Blogs from Newquay, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, Europe

Given the success of our camping trip to Pembrokeshire, Wales last August Bank holiday, we thought we'd try it again! This time we decided on Cornwall. ...Though we did learn slightly from last time and booked us into a camp ground a few months earlier!! On arrival, for some reason once again we were shown to our campsite down the back away from other campers by a friendly guy on a quad bike. We were pleased to be away from the rest and hoped we'd be able to repeat our open fire trick from Wales (having specially brought portable BBQs with us from London!), carefully placing our tents and car in a semi circle with the surrounding bush as background. A drive into nearby Newquay meant we could stock up on supplies.... and a night of ... read more

It's a place you either love or hate. There's been a lot of negative publicity surrounding Newquay in recent months. Intoxicated teenagers passed out in street gutters. Violence from binge-drinking stag parties. Locals awakening to pavements covered in vomit and fast food, both of which are happily gobbled up by bullish, intimidating seagulls. This certainly isn't the best advert for Cornish tourism. For me though Newquay, the self-proclaimed surfing capital of Britain, holds plenty of good memories and you can't help but think much of the negative publicity has been somewhat sensationalised. Many of the current 'problems' have been happening for years and although I agree some small pockets of behaviour could be classed as anti-sociable, without these sub-groups of tourists, unemployment and economic hardships in the area would be much higher. Newquay today... read more

Well were to begin. After our outing to Bath and Stone Henge, we had to prepare ourselves for Europe’s largest street festival. The Notting Hill Carnival was unreal! The initial Caribbean parade was wicked; thousands of brightly colored costumes dancing along the street and on various different floats. After watching and jumping in for a bit of dancing, we made our way to dance up on the DJ’s booth. Haha, yup somehow Lex got tickets to dance up on stage in front of at least a thousand people with one of the main DJ’s at the festive - nuts! Once we had partied ourselves out, we decided to explore the Cornwall area (Southwest edge of England). It turns out the ‘carnival’ followed us to Newquay too. While enjoying a night out, Megs found herself lecturing Smurfs ... read more

Taking a gamble with the weather and a random Kiwi, I took some time out for what worked out to be a week full of beach hopping, partying and camping!! It all started when I picked Richie up from the airport and brought him back to the lovely Garden of England. We spent the next couple days checking out some of the local Kentish taverns, a trip out to the beach of Whistable and headed to Canterbury for the sights and also some Barbs and Ads loving... Getting off to a wet start we set out to the south westerly coast of England, enroute stopping at Stonehenge and for some fresh strawberries! After a long old drive time totaling to 6,5 hours we arrived in the town of St Ives in Cornwall, we set up camp ... read more