Tourist Information

Granted, we've been pretty lucky this last week. Hot sunshine, grinding swell, winds varying in strength but continually offshore. And it's all hit just as the holidaymakers reluctantly make their way back to their homes, their jobs, their schools across our country (and, more than ever, to lands more distant.)

So now we get our own mini Summer to enjoy. We know we'll be able to get a parking space at the beach. We have meat, bread and milk left on the supermarket shelves. We can even see the supermarket shelves.

We can drive down lanes knowing that it won't take us half an hour behind a shiny top-down Porsche to drive the few miles to the beach (ditto pavements, but less shiny Porsche, more shiny, agonising sunburn.) And we know that, back on the lanes, the cars coming toward us generally don't mind a bit of hedge surfing.

Seagulls, once again, must learn to eat sealife.

But it's tinged with a touch of melancholy. We know everyone in the bars again. Pasty's are sat under lights for longer. Ice cream parlours close. Some of the lovely characters we've met in the mid-Summer weeks of madness may never walk back into our lives.

Say what you like about the emmits, grockles... what you will. They're so often the lifeblood of this part of the world and I, for one, am grateful for their visits. I'm aware that, with each barbecue, each dawn patrol, each burning sunset I watch off the high cliffs of North Cornwall (even each pristine, snow covered hill I bomb down on a dustbin lid in the winter) - chances are, realistically, none of this would be possible if I had to move elsewhere to make money.

So, fare well transient buddies - hopefully we'll see you, and your friends, next year.