Our babymoon in Cornwall

A couple weeks ago the hubby and I went away for a long weekend to Cornwall, for our babymoon. We'd picked St Ives on the back of dozens of recommendations from people we know.  We booked into a vegetarian B&B in Carbis Bay (just outside St Ives) called Coast (I'll talk more about that at the end).  Underneath each pic I'll talk a little about it :)

So, our first day there.  We made the mistake of driving through St Ives... I'm not sure I remember being so stressed outside of family funerals... there were people EVERYWHERE, wandering into the road with their prams, absolutely no respect for the traffic, which was very slow moving.  Once we were out of there, to try and calm me and the baby down we went for a drive down a country lane to stop and have some sandwiches (I brought a picnic for the journey).  This is the view of where we stopped, pretty nice.  While we were stopped I said I wanted a Cornish cream tea, but I wanted to discover somewhere off the beaten track, somewhere quaint.  Fast forward a few miles down the lane and that's exactly what we found!  This little gem was hidden away, the lady who ran the place did it from her home in her garden and conservatory and the scones were freshly baked and still warm straight out of her Aga :)  It was perfect.

This cream tea was so amazing, and it was so peaceful.  We were sat on a picnic bench in her garden and there were lots of little birds flying around and interested in us.  When we'd finished our cream tea, Chris picked up some crumbs and put them on the edge of the table to see if the birds were interested, and what do you know, they flew up and took them away :)  We tried this a few more times and each time (apart from the last) they'd fly up, hover and pick up the crumbs - I think they're used to this :)

After that we headed to the Seal Sanctuary.  This was a pretty expensive place to go (about £14 each), but it was money well spent because lots of that money goes on helping the seals get healthy and back to the wild.  There wasn't a great deal to do there, but after a long day travelling to Cornwall and driving around when we were there, we were happy with a chilled afternoon.

They also had penguins (and Otters) :)

When we got to the B&B we realised it was a restaurant that was open in the evenings too (Except Sunday & Monday).  We were so knackered we stayed there.  The food was lovely, in fact, so lovely I didn't get any pics of most of it.  Both nights we had Halloumi and Sweet potato skins to start - it was such a treat being able to order anything off the menu.  Considering my hubby is a meat-eater, I'm a very lucky woman that we ate here for two nights :)

The next day we decided we wanted to explore St Ives, but NOT drive into it.  Well, we kinda drove into it, parked up on the outskirts in a big car park and got a bus in.  This was a big mistake, the place is so incredibly busy we just couldn't enjoy it.  We don't like crowds, so coming here wasn't a good idea.

As idyllic as this picture looks, right behind us (about 2 ft) was a road with very busy slow moving traffic, meaning we were surrounded by petrol fumes.  And there were thousands of people everywhere, it was FAR from relaxing, so we decided to leave.

After that nightmare, we went for a drive to see where it took us.  We drove through St Just and they had some festival on and the town was basically shut down, so we followed the diversion and ended up driving down what felt like a pedestrian footpath, the side of our car got massively scratched up from all the shrubbery, but when we got to the bottom there was a little car park believe it or not, and a wonderful little alcove of beach.  This little stone seat was next to a pebble beach with only a couple of people on it.

We sat there for about 15 mins taking in the peace before we decided to head back (needed a wee!). On the way back we drove through Penzance and stopped at a pub called the Pirate Inn, a nice enough pub with simple food, which is all we needed.  We then headed back to the B&B.

Once we got to the B&B we thought we'd take a stroll to the beach, we knew there was a patch just opposite the B&B and thought we'd give that a try.  Well, it was a struggle!  The path was incredibly steep (downhill), so steep that when we eventually got to the beach (20 mins later) my legs were trembling from steadying myself all the way down.  I knew I'd never get back up, with the pregnancy and the asthma, that just wasn't going to happen.

Needless to say, when I arrived at the beach, I was a bit grumpy, but after sitting there for 10 mins enjoying the sun (with factor 50 on) and sea I chilled out and enjoyed an hour or so there.  Chris was amazing, when we decided to go, we walked to the beach entrance and Chris ran back up the hill, yes, ran! and came back to get me in the car (awwww) - I was so incredibly grateful he did that.

With lessons learned, we decided to do what we love, visit National Trust sites / Stately homes and found this place, Trerice, we made a day of it driving there and looking around.  The house was ok, and the grounds were nice, but the highlight for me was the resident cat who came and cwtched down with us in a gazebo/bandstand.  We had a lovely chat with the site manager (who's cat it was) and enjoyed some peace and quiet.

If we looked out of our bedroom window and looked left, this was the view.  I wasn't tall enough to be able to do that, so Chris took this picture :)  The B&B was nice, it wasn't without flaws.  Our room was very small and we had to walk sideways around the one side of the bed to get to the bathroom (which did smell a little of wee - but it did look very clean).  The TV in the room was very small too and hard for me to see from my bed (especially without my glasses).

The food was great, but on the first day I ordered a mix of granola, natural yoghurt and fruit - sadly there was lots of banana in it, which I'm allergic to - it didn't say on the menu anywhere that there was banana in it.  I managed to pick it all out and avoided being ill (whoop).  It would have been nice to have had a little more choice for breakfast, but what they served was lovely.

The people who ran it were lovely though, the other guests were too, we certainly wouldn't be put off going there again, but I'd probably try and book a bigger room :)

One other annoyance about Cornwall was the drivers... it felt like EVERYWHERE we went, we got stuck behind some idiot doing 30mph in a 60, and there was almost no places to overtake, and on those rare occasions when we could, they'd do that horrible trick of speeding up and racing us - so frigging dangerous!  And some drivers just ignored all speeds, they'd do 40 everywhere, whether they're driving in a 30 or a 60... drove us nuts!

All in all it was nice, but not what we'd hoped it would be.  Cornwall is very pretty, but was too busy for us, and if we're honest, we might be biased, but we still do prefer the scenery around Wye Valley and Pembrokeshire - we're fans of the lush rolling hills, and I think Cornwall was a bit flatter than I expected.


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