Thursday 26th April: Weather: 9°C to 12°C: Sunny and windy all day
Newquay: 5k walk: Around Newquay town
Accommodation: John’s House Pentire Cres Newquay
Cornish Past for lunch
Seagulls in UK are ginormous
Crammed in, Susie Cooper and Jan
Celebration drinks Lewinnick Lodge
Views to Padstow Light House
John and Jan Lewinnick Lodge
Jan and Matthew
Matthew’s Mazda for European trek
Highlight was getting together with family at the Lewinnick Lodge at the end of the Pentire peninsular in Newquay Cornwall for a few Cornish beers with a magnificent view over Newquay’s beaches all the way back past the Padstow Lighthouse.
A slow start to the day with lots of washing and sorting after breakfast. After unpacking our back packs and opening our box of clothes and stuff posted from Taunton, we spent the morning washing, hanging and re-arranging clothes to be re-packed for either the second leg of our South West Coast Path walk from Newquay to Falmouth or in our duffel bag ready for John and Susie to bring to Truro when they meet us at the end of the walk.
Morning tea of coffee and real cream and still more sorting before a leisurely walk downtown Newquay through all it’s junk shops and pasty bakeries, each claiming to make the world’s best pasties. We eventually succumb to the hype and buy a pasty from Lyn’ns Pasty Parlour and it was hot and beautiful - that’s now 2 great pasties and 2 duds. There’s huge seagulls everywhere and people go to enormous lengths to stop them perching on houses, but that doesn’t stop then sitting on car rooftops making scratches and mess.
Back to Pentire to warm up beside the fire before all six of us (me, Ian, John, Susie, Matthew and Cooper the Rhodesian Ridgeback) cram into a tiny Fiat and head off to Lewinnick Lodge, a hotel 2k down the road and perched on the Pentire Headland overlooking the beaches all the way to the Padstow Lighthouse. Inside, it’s warm and so are the beers but it’s such a lovely family get together it doesn’t matter.
Back at the house, Susie has prepared a magnificent meal of chicken and vegetables for dinner, which we have sitting at the antique dining table with such a lovely peaceful view of their garden. John Nd Susie had bought the house almost 30 years ago and had rented it out while they returned to live in Australia for 18 years. Returning to their family home in the UK is better than a holiday, and they seem to have picked up where they left off.