Leap Of The Faithless

Hanging out in the weirdly orange lights of Burton train station... Does anyone else get that completely insane and barely controllable urge to take an overly dramatic running leap in front of the first passing train?... No?... Guess it's just me then.

Summer Holidays

Ever since we first started seeing each other my partner and I have made it our goal to get away on holiday at least once a year, whether it be a weekend camping in the lake district or spending a week in Scotland staying with my partners grandparents. This year we decided to visit the south coast of Cornwall, Cornwall is somewhere both my partner and I have visited in the past and an area of the country we both love and feel at home in. After spending some time searching the net and doing a little research into the local area we settled on a small cottage on the outskirts of Polperro, a quaint fishing town about 15 miles south of Bodmin. We chose Polperro because of its close proximity to main roads and because, despite being a fairly popular destination, it has managed to avoid becoming too over crowded and has maintained much of its ruggedness and charm. Over the last few years overcrowding has become increasingly more important to us as my partner and I have both noticed that we no longer have the patience for even fairly small crowds of people, this has led us to seek out smaller more remote areas and to appreciate the ruggedness of places such as Cornwall and the south west coast of Scotland.

Unfortunately our journey down was cursed with, the seemingly ever present, holiday traffic and ended up taking close to 10 hours, not arriving in Polperro until around 5pm, by which point my partner and I were both thoroughly fed up and quite tired. we dropped our stuff off at the cottage and basically headed straight out and walked down into town to find the sea in an effort to wind down a little after our long journey. All I can say is the town is beautiful, set in a steep sided valley with narrow winding streets lined on either side by tiny, stone built fisherman’s cottages, eventually opening out in a small harbour full of small working fishing boats. You can literally see the history of the place as you walk through the town, nothing much has really changed here for generations and nothing really needs to, the locals have worked hard to preserve their town and have adapted well to suit the modern world.

We decided to spend our first full day in Cornwall staying fairly locally and we only really ventured out on foot to explore more of the town and to check out where was good to eat and drink. Despite Polperro actually having several restaurants we discovered that some of the best food to be had was available in the local pubs, the pick of the bunch being the Blue Peter Inn, unfortunately on our first visit it was so busy I literally couldn’t fit through the door never mind make it to the bar to order drinks. We opted for a less busy pub at the other end of town called the Crumplehorn Inn and we were far from disappointed the building was gorgeous, they had a few local ales and ciders to chose from, the staff were friendly and the food was good quality pub grub. We spent a pleasant afternoon/evening drinking and generally winding down before heading back to the cottage to get an early night.

On our second day we decided to venture further afield and drove into Looe, a larger town a few miles away from Polperro. Whilst the town itself was fairly pretty, it was so crowded that my partner and I weren’t really enjoying being there and we left after just a short stay to look at a few gifts to bring back for our family. After Looe we moved on to Cawsand and Kingsand to explore and spend some time at the beach, it was lovely and a complete contrast to our experience in Looe.

Over the next few days we slowly visited several of the local towns and villages, spending a little while exploring and just soaking up the atmosphere. We found that although Cornwall is now massively touristy there are still some places that are just far enough off the path to retain their character and offer the relaxed, chilled out atmosphere that Cornwall has become well know for.

As we became aware that the week was drawing to a close we wanted to spend the last couple of days staying local and decided to couple up two great pleasures of mine, walking and beaches. Consulting a local map we noticed a small beach, called Talland Bay just a couple of miles away from town along the coastal path, packing up a day bag with beach essentials we set off. At first it seemed like a pleasant walk along a well trodden path but what we had failed to notice was that about half a mile along the path was mile long, very steep, uphill hike. It has been a long time since I last felt my calf muscles burn like that but it was worth it when we arrived, the beach was a lovely little bay surrounded by woodland and, apart from a few surfers, was practically deserted. We spent a couple of hours on the beach before it really started to get busy, about 50 metres back from where we were sitting, set into the trees was a small car park and a cafe serving snacks and drinks, we treated ourselves to a glass of homemade lemonade and some Cornish ice cream before braving the trek back in reverse and having to re-climb the hill. Arriving back in town mid afternoon we called into a small shop selling a wide range of local beers, ciders and mead to stock up for the evening. We spent it getting pleasantly drunk on mead and cider whilst playing a couple of games of scrabble, which I lost.

Friday morning had arrived and we were acutely aware that it was our last full day before journeying back the following morning, setting out early, we headed for the village of Lansallos were my partner had read was a little known beach. Being only a few miles from Polperro and knowing it was considerably smaller we weren’t really aware of what to expect. What we found was possibly the most picturesque village either of us had ever seen, really there was just a handful of small stone built houses, a gorgeous old church and acres of farm land. After a parking up and walking for a couple of minutes we found the path down to the beach, a small woodland foot path, about a mile long, that looked more like something out of a fantasy novel than real life. When we arrived at the beach we found it was largely pebbles but got sandier as you got closer to the sea, it was set back in a truly gorgeous bay hidden by steep sided cliffs on either side. For the first hour or so we were literally the only people there and it was lovely, the sea was totally clear and I braved going topless so I could have a swim. We had been there for around 3 hours before the beach started to get anywhere near busy and it was at about this time we decided to leave and headed back to Polperro for some lunch. Earlier in the week we had decided to make another visit to the Blue Peter Inn when it would hopefully be less busy and Friday lunch time seemed perfect. Being situated right on the harbour, and having sea views out of literally every window, the Blue Peter Inn is a proper local pub, a rare breed these days, offering a good selection of cornish ales and ciders with genuinely friendly staff and a really relaxed atmosphere. The really surprising thing about the Blue Peter Inn is the food, its all good hearty, home cooked fare and quite frankly its awesome. I had a seafood platter consisting of local smoked mackerel, battered haddock chunks, Cornish crab meat, scallops and squid and my partner had battered haddock chunks with chips and bread. As the plates came out from the kitchen they looked incredible, you could clearly see that everything on them had been prepared by hand and was freshly cooked, not a frozen chip in site. I am a lover of fish and I have eaten a lot of it from many different places and this was one of the best plates of fish I’ve ever had (I think only the Magpie in Whitby actually beats it). I really can’t give this pub enough praise, I’ve never seen a place that can offer the real pub feel and experience yet still get the food so right. You so often get one or the other but very rarely get both, it was an excellent way to end an amazing holiday.

As the following morning rolled around both my partner and myself were very sad to leave, we really didn’t want to say goodbye to a place we’d both enjoyed so much. We will definitely be visiting again at some point in the future.

Odd Interview

As I was walking into work today I found that I was contemplating the weekend that has just passed, more specifically the interview I experienced on Saturday morning. I feel a small amount of background information is required here, I have recently applied for my first passport and now, in the UK, in order to get your first passport you have to attend an interview to prove that you are who you say you are. A few weeks after sending my initial application I received a letter asking me to call and arrange an interview location, date and time. As I work fulltime I had little choice but to request a Saturday appointment and 8:30am Saturday 29th in Derby was the only realistic option available. In all honesty the time and place didn’t seem particularly bad, it would give me and my partner the chance to make a morning of it and engage in a little retail therapy. So Saturday came round and me and my partner got ourselves up early and headed off to Derby. More or less from the time we arrived it was a somewhat surreal experience. To start with, despite the office being literally just off a main street in Derby town centre, the directions given to me by the passport service took me out of the town centre and round a fairly grimy, derelict part of town. We got to an open area surrounded by boarded up shops and run down houses, feeling a little lost we stopped to get our bearings and check on my partners phone that we were actually heading in the right direction. Almost as soon as we had stopped walking I was approached by a man asking if my beard was real, once he had convinced himself it was in fact real he shook my hand and congratulated me on my obviously miraculous and glorious beard. Oddly this distraction actually helped, while I was busy shaking hands and having my beard admired my partner spotted the building we were looking for. We entered the building expecting to see a reception are, or at least a receptionist, instead we were greeted by a spiral staircase and another door this time with a buzzer, stuck on the staircase was piece of A4 paper with an arrow, directing us upstairs. On the first floor was an identical scene, again with an arrow directing me up a floor. The second floor turned out to be our destination, here there was yet another identical scene, however, this time the paper was on the door and was directing us towards the buzzer. We approached the door and my partner pressed the buzzer, after a couple of minutes the door opening and a slightly creepy looking man in a security guard uniform poked his head around out but said nothing. Slightly taken aback by the situation I haltingly explained why we were there and handed over a letter I had been asked to take with me. The guard asked me if either of us had a mobile phone and refused to let us enter until he had seen that we had turned them off.  Although the outside area gave the appearance of a small building, upon entering the main room it opened out into a large meeting room. At one end there was a bank of chairs set out in ‘U’ formation, obviously the waiting area. At the far end of the room, forming small cubicles, was a series of floor to ceiling dividers in front of a large glass wall with a single door in it. In each these cubicles was a desk which was exactly the same width as the distance between the dividers, essentially separating the room in two. On each desk was a computer and at each computer was a person, these were the people performing the interviews. As I was waiting I could occasionally hear the other interviews taking place and each sounded slightly odd. The interviewers were all of a type, a none descript man or woman, of smart appearance, who could have been any age from 30 to mid 50, all had a kind of fixed smile on their faces and all spoke with a forced joviality. I was called over for my interview and approached the cubicle that I had been assigned, it almost felt like I was entering a trap, the falseness was almost palpable in the air. As the interview progressed I was asked the obvious questions about where I worked, how’d I’d gotten there, did I drive etc. all the time the woman in front of me had a smile fixed to her face and the false joviality in her voice. I think it was this constant forced joviality the disturbed me the most it left me feeling very uneasy as if there was a wrongness about the whole affair. A feeling that stayed with me well after the interview was over, I still don’t know whether I’m being given a passport or not, all I want to do is go on holiday with my partner for a few days....