Conor & I went to Newquay this weekend for a little break away. It was a fantastic weekend, although the weather wasn’t particularly on our side.
With Newquay being over 270 miles from Milton Keynes, I knew the journey would take most of the day so I made a point of making a day of it so Conor wouldn’t get too bored sat in the car the entire journey. We left at 9:30am and to reduce motorway driving (and because the M4 was closed en-route) we went cross country to the M5 at Gloucester, then down the M5 and onto the A38 with stops on the way. We stopped at the Kings Arms at Tedburn for lunch, which I’ve been to many times going to Newquay for stag-do’s. After lunch was the remaining trip to Newquay, which we got to at about 4pm. We stayed at a hotel in Porth, which is a suburb of Newquay, called Porth Lodge Hotel. It’s a family run hotel which is clearly in the slow process of being refurbished. All of the staff were very friendly and always had a smile for you when you got back from a day out. The hotel has it’s own four lane bowling alley which is free up until 12pm, so we had a game before we left the hotel for our days out. The alley is clearly pretty old judging by the state of the balls, but it was good fun anyway and yes Conor did ‘beat me’.
On Saturday we went to Newquay Zoo, which has all the usual exhibits from birds to reptiles, from monkeys to lions and it also has two children’s play areas along with a maze constructed from hedges. Conor had his face painted as a leopard because he had bought a leopard toy and he wanted to look like it. After the zoo, we went to Towan Beach in the centre of Newquay, as the weather was really nice. Conor wanted to build sand castles and play in the sand, which he loved doing. He did get some funny looks though from other beach goers being a leopard building sand castles. We stayed there all afternoon and headed back to the hotel before the stag and hen do’s descended on Newquay. It was at the hotel Conor discovered the game of pool and thankfully he didn’t damage the table in the process of learning the game.
Sunday was the day for the rain and we just managed to get in to Buccaneer Bay before the rain came down. Buccaneer Bay, formerly Tunnels in Time, in a step back into Cornish history with actors playing the parts of pirates who narrated the scenes of the exhibits. Conor didn’t like the pirates and I ended up carrying him through the attraction to prevent him getting upset. After Buccaneer Bay we intended to go to the Blue Reef Aquarium, but because of the weather everyone else had the same idea. So we grabbed some lunch and went on the Road Train around Newquay to keep out of the rain. The trip gave the aquarium queues time to go down and we ended up going there. Conor loved the tunnel under the main tank and whilst we were in there they fed the sharks, which was pretty cool. We did manage to get to the beach again albeit in our raincoats as although the rain had stopped it was still pretty miserable, but it was nice to go there anyway because as the tide was out there were loads of oysters (although I’m sure they’re called something else and I’ll be corrected) on the rocks.
Well other than journey home, that was pretty much it. We didn’t do a huge amount but it was fantastic just to get away and spend some quality time with my little lad.