Polruan and Cornwall, England

So it was a bit of a relief (that’s an understatement) to meet up with Mum and Dad on Tuesday June 16 in Cornwall. Us 3 girls caught the train from London to Par, where the parentals met us in a hire car to take us back, via some great narrow country lanes, with hedges that we could reach out and touch on each side, to Polruan. We spent a relaxing couple of days checking out this lovely English fishing village and its surrounding towns. We managed to have lunch (Cornish pasties!), dinner (fish&chips with peas) and pre-dinner drinks (Pimms for me of course!) at a couple of pubs, especially our local, the Russell Inn. We ate lots of Galaxy chocolate bars, English fudge and Fowey rock, which is like Suga lollies. We learnt good and bad things about Daphne du Maurier, author of Rebecca, who lived in and based many of her books on the area. We went for a walk through the forest behind Polruan, climbed over a stile and enjoyed looking at some meadows – real English countryside stuff! (Would have loved to walk through the meadows but it was really wet.) We found a great church in Fowey (rhymes with ‘boy’, believe it or not!), called St Finbarrus. It obviously often receives tourists, and is really well set up for them, with various free booklets about living as a Christian. It even has the Jerusalem Declaration from Gafcon pinned to the noticeboard – we took a photo to show RC so we can do the same at St Judes!

One of the greatest things about Polruan is that it’s built on the side of a hill, which makes it quite picturesque. The house we stayed in was 3 stories, with an amazing view, from the top storey bedroom, of other houses in the town down to the water and across to Fowey on the other side. Another great thing about the town is the streets are really narrow. This was hilariously interesting when we tried to get our small hire car up into our street to pack our suitcases into it, then back down again to get out of the town. It took about half an hour and a ridiculous amount of small manoeuvres by Dad, with directions from Katie and Mum. Em and I just stayed away, contemplating taking photos of it all, but decided that would just make things more stressful. Pretty funny looking back on it now though!

We spent the next few days travelling, but with exciting things in between so it wasn’t too boring. On our drive back to London we stopped at Stonehenge, and took some photos from the side of the road without paying for entrance (!). We also stopped at the beautiful Hilsey College, where Dad went to boarding school at age 5. In London we stayed with some friends Penny and Godfrey in Epsom, right across the road from the Epsom racecourse. Anna and Matt and their twins Kate and Sophie, as well as Anna’s parents Graham and Sue, were there for a huge Aussie dinner – BBQ with heaps of salads and pavlova. We left some of our stuff with Matt and Anna that we wouldn’t need on the continent, which was liberating!