Paul’s blog

Évi and I went for another walk from the book ‘Walking in Buckinghamsire’. We started our walk on the outskirts of Princes Risborough, with our walk taking us to the village of Bledlow. Here we found a hidden garden called ‘The Lyde Garden’ which proved to be a find, and one we would have walked past if the book did not mention it was there.

Next we made our way to the ‘Lions of Bledlow’ pub where we treated ourselves to a pub lunch before completed our walk. Some photos from the walk are on my flickr photo album.

Off for another walk today, hopefully the weather holds out. We plan to have a pub lunch en-route in Bledlow. Today the book cannot fail as I have the whole route marked out in pencil on the ordinance survey map, the problem with the book is that it occassionally gets its rights and lefts mixed up!

I have just upgraded my blog from WP1.5 to WP1.5.1. Most of it has gone pretty smoothly, but alas I am having problems with my RSS feed. Looked at the WP support form which states posting a new post may cure the problem, hence this post. Fingers-crossed.

Well we are now back from our holiday in Goa and we had a really great time. We stayed at the Colonia Santa Maria, or CSM as it’s know, which we found to be quite basic but in an excellent location. The people there were very friendly and always willing to help.

We went on a few trips. One to Old Goa, the former Portuguese capital before it had to be abandoned due to Cholera outbreaks. Another to Cola beach, South Goa where we stayed in Arabian style tents on an isolated beach. We also spent time riding and washing elephants, I also had an elephant shower which was nice.

A great time was had by all. I will be writing more on our holiday at a later date meanwhile if you visit my flickr account you will find some photographs. Enjoy!

Excursion - Indian retreat
Excursion - Capital cruise
Hotel Colonia Santa Maria - CSM
Excursion - Back to nature

We woke up late, my alarm clock decided this would be the day it would give up the ghost. Luckily I awoke at 5:45 wondering why it was getting light. It was not a good start to our Easter weekend jaunt, we wanted to get up earlier to miss the expected traffic, and so we expected the worst. As we travelled down to Cornwall we expected to be confronted by heavy traffic around the next corner, but it never occurred. The traffic was slightly heavy past Bristol and there was a bit of a queue at the Tamar Bridge, but besides that it was plain sailing (well driving anyway!). We got to our Bed and Breakfast accommodation just before 11; we had a nice cup of tea (well I am English), unpacked and started our sightseeing frenzy.

We first drove down to Fowey, which was a wonderfully quaint small town on the coast. Évi loved to explore all the narrow back lanes and alleys, and we walked a fair distance as far as St. Catherine’s castle. We next went to Mevagissey, here we found a lovely small fishing village. Again we walked everywhere we could. It was here I had my first ‘proper’ Cornish pasty - which was nice. As it was the first day we were pretty tired so we finished the day at a local Chinese restaurant before retiring to our beds.

On Saturday we left early to miss the expected big crowds and traffic at the Eden project. We hoped for the best, as our accommodation was only a mile and a half from the Eden project. Luck was on our side as we were one of the first to arrive, and could look around without hundreds of other visitors in our way. Bliss. We spent just over 3 hours there, as the place got more and more crowded. Next we decided to visit a National Trust property but I had left the directions at our B and B. No problems as this was less than 2 miles away, but silly me turned the wrong way and we ended up further and further away. Still we decided to head towards Bodmin, after a little while we spotted the familiar brown National Trust road signs for Lanhydrock and arrived there 15 minutes later. We found Lanhydrock to be a magnificent late Victorian country house, with over 50 rooms to explore. Our next port of call was the small village of Charlestown, which was worth an hours stay. Next we headed down the cost to Gorran Haven before moving downwards to Dodman point.

Sunday we went to Truro to find it closed! not surprising being it was Easter Sunday. I wanted to see the Cathedral but its front facade was covered on scaffolding and a protective cover so we soon left. Next we planned to go to the National Trust property at Trelissick but I saw in our NT handbook that parking was £3 and we had no cash thanks to Barclay bank cash machines not working in the South - so we headed down to Falmouth and explored the English Heritage property Pendennis Castle instead. This was worth the visit. Next we headed to Porthleven, stopping at cash machines on the way hoping Barclays had resolved their cash point problems. We were now desperate for cash, so I came up with the idea of using my Barclaycard to get money out and we would pay this off ASAP via the Internet when we got back. If Barclaycard charges us a fee for this I will kick up a fuss, as it was Barclays inaptitude that we had to withdraw money this way. I will wait and see…

Porthleven was nice enough but we had our fill with quaint Cornish fishing villages at this stage so we decided to visit St Michael’s Mount.
It was a long drive but worth every inch travelled. We arrived around 2:30 in the afternoon and walked across the causeway just before the tide covered our steps. It was a steep walk to the top but worth every step, the views were breathtaking. We had to get the boat back to shore where we had a quick look around Marazion before returning to our Cornish base.

We returned to High Wycombe on Monday, but not before visiting England’s smallest city, Wells. We looked around the Bishop’s palace and Gardens before moving onto the Cathedral.

Overall it was a great weekend although very tiring due to the amount of walking and travelling we got up to.