Nude!

Friday 26th May 2016 - To Bude.

I thought the title might get your attention.  It was merely my spell checker prompting me to correct my current destination.  It could be worse it could have been a rude, lewd, nude, dude from Bude!

I have had some stick from my younger brother about my hair....he asks 'what have I done to it as it looks like a hawk'!  Well, I haven't done anything to it (at all, and you can tell) and he's wrong, it's more like a crested lark!

Moving on - we travelled at least 15 miles from Tintagel to Bude.  We had a little shopping trip on the way but still arrived by 11am.  The site is a CL on a golf course near Stratton, approx 3 miles north east of Bude.  It is quite a nice place, it seems very quiet as we haven't seen anyone playing golf yet despite it being a pleasant afternoon and evening.  Also, there are three other vans here but no-one has turned up to them yet (and I am writing this at 8.30pm).  If I had brought my own golf clubs I could have had a round for free.  The only down side about the site is that it is up a big hill and we will be staying for three nights which, at least, means there will be three long hill climbs on the bikes.

We set off down towards Bude on the bikes, cycling first through the smaller (and older) village of Stratton.  Bude was busy but it is the start of a bank holiday weekend.  We had a good walk around and we liked it.

Nice beaches, a river and a canal.

The weather was grey initially but as the afternoon progressed it improved, culminating in a lovely evening.

We visited the Castle Heritage Centre (not what I would call the real castle, so it didn't make up for the absence of a castle at Boscastle), and found out about the Battle of Stratton in the Civil War in 1643.  The royalist army won against the odds and were led by local man Sir Brevil Grenville.  He had a Cornish Giant as a bodyguard called Anthony Payne who was 7'4" tall and about the same around the middle.  He is a picture of him......

It's supposed to be life sized.  I think he's had a few pasties!

Apparently he lived and died in a house in Stratton which is now the Tree Inn.  Supposedly they had to enlarge the doors of the house to get his body out.

In the interests of research we had to go and have a look.

It was a lovely little sun trap in the courtyard.  I think we will go for Sunday lunch.

Back we went up the hill to the site.  It was steep too.  Never mind, it will do us good!

We had a nice simple tea of sausage, egg and beans.  I like to have plenty of pepper on my food but in my exuberance with the pepper grinder I managed to pull the top off and half the pepper corns tip all over my food and the rest over the floor!  What a plonker.  I tried to get some of it off but ate the meal with high doses of pepper followed by plenty of sneezing.  You may have realised that we have not been running a sneezing competition this trip.....maybe I should have started it after all.