Holiday in Newqay
We’ve been camping in Newquay for the past week. I just thought I’d post a few unstructured notes about our time there.
- It took about six hours each way in the car. Much better than last year’s nine or ten hour journeys each way.
- The weather was amazing. Given the miserable forecast before we left, it couldn’t have been any better.
- We stayed at Trencreek campsite. It was a good site about 15-20 minutes walk away from the northern end of town (coming out opposite Tolcarne Beach). Along with the no single sex parties or single people rule, they didn’t have any card facilities and requested that you to park on the right hand side of your tent – maybe they could modernise just a little…
- Spent some time at Fistral beach, watching the Ripcurl Boardmasters surfing competition, drinking Fosters, and body boarding. The South African commentator suggested that his mate took the picture of the great white in South Africa a good few years ago (a story that seems to be confirmed by the Guardian).
- Bought a skimboard and fell off hard at least twice.
- Had a good meal at the Fistral Blue restaurant and took some pics of the sunset.
- Had a rushed meal at the Maharajah restaurant. Tip to restaurant owners, asking us to finish our drinks in another restaurant across the street (even if it does belong to you) will not make us want to come back.
- Took in the amazing views along the coastal path from Newquay, via Porth to Watergate Bay for the Ripcurl unleashed music festival.
- Got to the festival site without any cash only to discover that there were no card facilities anywhere. Having walked for an hour and ten minutes to get there, we had to pay £10 for a cab to take us back, virtually all the way to the campsite, to withdraw some money. Ho hum.
At the festival, we saw:
- Funeral for a Friend. So much harder live than on their albums.
- Ash. I only really know their old stuff so it was cool that that was what they mainly played. It makes me wonder if that’s a sign that their newer stuff isn’t selling quite so well though…
- Newton Faulkner. Only caught the last three songs but was impressed with what I saw.
- Scott Matthews. Boring.
- The Guillemots. Boring.
- Paolo Nutini. Although the albums are pretty boring, he’s pretty cool live (having originally seen him at Isle of White festival). It was a bit of a shame that he was so drunk as his strong accent is hard enough to understand at the best of times.
- Mat and Kim. An amazingly energetic band from New York that played in front of maybe 100 people in the relentless tent.
- Wakeboarding and Wakeskating at the relentless tour.
- Freestyle motorcross with the UK FMX team.
All in all, a good week.
