Day 13 – Newquay is gnarly, man…

This is such a surfer’s town, in spite of the fact that it’s here in England. We’re overlooking beautiful Newquay beach, which had over 25 people out the back enjoying the excellent waves, I can only assume they either don’t feel the cold, or have heated wetsuits.
We slept in this morning, meaning that there was actually sunlight when were ventured out, so we took the opportunity to walk along the cliffs to the headland to visit Rick Stein’s fish restaurant. It was lovely, a fantastic view over the ocean, and I had some great fried Cod chips. Dogs are more welcome here than in London, in pubs and restaurants they’re frequently found lazing about with their owners, and here was no exception.
After a leisurely brunch we began the hunt for a place to have Christmas lunch. Ah, what naïve sweet summer children we are. I had naturally assumed that we could eat at our hotel on Christmas day, provided we couldn’t book anywhere else, so it was only with mild disappointment that we were told they were fully booked. Oh well, we thought, there’ll be plenty of other places.
Wrong. So wrong. We spent our afternoon walking to every single hotel, restaurant, takeaway and food outlet to be told one of three things: We’re not open on Christmas day; we’re fully booked; try (insert place here) and repeat the first or second phrase. Over twenty venues later, I thought never mind, we can just get room service. Ha! Turns out, due to Christmas lunch, there is no room service on Christmas day. We came back to our room to begin calling less local places in the hope of being able to drive somewhere. After ten phone calls, all of which were met with the same fully booked mantra, we gave up.
We had a nice meal at a restaurant across the road for tea, and have reconciled ourselves to having our own homemade Christmas in our room. However, this is somewhat complicated by the fact that we have neither a fridge nor microwave in our room (as an aside, I’ve rekindled my great hatred of long life milk in tea) so we’re going to have to get creative. Currently drinking Archers and lemonade in a can, ruminating on what to do next.
-  Jess

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