This year we wanted to have a UK break with Amber’s parents and with the hope for decent weather, heading to the West Country was really the only viable option outside of the school summer holiday! Despite having a seven seater car, the S-Max doesn’t have space for six people and luggage for the week, so to avoid the very long drive for Amber’s parents from their home in Norfolk, we decided to travel by train.
We started to search all the usual holiday booking sites for properties well located in Cornwall, also close to a train station on the main London to Penzance route, and with availability for the late May school half-term holiday (considering this was in early April, the options were quite limited). Fortunately, one such property was Parbados, one of the apartments at Sandy Toes Accommodation in Par, so with the booking confirmed, we went about sorting out our travel.
Originally we considered driving to Reading to pick up the train from there, but the realisation that it would cost £25 per car, per day for parking, quickly made us reconsider! Instead we booked the train from our local station in High Wycombe, travelling via London with the short transfer between Marylebone and Paddington stations. With a Family and Friends railcard the total cost for the six of us was £386 return, broken down to £84.40 for each adult and £24.25 for the kids using Advance Single tickets. Whilst more expensive than driving, it was more palatable than the idea of sitting in the bank holiday weekend traffic on the M4 and M5, so even if the S-Max had the space, the idea of letting the train take the strain seemed a good one!
In the weeks between booking and going away the ASLEF union announced rail strikes during the time that we’d be away and for the day after our return, so we felt reasonably lucky that we had escaped from this disruption and our thoughts had moved on to the activities that we could do whilst in Cornwall. But then just on the legal minimum limit of 14 days before the day we were due to return, the RMT union announced a further day of strike action meaning a change of plan would be needed to get home to Buckinghamshire.
Fortunately, due to the number of recent strikes, the rail operating companies have a good idea of the level of service that they can operate and it was pretty clear that whilst there would be no services within Cornwall on the day of the RMT strike, there would be regular trains from Plymouth back to London and the Chiltern line out of Marylebone to High Wycombe would also be operating some sort of service, so we took the decision to book a hotel in Plymouth for the Thursday night so that we didn’t have to cut short our time in Cornwall, beyond the final evening.
Thursday 25th May 2023
Before we knew it the school term had finished and Amber’s parents had arrived ready for a relatively early start the following morning. I still had a bit of work to do, so after taking the kids to their swimming lesson and packing, it was time to work through as much of the to-do list as I could before some sleep.
Friday 26th May 2023
It’s not possible to reserve seats on the Chiltern line, so we decided to catch one of the stopper trains that start in High Wycombe so that we would be able to store all the luggage and get seats for the trip in to London without having to fight it out with people travelling from Oxford or Birmingham. The journey into Marylebone was uneventful and after changing our minds a few times, we made the decision that we would walk to Paddington instead of catching the tube. The fact that we got the tube on the way back tells you we made the wrong decision! Whilst less than a mile, there must be the need to cross at least 20 roads, not ideal with all the luggage, two kids, plus nanny and grandad in tow.
Saturday 27th May 2023
We had already decided to stay local to Par on the first day, but when looking for things to do before we set off for Cornwall, Amber discovered that a local festival, aptly named the Par-Teee, would be held on Par Bay beach on Saturday afternoon. To get to the beach it was a 10-minute walk, mainly along footpaths through a nature reserve and then across the edge of the dunes. The festival was at the other end of the bay, so we made our way to the area of Par-formance and Par-ticipation (there were way too many “Par-something” based jokes all day)!
The event was quite low key, but considering Par is only a village of around 1,600 people, that probably shouldn’t have been a surprise and it was an ideal lazy first day. We were able to join in the Par-ade for the inauguration of the Time and Tide Bell, watch some of the local acts performing on the stage, and join in a few activities including helping to build a giant lantern ship out of bamboo, making seashell garlands and upcycled crowns. Time and Tide Bell is a National Community Art project focused on the current climate crisis. The bell will be highlighting global warming and rising sea levels, very relevant to Par and the surrounding area.
As well as the Par-Teee, we’d also seen that there was a Tudor event called Tudor Times in Tywardreath being held over the weekend at Newhouse Farm in the adjoining village of Tywardreath, just a leisurely 15 minutes’ walk from where we were staying. The Tudor period is going to be one of the main topics at school for Forrest after half-term, so we thought it would be a good introduction. Like the Par-Teee the event was quite small, but we all particularly enjoyed the talk and demonstration from the archer, including finding out the origins of the term bickering (something that happens all too often between the kids). Hopefully the kids will not reach the extremes of firing small arrows at each other, but it did demonstrate how bickering can lead to a more substantial conflict.
There was also the opportunity to partake in a few activities, including leather work and weaving, the latter being something both kids enjoyed. Before leaving we all enjoyed a hog roast roll, other than Forrest who decided that he’d prefer some rice cakes and an apple. It’s a little frustrating as we know he’d love the hog roast if he was to try it, but especially when out in public, it’s not worth the subsequent bickering that trying to change his mind would cause!
After returning to Sandy Toes to leave nanny and grandad for a quiet afternoon, we caught our first bus of the holiday for the short journey to the edge of St Austell to visit the Cornwall Football Golf Park for our first ever attempt at football golf. The park consists of two courses, Parkland that is a scaled up version of a typical crazy golf course, and Hillside that as the name suggest is on the side of a hill, but also more akin to a normal golf course with longer holes and simple sand and water hazards.
Monday 29th May 2023
A sunny Bank Holiday Monday was the perfect day to travel by train to Looe. From Par we had to take the mainline back to Liskeard, then catch the local train along the picturesque Looe Valley Line. Both trains took about 20 minutes, with another 20 minutes at Liskeard, so it was around an hour journey time in total.
At Liskeard we had picked up our Looe Pirate Trail booklet, a promotion from the Great Scenic Railways of Devon and Cornwall community rail partnership, so our first task once in Looe was to hunt down the pirate stickers placed in shop windows across the town on the 1.5-mile trail. The booklet provided child friendly clues and with the kids eager to rush from pirate to pirate, we were soon at the RNLI shop and the final sticker (although we did miss one out as suggested until a little later in the day since it was over the other side of the harbour). The trail had taken us through the heart of the historic fishing port, down lots of tiny streets and alleys, although the number of cars competing with the pedestrians had kept us on our toes.
We were now next to the sea, so after a round of milkshakes from the Pier Café, we had a little explore of Banjo Pier and the kids had their unique take of a paddle that involves getting completely soaked on East Looe Beach! Everyone was now getting peckish, so we headed back to the harbour side for some fish and chips from Catch. Despite the long bank holiday queues, we didn’t have to wait too long and the kids enjoyed watching other families crabbing along the edge of the harbour. They did ask if we could do it but, mindful of time, we’ve promised that we’ll take them to Walberswick the next time we’re back visiting my parents in Suffolk. When the fish and chips were ready, the portions were decent and the quality very good.
As well as the hope for decent weather, being able to visit the Eden Project was one of the main draws of heading to Cornwall and to the Par/St Austell area in particular. Although Par is less than 3 miles away from Eden, the only public transport links are to either St Austell or Lostwithiel, located 4 miles to the west or 6 miles to the east respectively. Having lived in London where you just turn up at the bus stop and one will arrive within a couple of minutes (unless you’re in a real rush, but that’s a different story), the buses to and from Eden were much more sporadic with one roughly every 90 minutes. To make things worse, at least on the way there, the connection time from the train at either St Austell or Lostwithiel would be at least another 40 minutes. So to avoid the fuss we booked a taxi that cost £12, took less than 10 minutes and we arrived with a lot of local knowledge on how best to explore the Eden Project from the friendly driver.
At least the location was ideal for our next activity, which was to watch a live kid’s comedy show, Attenborough and His Animals in one of the Core teaching rooms. This was on as part of the school half-term activities and provided the kids with a lot of laughs, although for Paloma it was probably 15 minutes too long and we had to raid the snack bag to keep her fully occupied. Nanny and grandad had decided to explore the outside gardens instead of watching the show, so once we’d met up for an ice cream and the kids had quick play on the larger playground (but not the new even larger one that is due to open in July), we started the journey back to Parbados. Instead of getting a taxi we decided on the bus and train combination and this worked relatively well with only a 15-minute wait at St Austell for the train back to Par, however it did take an hour in total so a taxi would have been a better, if not so environmentally friendly, option.
Wednesday 31st May 2023
After the glorious sunshine of the first four days in Cornwall, we woke up to more overcast skies and it was noticeably cooler as we walked to the bus stop for our trip to Fowey. Fortunately, we’d heard enough people calling it “Foy” since being local, so we were able to ask the bus driver for our tickets without any embarrassment. After a bit of thought the driver declared that a Family Day Ranger ticket would be best, so for £10 all in for our family of four and with nanny and grandad tapping their free bus passes, we were on our way through the country lanes to Fowey.
We had pre-booked tickets for a 2-hour wildlife seafari boat trip with Cornwall Seafari, so we headed down to the departure point ready for our 11am start. Amber’s parents had decided to stay on the shore and spent their time having a potter around the many little shops and galleries, as we left the calm waters of Fowey Harbour and set off East towards Lantic Bay, Polperro and Looe Island. Our boat was a high performance RIB called Hornet that was pretty much brand new and great fun on the open water bouncing off the waves. Paloma had a massive grin every time we went quickly and she must have said “this is the best boat trip ever” at least 100 times, although she wasn’t quite so impressed with the more sedate return when we headed back West with the wind behind us and a lot less chop!
Once back on land we headed to the rendezvous point in the centre of the town and then to Bufala Fowey, a waterside Italian restaurant that we had researched in advance. It didn’t disappoint and we all had pizzas with Paloma enjoying her Quattro Formaggi Pizze Bianche, a pizza perfect for her with lots of cheese and without any tomato sauce.
Thursday 1st June 2023
Our final day in Cornwall and we were back on the bus to The Lost Garden of Heligan. This was the longest bus trip of our holiday, taking just over an hour in total and we again made use of the £10 family day ticket. We did have a bit of a panic on Wednesday evening when we noticed online that all of the entry tickets for the 10am slot had sold out, however we need not of worried as we had no issues purchasing tickets on the door.
Amber had seen that there can often be a queue during peak hours to cross the famous Burmese Rope Bridge in the Jungle part of the garden, so we decided to head that way first via the Woodland Walk. The walk meandered along the edge of the site with a number of sculptures to see along the way and we soon made it to the edge of the jungle and to a queue-free rope bridge. After we had all crossed the bridge, and the kids with Amber for a second time, we explored a bit more of the jungle before looking for the Wild Week activities.
After lunch we explored the wild breed animals and spent some time in the bird hides before splitting into three groups for the last hour. Amber and Forrest went back to the jungle to explore a little more, nanny and grandad headed for a coffee, whilst Paloma and myself spent some time on the playground that was mainly spent with me pushing her on the large bucket swings. It was then time to catch the bus back to Par and Parbados for the final time.
During the day a number of trains towards Plymouth in the early evening had been cancelled, presumably due to the RMT action the following day, so we had changed the initial plans of having a Chinese in Par to heading straight to Plymouth. However, with most of these trains reinstated and confirmation from a friend at GWR that the 18:53 train would definitely run, we decided to stick with the original plan and get a takeaway from The Golden Wok on Par Green, just a couple of minutes from our accommodation. It was certainly very popular with the phone constantly ringing whilst I waited for our food, but unfortunately this wasn’t a good omen and the food was a little disappointing.
It was soon time to do the final departure checks and make our way to Par station for the start of the journey home. The train was surprisingly quiet and the hour to Plymouth quickly passed. We had booked rooms at the Copthorne Hotel and once we had worked out how to get up the hill from the station it was only a short walk. The hotel had muddled up the reservation and neither room had been set up as a family room, but the reception manager did her best attempt at housekeeping and with a little help we had set up the sofa bed for the kids and it was time to get some sleep ahead of the long journey home in the morning.
We’d decided to give the hotel breakfast a miss and I’d found a good looking café (at least online) just across the road from the hotel. Unfortunately, the breakfast offering was a lot less than on their website, so we moved on to Coffee #1 on Cornwall Street. It served white hot chocolate that kept the kids happy and had a good mix of pastries and hot options such as porridge, so everyone was catered for.
After stopping off at the hotel to collect our bags, we retraced our route back to the station from the night before, although this time downhill, passing the striking RMT picket line on the way. The train was very quiet when it left Plymouth and despite picking up people along the way to London, it wasn’t close to how busy the train had been the previous Friday on our way to Cornwall.
Whilst it was a pain having to change our plans and include the hotel stay in Plymouth, it did help with the journey home and probably reduced exponentially the number of “are we nearly there yet?” calls on the journey to Paddington!
So in summary, Par with no car is certainly possible and Sandy Toes Accommodation is perfectly located close to the station and bus stops to explore the local area, and only a short walk to the beach. Getting to the Eden Project was a little bit of a pain, which is disappointing for somewhere with such a strong sustainability focus, but it was only a short taxi ride away.
Hope you’ve enjoyed the blog; we’ll be back with one of our more traditional daily update blogs as we tour Ireland by car and motorhome in August…
Blogged by Matt
