A wee bit of luxury.

Friday 21 and Saturday 22 August 2015 – Mawgan Porth, Cornwall.

El and I booked this trip a while ago, when I first decided to do some walking on the coast path. My plan was to walk to Mawgan Porth and meet El at the very lovely hotel we stayed in for her birthday a couple of years ago. The hotel backs on to the path and I had visions of me walking up through the hotel to reception with my backpack on, 3 weeks worth of facial growth, possibly a bit smelly and asking for a room. Well that didn’t happen.

What did happen is we went together from London to Bodmin in Cornwall in a first class carriage on the train, picked up a hire car and I drove us to the hotel. It was far less strenuous.

We had booked ourselves on the 9:00 am train out of Paddington which meant leaving home really early as there are month long works on the Victoria underground line into Walthamstow and we had to do a rush hour run across London. It actually wasn’t too bad in the end.

Paddington station is famous, for one thing.

It was really nice sitting in first class with plenty of space, gallons of free coffee, a decent sized table, power points and extremely dodgy wifi which allowed me to work on my SWCP walk blog posts as we roll back towards the coast that had so recently defeated me.

The train ride is pretty pleasant, it is reasonably quick and there are some lovely views, especially on the coast between Exeter and Plymouth, a journey I have taken a couple of times in the past. From Plymouth the train passes through Saltash and across the river Tamar on the wonderful Prince Albert Bridge, designed by the engineering genius – Isambard Kingdom Brunel and opened in 1859.

The weather was pretty average when we arrived in Bodmin to pick up the rental car and had not improved 30 minutes later when we pulled in to the Scarlet Hotel in Mawgan Porth. We did not have high expectations about the weather as the forecast for the whole weekend was pretty rank. We had high expectations about the hotel though, and planned on just having a relaxing weekend. The view out of our room over a stormy Mawgan Porth was pretty lovely.

As was the room itself. A bath with a view, I am going to have to test that out.

The rain gave us a moment to nip out and go for a quick walk into the thriving metropolis of Mawgan Porth, all half dozen buildings of it. We walked round the beach and up the headland on the far side to the hotel.

The beach looked lovely under the low clouds, and was still quite popular with the surfers that come to this part of the country.

We bought a bottle of wine at the local shop and headed back up to the room and sat, just inside the door to stare at the rain and the listen to the sea across the deck. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant both nights we were there and they were both superb. Excellent food and wine, including a delicious, light and flavoursome Cornish sparkling wine from Camel Valley.

Saturday morning broke wet and warm and shrouded in low cloud. We had been expected this so were not overly disappointed by it all, though the view out the window was limited.

After breakfast we took a walk around the hotel, the view from the outdoor pool must have been amazing, but I was not willing to get into it to find out. I did take a dip in the indoor pool though.

We both had very indulgent massages, I was of course planning on needing one after three weeks of walking, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, well I you would wouldn’t you.

The rain cleared early afternoon so we walked back down to the beach again, I wanted some more moody beach shots. I have swapped my G16 to shooting in raw mode and man what a difference it makes, huge improvement in image quality.

We had lunch in one of the beach side cafes before heading back up to the room, where I took the opportunity to relax for a while!

The sky soon shut in again and there was no romantic sunset to share our dinner with. We had to have the bubbles again.

It was a lovely couple of days, being spoilt, eating lovely food, washed down with some fantastic wines. A two year treat!