A mixture that, though sweet, was very tasty. Paul seemed particularly pleased to find out how tasty the concoction was.

An impromptu pub crawl started. As we bumped into a kareoke, more beer flowed. Sleep was beckoning those who had actually paddled more than 30 mins and conversation started to Lag. Our Pub crawl had to fit in all the pubs in town though so all but Stella and Harriet battled on to the last pub (No 3) Here was pool, things livened up as Paul heroicly saved Hugh's pint from peril as tom's break went slightly wrong. A few games later it was last orders. South park was the order on return, with whisky.

Sleep seemed to take us over though some managed to fight it til later. I wouldn't know as I got in my blessed snoozing.

Next morning saw a lazy start for all, even Paul. Breakfast eaten we wandered off to check out surf around the local breaks. Monsterous waves were a bit offputting to many, after much driving we returned to the same beach as Saturday. Beautiful peeling breaks were again slowly replaced by dumping monsters, though everything was bigger all round, up to 8' or so. kickings were had all round. The Alien proving a bit short for breaking out of the waves, I experienced a double looping backwards before surfing most of the way back into the shore upsidedown. It was about then I decided to take out the sufboard so I could play chicken rather than get such a big kicking.

Seals returned, and we eventually returned to the beach, then toms bit to pack up and make our weary way home to London via a sneaky curry in some wee place.Returning to London we unpacked, though Sam deserves a medal for going home with the bus keys leaving us super happy union officials to deal with on Monday morning.