17th August 2008: Better weather than expected!

We had an amazing moonlit night, I woke at about 3 am and looked out and it was like a strange false dawn outside, the full moon was huge in the sky and there were white fluffy clouds sailing by and very define shadows of the caravans cast by the moonlight: quite spooky in fact!
by the time we got up it was dull to begin with but we set off along the coast road and to our surprise the weather improved quite a bit, and after dropping down into Port Quin, we descended the steep and narrow hill into Port Isaac where rather uniquely you can park all day for £2.
What's unique about that? simply that it's on the beach in the harbour and the high tide determines when the car park closes for the day!
We enjoyed some superb cakes at the local bakery before taking to the road again and visiting a cove we haven't been back to since the 1960's
Trebarwith Strand.
Gorgeous beach at the bottom of a steep hill and a fast running stream has carved a deep channel through the rocks on its way down to the sea. It was busy with surfers (there's a surfing school there) and all the usual facilities so we had our first pasty of the holiday and sat outside enjoying the view and munching away: good fun!
Continuing our journey we passed through Tintagel without stopping,as we had walked far enough already, and paused briefly to take some shots of the astonishing folder strata in the cliffs just before Widemouth Bay, what titanic forces are needed to twist the strata into Zig Zags like that I cannot imagine!
Pretty soon we reached Bude and began our return journeyalong the main road, taking about
a third of the time needed on the outward bound journey to return to camp along the main coast road.
The forecast for the day had been poor, but we had a good one, and the foul weather at least had the good manners to wait till after tea, right now it's blowing a gale and raining cats and dogs!