Surfing and Pasties, the finest Cornish Combo!

Day 2! First night in the van was a success! Bentley was good as gold and we pretty much zonked out after an exhausting first day!

Land’s End before the crowds

Up early and went straight to Lands End before all the hustle and bustle of tourists took our tourist photo with the fake sign (they seem to remove the big sign for out of hours as you have to pay for an official photo) but that didn’t bother us!

We took our photos, enjoyed the peace and quiet before heading off to drop the pup off at doggy day care for the morning, whilst we headed to Sennen Cove for our first ever surf lesson!

Learning to surf at Sennen

We booked our surf lesson with Sennen Surfing Centre and words cannot describe how incredible they were! We did the beginner class with Luca as our instructor, who got us warming up on the beach (it was 25 degrees and we were in wetsuits!) before getting us use to the boards on dry land, practising our technique so that when we hit the water we were pros!

Spoiler alert, we were not pros! But we did give it a good college try, and after an hour or so of laying down, falling off, nosediving and the like, I managed to stand up twice and Michael was in a sort of stand up squat, all in all pretty successful!

We are already discussing coming back down to Cornwall to explore it more and in that trip we would definitely do another surf lesson!

A roadside repair

After slowly peeling the wetsuits off of us, we headed out to pick up the dog and carry on with the days adventure. However, having just collected the dog, we hit a pothole and our fresh water valve was knocked off into the road, and the entirety of our fresh water tank was gushing onto the road.

Michael managed to stop at the side of the road pretty quickly and I ran the quarter of a mile back to retrieve the valve. We phoned Chiltern Motorhomes to let them know what had happened and they let us know that there was a spare manual valve in the gas cabinet that would replace the electronic one no problem, which Michael fitted and once again we were on our way.

Pretty scary moment when you hire a van to see a part of it in the road behind you and not knowing how much damage has been caused and whether it would be enough to end the honeymoon at midday on day 2, luckily it was something Michael was able to fix (he’s a very handy man) and we were able to continue!

Pasties, St Michael’s Mount & Britstops

So continue we did and we headed St Michael’s Mount in Marazion as Luca had told us that Philps Pasties was the best place for a proper Cornish pasty – he wasn’t wrong, it was fantastic! We found a spot on the beach, ate our pasties and enjoyed the view, I ended up sharing some steak with Bentley as it was just so filling!

We took a nosey in all the gift shops and headed back to the van for our final drive of the day, this time the destination was The Britannia Inn. When planning the honeymoon, we didn’t want to spend every signal night at a campsite, as that can get expensive!

So Michael found something called Britstops, which are essentially park ups at pubs etc, where they have a big car park or extra space to house caravans/Motorhomes etc. It’s free to park, some offer toilet blocks/electric/water, but not all and whilst it is free, there is an expectation that you eat dinner at the pub – which suits us down to the ground! Free stop with some good grub – perfect!

When we got to The Britannia Inn, we were super impressed with the space they had to offer for park ups, there must have been 6 or 7 other vans of all types parked up. They had a toilet block for campers, but no other facilities but that suited us.

We headed down for dinner, I ordered scampi and chips and Michael had lasagne, the food was good but the portions size were a bit much, even by Michael’s standards! Definitely worth checking them out as it was super easy, lots of parking and good grub!

Stick around as we tackle Hangloose at Eden Project tomorrow ✌🏼