Newquay

Near the end of my time in England, I made the trip down to Newquay with a really good friend. He has some friends we could stay with, and I knew one of them from previous trips to England. Newquay is the perfect mix of countryside and surf town. A five minute drive out of town and you're in some of the most beautiful cliff-countryside I've ever seen. I was day-dreaming of owning a piece of land there, with an old farm-house. Growing my own veggies and other edibles, and surfing to my heart's content. What more could one ask for?

Everyone was warning us in the week before we made the drive (only a few hours, but a monster drive for British people - they should try driving across Ontario!), that the weather would be bad with snow and freezing temperatures. My friend's response to all of this was simple, "It's ok, I've got a Canadian with me. She knows all about the snow". And so, we departed on our trip out to the South West corner of England, armed with food, water, toilet paper and other survival gear, just in case we came across any life or death situations on the roads.

It was my third trip to Newquay, and I couldn't wait to get back to the coast, with it's awesome cliffs and sandy surf beaches.  We were on our way, and took our time on the motorway, stopping to feed and water ourselves and stretch our legs. Now everyone in Canada knows you put actual windshield washer fluid (with antifreeze in the winter!) in the reservoir under the hood labeled with the windshield wiper blades. In England, it seems common practice to just use water (I guess they don't get freezing temperatures very often down in the South)...and so we found ourselves on a dry motorway (with a few flurries), but unable to wash our now dirty and grimy windshield because the jets were frozen! So we pulled over into the next service station and I started to defrost the jets with water (our survival water!), while my buddy went to get proper windshield washer fluid with antifreeze. After the proper stuff was in, 10 minutes of forcing the jets to fire, and me constantly throwing water at the windshield so as not to wear out the wiper blades on dry glass, we had working jets! And then we were on our way...only to pull over again in 10 minutes because MY jets needed firing after a massive coffee I had consumed from 3 service stations ago.

We had a sweet ride out...no problems with traffic or road conditions, and we finally arrived at the edge of England. It was dark and cold and we were tired and hungry, but that didn't stop me from requesting to stop at the edge of a cliff over-looking the ocean. I bellowed my greetings, with a huge yell out into the darkness, to my old friend, the Atlantic Ocean, as it rushed up and crashed onto Fistral Beach, one of the best surf breaks in the UK. The ocean has always called me to it, from when I was very young and we used to drive down the East Coast of North America to Florida or Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. It has always called, and I have always answered...surfing in England on two separate occasions, and in Southern California once, body boarding in Southern Australia when I was 17, and sea kayak guiding off Vancouver Island, Canada this past summer.

Newquay Coast, SW England. December 2010.

 

Unidentified Surfer. Fistral Beach, Newquay, England. December 2010.

Farewell to my Familiar Friend. Newquay, England. December 2010.