Hodge Holiday 2013 - Isle of Skye

Last winter we were sat watching TV thinking what shall we do this summer when an advert came on tv saying 'Visit Scotland' and that was all the convicing we needed. Having visited Scotland a handful of times before I remember leaving the highlands thinking I must revisit with Naomi. So a bit of googling and we came up with a plan of visiting the Isle of Skye with a day in Fort William to climb Ben Nevis. Our previous holiday was a couple of days camping in Snowdon which was a little bit on the damp side so with us deciding to visit Scotland we decided a guaranteed dry home would be suitable especially if we're driving so far! Google came up with this suggestion and we fell in love. So with our plan set we went off Our drive up was split with a nice overnight stop at our friends Jon and Kate who live in Leeds. Which ment our final drive into skye wouldn't be quite as tiring through the lovely Scottish scenery. We stopped off and had lunch beside Loch Lomand:

Which was a nice little break before driving through the amazing scenery which gets you through to Fort William, from Fort William we continued onto the Isle of Skye originally intending to go via the bridge but satnav had other ideas:

From the boat we finally made it to Skye, fish and chips then bed. We awoke to find that our little shepard huts had quite the nice view:

Our holiday was planned to consist of lots of walking mixed in with food, drink and reading our books. I'd brought with me my kindle whilst naomi had brough a large handful of the ungreen paper variety. Tehe. Our first planned walk was Boreraig and Suisnish however I planned to cut the corner off as we'd started quite late in the day. However once going off the track it became apparent that the footpath was more of a guide over the heather:

So progress was slower than had we just kept to the normal loop (typical) so another slight diversion saw us break the unbreakable rule of doubling back on ourselves to the car. However as with road riding its all about the view... well so I told myself.

The walk covered going past an abandoned farming village type thing which showed a lovely house, which makes you wonder how such a nice house can be left to be abandoned... we'd move there:

Being slightly frustrated at the lack of complete walk we decided a walk to a hopefully picturesque lake...lock might be in order. I managed to take a cool photo of the landscape:

Whilst Naomi managed to take a cool photo of the wildlife:

That night was a clear night not knowing how many more we'd have I decided a timelaps of our accomadation should be done:

The next day we took a trip to the north of the island as I was hoping to get in and amugst the amazing hills:

I feel I was quite successful, our afternoon saw us visit the coast where we visited a 'Cave of Gold' where we saw no Gold:

However there were quite cool rock formations meaning I simply had to take a photo:

on the way back we got told off by walking back the wrong way by some excessivly cross scotish man which kinda put a dampener on a nice day! That evening we chose to eat next to the outside fire:

Combined with nice company (wife), views and local ale being told off quickly disapeared into quite an amusing story! Next day we decided a visit to the fairy pools was in order, a number of people mentioned its worth visiting the fairy pools so we were pretty excited to see them:

Yeah they didn't fail to please! The weather for the day was forcast to be rain all day, however for the whole of the walk it was like a blue patch of the sky was following us, so couldn't really complain! The next day we went to what was called the caribbean on Skye... basically a nice beach ideal for when the weathers not listed as being great. It was a beach... we have many of them in Devon/Cornwall:

However for the afternoon the weather cleared up a tiny bit so we went to the area of the island which drew me to it to start with, it's iconic 'Old Man' basically its lord of the rings style landscape:

Yeah it looked epic! Prior to going to Skye I posted on the cycling forum I visit if there's any must do/see activities on Skye, the one which stood out for me was the boat ride and walk on Corsuik. So that's what we did on the next day. The guys at MistyIsle boat trips took the honour of boating.... shipping us... ferrying us over to the loch and even allowed us on even though we didn't have cash (taking our address) on the pretence we'd pay the local tourist office when we get cash out. The walk around the loch was highly rewarding except sadly the weather didn't play to taking any great photos but you get the general idea:

Tehe the photo above looks hilarious out of context, the slop was a little steeper than the photo puts on and we had a nice rest there but from the image it looks like I'm just sulking! For our final day on the island we went for a walk up to something called the prison and accidently picked up some hitch hikers on rout (flashed an oncoming car for them to drive through the gap, german hitch hikers saw this as a come on aboard sign and oh deer). The walk was once again highly scenic at one point the clouds lifted to give us an amazing view (one which will stay in my mind for a long time), sadly the photo doesn't do it justice just couldn't get an angle:

With this saw our exit from Skye our next day consisted of a walk up Ben Nevis where the camera stayed in the bag for two reasons, it was hammering it down and thus zero visability. Skye is well worth another trip in a couple years. Any questions about it please feel free to fire away the whole album should be listed on my Google+ account.

Burning Barrels... and Dartmoor Walk!

You know when you get to the train station and just miss your train, you reassure yourself that the next one will be there within the hour but the longer you wait it would appear this isn't the case.... well that's sort of what this blog has turned into!

Anyway me and Naomi are doing fine, we're both alive, and happy and everything... we even survived the burning barrels last night in Otter St Mary:

Which was rather fun... incase your unfamiliar with the set up of what happens in Otter St Mary you have a small Devonshire town, 20k+ people, barrels coated in flammable fluid and a bunch of crazy people who run through the said town with these barrels attached to their backs boshing the 20k people out the way... its surprisingly entertaining!

I do love these typical stupid British traditions... but its what makes us so great..... I guess! However one of the highlights for me was eating a Pork Bap... mmmmm:

We then spent today burning off the calories induced from the above photo by walking on Dartmoor... how original!

Errm yeah that's all!

We're all going on a Summer Holiday! - PART 2!

Well due to the initial misshap of the frist week... i.e. booking the first B&B for the wrong night, we ended up expanding our trip into two weeks. OH WELL!

Dartmoor Picnic!
Well in-between our last B&B from the previous post to the next B&B we had a couple days at home so we figured we'd make the best of our location in devon and go for a picnic and walk on dartmoor!

Well when we arrived at our designated picniq spot the weather had other idea's so we decided to share the experience with paul:

Then we went for a nice walk up over them there Moors:

It was smashing... we saw sheep and some horses and even some fish!

The rest of the weekend consisted of us sitting on our arses doing nothing well I say nothing Naomi did make a Tasty Tasty Chicken Pie!

We went to Mousehole
However we didn't see any small rodents... I wonder how many time's joke get's pulled when mentioning Mousehole... incase your not aware, Mousehole is a small village in the south west of Cornwall, 8 miles away from LandsEnd:


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Right there to be exact! Prior to leaving Naomi cooked us up some tasty tasty tasty BLT's which we ate upon arrival. Mousehole is a very pretty traditional Cornish fishing village, and as a result its very compact. However it sure does look nice:

But I feel due to the abundant supply of Artists in the area and board youth, they do get up to some wacky activities, we walked past a beach/rock beach and there were hundreds of piles of rocks like this:

It was very odd! However did have an adverse effect upon our behaviour as we decided to add our own... I say we from the photo it looks like I contributed but I think my efforts where in an adverse effect to the piles of rocks on the beach:

We then checked into our B&B which was located just outside Mousehole called the Panorama Guest House. We then walked back to Mousehole (which is just about doable from the guest house but only just. As we had a dinner reservation for 8pm at 2 Fore Street it was TASTY! However due to the level of sophistication the restaurant projected I did feel a little out of place in just a polo shirt and the food although very very tasty was a little minimal most notably a distinct lack of carbohydrate on my plate however I should really have spotted that and added a side of chips.... or something! We followed the meal up with a visit to Mouseholes only pub The Ship inn in which we had two cornish ales:

The B&B we stayed in wasn't quite as nice as the one in Perranporth, however it did rate as the best Breakfast with the inclusion of BEANS! yey!

Fireworks & Hose
Well we rounded up our Hodgebodge of a holiday with my parents visiting to install an outside tap (for a hose). The tap got installed and the fireworks were AMAZING! However below is a rubbish photo taken with my shaky hand!

 Weddings and Thorpe Park 
To round up our 2 week holiday we decided to head east towards Surrey & Southampton, here we witnessed a good friend of ours wedding and were very happy to see him and his wife tie the knot! YEY!

Then Thorpe Park double YEY! I've never been to Theme Park in England before... have been to one in Wales and Italy mind! We visited Thorpe Park with our close friends Stephanie and Sam our favourite rides were Stealth and Saw however had the weather been of a more suitable variety I feel Tidal Wave might have been up there, but it was freezing yet we still decided to ride it:

We got rather wet!

Tehe!

We're all going on a Summer Holiday!

It's summer Naomi's on her Summer Holiday (school teachers eh!), I have some days holiday to use... lead to one thing... ROAD TRIP! We decided we'd utilise our fine position within the southwest peninsular to expand upon our knowledge of the local beaches.

First stop Mousehole Par...
Well we had planned on going to Mousehole first (this being our first B&B stop), however we successfully managed to get our dates wrong booo... however this has mean we've an extended holiday so yey! With a couple swift phone calls and a look at google maps we managed to settle for a alternative stop for our first day... this being Par... Par isn't the most desirable place to stop at in relation to other places in Cornwall however it's not exactly the worst place we had a nice little picnic on the beach:

Then had an ice-cream:

And I we proceded to get successfully burnt by the sun... I feel quite ashamed of myself especially seeing the exact thing happened on the first day of our honeymoon! Our B&B (Emms Cottage) was a very quaint cornish house which had been converted to a B&B as the owners kids had moved out. It did seem a little odd sleeping in someone else's house (as most B&B's do) but this was quickly out shadowed by the AMAZING Cooked breakfast and Coffee mmm!

Next stop PerranPorth
The was the first of our Planned stopped, we chose this place to get our Surf on, however as we drove through the tipping rain... the likely hood of either of us dipping our toes in the water was getting rather slim. However where there's a beach there's fun regardless of the weather! We checked into our B&B (St George's Country House) which was a short walk from the beach... here are some of the views from the B&B to the Beach:

Our first task once at the beach was to locate somewhere to purchase a Pasty, we'd gained local knowledge that a certain Butchers (Chapmans) held the towns title of the best Pasty... will it be better than Oggy's or even my mums...

Quite amusingly I'm sure my dad has a large array of similar images (with himself and my mum replacing me and Nay obviously)

The Pasty's got awareded best Cornish pasty of 2000.... wasn't 100% convinced myself, if Oggy's was an 8, and my mum's being perfection at 10 I'd rate these at a good effort 7...

Next we read our books, since Par I've been hooked on reading this particularly entertaining read: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night about an Autistic person's detective work about finding out who killed the dog... the insight into the authors mind is rather compelling as such I managed to read the whole book within 3 days... which for me (at a reading age of 12) is rather good! After a hour or so of reading Naomi's short attention span kicked in and I was forced to fly our kite... did you know that the beach at Perranporth has a By-Law of a no-fly zone of kites outside of a designated zone... I didn't either until a life guard told me off! We rounded of our day out at the beach by having a classic Cornish afternoon snack of Devonshire Cream Tee's (coffee) in The Tin Fin... which is where we returned for our actual tea!

The B&B we stayed in was more of a Hotel so no oddness of feeling like we were in someone else's house! However the Bed sheets were still thick winter sheets which combined with the extra heat our Sun Burns Tan's were giving off we didn't have the most comfortable of sleeps.

Our final Stop of this Mini Tour was Padstow
Well I say Padstow the B&B (The Harlyn Inn) was actually situated just off Harlyn Beach (I think that's the name). We checked in then went down to the beach... which was rather windy and cold:

Quality self portrait there!

So this stay on the beach was short lived and off to Padstow down we went in search of Food! Which seemed like everyone else had the same idea as the place was rammed! However we managed to find a pasty shop (The Chough Bakery) which held the best Cornish pasty of 2008... who gives out these awards? If we go back to my original rating system I'd give these a measly 5, no bad points and the crib was in the correct place and they didn't do anything silly but just lacked any flare... if I was to liken these pasty's to a car it would be a Ford Mondeo, Naomi however must have forgotten what a good pasty tastes like and gave it an 8! That's on Par with Oggies... MADNESS!

We decided to combat the strong winds on Harlyn beach by purchasing our First Windbreak! This was swiftly set up back at Harlyn beach and book reading commenced...

Look how happy Naomi is with the windbreak!

However the reading was short lived partly down to me finishing my book... chicka chicka yeah! and Partly down to Naomi's short attention span! So a walk of the amazing beach was in order:

At the end of the Beach we discovered some cool rock pools as well we saw a water snail thing:

And an sea anemone:

The next day started rainy but soon turned sunny, so we went for another walk of the beach... it really is a nice beach! We hid in a cave whilst it rained:

Then the sun came out meaning I could get a good snap of the beach:

We rounded our Mini road trip off with a relaxing afternoon on the beach followed by a quick dip in the sea!

Welldone on getting to the end of a MAMOUTH blog post! Here's a mini video of the highlights: