We’ve got a charger for Carol’s mobile phone. We’ve got a charger for John’s mobile phone. We’ve got a charger for the lap top. We’ve even got a charger for our electric tooth brush (we like a little luxury in our camping these days. What, it was suddenly realized on Saturday morning, we have not got, is a charger for Carol’s jolly nice Canon 400D digital camera. Drat! Double Drat!

It was a drizzly morning and, after an inaugural egg, bacon and mushroom breakfast, since a certain someone was not going to be able to relax with the threat of a dead battery hanging over her like the sword of Damocles, off we went into Penzance to see if the lamentable situation could be rectified. There, in the main shopping street, was a Jessops. There, in the Jessops, was a non-Canon-but-universal-to-all-Canon-digital-cameras battery charger. Fixed – hoorah! Now everyone can relax and we can get on with enjoying Cornwall – assuming, that is, that the weather perks up.

Off to have dinner with our friends in Falmouth, Janet and Jon. Mr Driver will have a little drinky when we return. 🙂

Billy Bailey was sitting impatiently outside our house wondering when he would eventually be off to have some fun. The waiting was finally over on Friday morning as we finally set sail for Marazion at about 9:15 AM. I use the word “sail” advisedly; easterly winds may be unseasonably cold but they certainly seemed to pay dividends on the journey west to Cornwall as we were fairly blown along in a very relaxed fashion to our destination. 31 mpg towing was hitherto completely unheard of and, with diesel at £1.22 per litre on the motorway (that’s about $9 a US gallon for Amerispeakers), very welcome. It really is time this country rebelled against the levels of tax; we need a decent amount of civil unrest.

Traffic was light, even on the M5 where we paused to refill the tank and to have a reviving Costa doppio for me and cappuccino for astronavigatrix, Carol. A little lightening of the foot and some judicious slipstreaming of heavies helped with our fuel consumption. We have a couple of irritating rules in this country – irritating in that they seem to conflict with each other, to some extent. Technically, towing vehicles are permitted to do 60 mph on motorways and dual-carriageways. This was fine until, a few years ago, we introduced a bizarre regulation limiting lorries to 56 mph. (This regulation smacks of Brussels ‘cos 56 mph = 80 kph.) Now, it’s very difficult to do 60 because you’re nearly always stuck behind a heavy doing 56. Brilliant!

Nonetheless, ‘t was a good journey and we arrived at Kestal Farm, just outside Marazion (St. Hilary nr. Goldsithney, to be accurate), at about 4:00 PM to get set up with the now traditional beer or three before some drizzle started. The timing couldn’t have been better; it’s unpleasant having to set up camp in the rain. Cooking dinner in the rain, on the other hand, is perfectly fine, especially when accompanied by some vino.

Final preparations took place today for tomorrow mornings departure for Cornwall. This involved remembering what to pack in the car and how to get the bicycles on to the roof of the car without damaging either (or me, come to that). Surprisingly, it went quite smoothly. The boot of the car seemed a bit light but that was because it lacked a BBQ and bags of charcoal, which we have elected not to take (for the first time ever, I think – worrying). Maybe that’s because the weather shows no signs of warming up yet as we seem to be stuck in the grips of a cold easterly air flow. Last April was stunning weatherwise and even that was too cool to consider dining al fresco.

Then, of course, we had to agonize over what clothes to load in the van in order to cover ourselves for all weather eventualities. It’s enough to drive a man completely Bodmin.

I’ve been trying out some blogging clients, the main purpose of which for me must be the ability to write blog entries offline to be posted later as and when a wi-fi connection can be found. Many commentators bang on about a WYSIWYG editor being vital but that seems to me to be missing the most crucial point – offline composition. I’d used one, w.bloggar, to upload all the recipes pre-formatted to Gastroblog. However, I suddenly realized that, as it fires up, it asks for an id/password combination. Duh! Yes, it doesn’t appear that it will do anything without connection. I tried a couple of others, Zoundry and BlogDesk, but they both had a couple of things I didn’t like normally to do with handling pictures badly. In the end I’ve settled on Windows Live Writer which does seem to do a half-way decent job with photographs, despite being Microsoft. So, that’s on Carol’s laptop, now. I should probably be writing this with it to practice but, nah!

So, ready(ish) for a relatively leisurely start to our seven hour drive tomorrow after the morning rush hour has subsided. Cornwall, here we come.

The season is nearly here; it’s C-3 and the anticipation is tangible. We are planning to set off for Cornwall to start the first trip of our year on Friday 18th. In normal years, Easter marks the beginning of the season but, this year, Easter was so ridiculously early that it threw everything out of whack, including rug-rat holidays which seem to have been scattered all over the calendar. By judiciously studying the pricing of certain commercial travel and leisure activities, though, we think we’ve managed to plan our way around them and avoid the little darlings.

We are planning to return to spend a week in each of three old favourite haunts starting in Goldsithney (near Marazion and Penzance) on the south coast, moving to St. Agnes on the north coast, and finishing near St. Minver Lowlands just outside Rock across the estuary from Padstow (also on the north coast). We may just have to toss a few back with the locals at their May Day celebrations ‘Obby ‘Ossin’ in Padstow.

Our first job was to go and recover Billy Bailey from his winter quarters which, of course, meant removing that enormous cover again. BC (Before Cover), I used to be able to retrieve him by myself but now it’s a two person job so small and mighty Carol had to accompany me on this first short expedition. We must be getting good at it because everything went very smoothly and we were soon back at home with a caravan ready to prepare and load up. Much to my surprise, this time I even managed to fold the enormous cover and get it back into its storage bag. (Aside: Sailing fans invented self-furling sails years ago; we need something similar with caravan covers which are, of necessity, a similar size.)

The cover may make one curse a little, being an unwieldy contraption, but it has certainly paid dividends when it comes to preparation time. Billy is still bright and shiny, even though he’s been sitting under a filthy oak tree all winter, and didn’t need a whole day of scrubbing and washing. Excellent! I did, however, treat him to a protective covering of Turtle Wax to try and help keep him looking spick and span.

Now I just have to jar ze little grey cells into remembering what to pack and how to prepare.