An escape down to Fowey in the motorhome (Day 2)

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Although new to motorhoming (we have only owned Bryony since September 2021 and we have only done four trips in her – this is our fifth), we have become more adept at getting up in the morning, packing away and clearing off somewhere in her.

I am sure this process is rapid because I won’t allow Maggie to have her morning cup of coffee in Bryony if we are going out in her. Hence her frantic dressing and organising – a desperate bid for freedom and COFFEE!

Today, from waking up to being on the road (and that includes, dressing, packing away bed etc), its 20 minutes.

We head down to Charlestown near St Austell and park at the top of the road leading down to the harbour. There was plenty of space and no restrictions.

Breakfast at one of the cafes – lattes, a bacon bap for me and a HUGE bowl of granola for Mag. No ships in the harbour which disappoints me immensely but the sun is shining, the sky blue, the sea deep aquamarine and the temperatures hot. We stroll about the harbour and then walk some of the cliffs to the east before cutting back through residential areas back to Bryony, high on the hill. 

https://www.intocornwall.com/engine/azabout.asp?guide=Charlestown

https://www.visitcornwall.com/places/charlestown

We had booked a 1pm slot at the ‘Lost gardens of Heligan’. Back at Bryony, we discover her interior temperature has crept up to 35C, which prompts us to think about how to keep her interior cooler in hot weather when we are leaving her closed up and that is despite pulling across all the screens. 

·        The obvious strategy is to fit an Air Conditioning unit but we feel we aren’t quite there yet. Maybe, when we are definitely venturing into southern Spain and Italy.

·        We don’t like leaving any roof vents open when we have left her unattended. We think it is a security risk. However, when lazing around outside the van, then that’s an obvious solution, in conjunction with using the fly screens. (We did pull across all the screens – ours have a metallic shiny finish on the outward facing side which clearly helped).

·        We have tended to use the dashboard air conditioning when driving around in very hot weather. Open windows are noisy. We could get a couple of 12v rechargeable battery or 12v plug in small fans that you can attach to the windscreen with suction cups. We’ll give this further thought.

·        We forgot on this occasion to use our flexible, thin silver screen – a cheapy from ‘the middle of Lidl’. It lives, tightly rolled up, on the parcel shelf above our seats.

·        Obviously, if I had used my nous today, I could have driven a little further down, turned Bryony around and then parked on the opposite side of the road facing up hill, under the shade of a huge avenue of trees and with the windscreen facing away from the sun. You live and learn eh?   

 

 

The Lost Gardens of Heligan are heaving! The car park is full and the parking attendants direct us to go back around all the fields to the coach parking spaces right next to the entrance. Pity they didn’t have someone doing that at the entrance – would have saved us a ¾’s mile round trip along bumpy gravel tracks! As it is, we get the last coach parking space! Needs better organising for motorhomes frankly.

Where upon, we are asked to move by a coach driver, who doesn’t feel we could park alongside because it would stop him getting out. I did ask what he’d do if another coach was alongside which stumped him for a minute or two. We reverse back further into the bay. He has plenty of swing room fore and aft now!

The bin man arrives and asks if we could move forward so he could slide behind us to access the wheelie bins; where upon he starts to empty all fifty of them. Apparently, that’s one week’s rubbish. Fifty wheelie bins! We are horrified! It strikes us and him that so much could, should, have been recycled.

Eventually he goes, we retreat back further into the coach bay, the coach driver settles down and we lock Bryony up and go into the gardens at our allotted time.

 

The gardens are packed but we are still able to find areas to escape into. Flowers are in full bloom, their scent perfuming the air and attracting a wide variety of pollinators. The vegetable and flower garden look stunning. We leave with plenty of ideas for our own wildlife garden and woodland area and to our surprise discover via an app that we have strolled over three miles navigating the woodland glades, steep valley paths and meticulously prepared walled gardens and orchards.

https://www.heligan.com/

Back at Toynes house we get a surprise. The motorhome taps are finally working. The drive out and back, plus parking on a steep slope, seem to have dislodged the airlock. We had also before departing this morning, drained off half a tank of freshwater and so that left us wondering whether the ‘non-dropping arm’ theory might actually be the issue, rather than the airlock idea.