What I Did on My Summer Holidays (Spoiler: I Got Engaged)

Full disclosure: most of this was written on half a bottle of Jack Daniels. I wanted to document this important moment in my life, but blog writing can be tiresome¹ sometimes so I resorted to something Philip Marlowe called “incentive to keep me interested”².

Why post this so late? Summer was months ago! I’ve been busy and didn’t get around to cleaning up this blog until now. Specifically, I’ve been looking at buying a house which, at the time of writing, looks like it’s going to go ahead. Probably time to close this chapter before we open the new one, I figured.

Samantha Josephine Dyer

I met my often-referenced “other half” ten years ago at the time of writing. We had been in the same classes for years before, but it was only when the students not interested in continuing their education at the same school left where the opportunity arose. All the geeks congregated in “the study room” to do anything but study.

In my case, it mostly involved faffing around online, mostly on a forum called “A Very Silly Place”³. I remember one empty period in-between lessons, seeing Sam on a computer visiting A Very Silly Place for the very first time. I sent her a private message that consisted entirely of the following:

😛

Assuming my WordPress installation isn’t buggering that quote up, it’s a smiley face emoticon. That’s the first human interaction I had with my future wife.

I remember smiling as she looked over at where I was sat, at another computer in the study room, in disbelief and (typically of Sam) rather than come over and talk she instead posted a reply via the forum. Sam probably remembers what it was fully, all I remember was the general gist was “Okay? Why?”.

I don’t wish to try and summarise the next ten years – the awkward teenage years, the early adult years, moving in together⁴, that scary bit at the beginning of 2014 where I almost killed myself⁵ – instead, let’s cut straight to last year.

We went to Ilfracombe! One of Sam’s holiday haunts from yesteryear. A lovely place, I was sceptical at first but after a memorable long weekend it’s quickly becomes a favourite of mine too. The original plan was a few days in Ilfracombe followed by a trip into Cornwall to visit some of my childhood places, but I chickened out as the drive down to Ilfracombe was terrifying enough for me at the time.

I knew that the following year marked ten years of being together⁶. It was time to plan the proposal.

The Plan

Originally I was going to suggest we fly over to L.A. and, once there, I would take us to see Hollywood Babble-on, a podcast/live comedy show hosted by Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman. Kevin Smith is ordained in the Church of Life, so he could “marry” us there and then – it would be a recorded show, so we’d have the audio forever.

However, thinking about the logistics, I got paranoid about getting the ring though customs. Especially after seeing a specific Dara O’ Briain routine about one unfortunate chap having to propose while going through customs after an official asked him to open up the ring box.

I debated a few alternatives – I could always buy the ring while in America, but I wouldn’t have the ring size and when I’m on holiday with Sam we tend to stick to each other like glue. I wouldn’t be able to say “I’m just going to pop off on my own for a bit dear if you want to entertain yourself, and I’ll be borrowing your promise ring if that’s alright”. It would’ve been dead obvious!

If I couldn’t reliably do something very loud and public, I’d go the other way instead and do something very private with just the two of us. I’d do the Cornwall jaunt and expose Sam to some of the places from my yesteryear – it’s a bit self-indulgent, but I had the perfect place in my head where to propose; a cliff range in Treyarnon Bay overlooking the sea. There was a bench there where I once took a picture of Dad sat with Granddad⁷. It would be secluded up there, and with the sun shining it would follow a nice stroll along the sand afterwards.

My Dad and Granddad on the bench of destiny, many years ago.

I began plotting the route out. The first stop would be in Ilfracombe as we were now familiar with the roads and how to get in, where to eat and what hotel to book into. I knew that Padstow would be one of the destinations I’d like to revisit, so a quick Google Map lookup revealed that there is a coast road that goes between the two.

Along that route was a familiar name: Wadebridge. I fondly remembered many a day out in Wadebridge, there’s a cinema there where 11-year old me saw the 12-rated Wild Wild West⁸ with my parents in a mostly-empty cinema.

As for Treyarnon Bay, it’s a ten-minute trip from Padstow. Even better, I remembered a nice little hotel called “The Harlyn Inn” next to a beach around the corner from Treyarnon – we could have a day in the sun out on the beach!

The route was settled: a night in Ilfracombe, a trip down to Wadebridge the next day, into Padstow for the third day and then a day of sitting on the beach in Harlyn Bay with an intermission in Treyarnon for the proposal. I booked all the hotels a month in advance, so everything was settled and ready to go come August.

Ilfracombe

It rained on the Monday we were supposed to leave. We’d spent the entire weekend cleaning the flat from top-to-bottom so it would be neat when we came back, our pet parakeet Jigen was bundled into a “travel cage” and sent to live with my parents for the week and the suitcases were (mostly) packed.

We’re probably one of the only households that considers dusty plastic figurines as part of the washing up.

Waking up around ten, I would spend the next hour or so impatiently pacing the flat waiting to leave. We locked up the flat, threw two full suitcases into Sam’s Nissan Micra (Sport Edition) and headed off down the motorway.

I had never driven Sam’s Micra before but I wanted to on the holiday due to the narrow country lanes in Cornwall and Devon. I had fantasies about being Lupin III in his souped-up Fiat 500, but in reality the Micra didn’t take to climbing multiple hills and, in-turn, I didn’t take to the Micra. It would complain doing 60+ MPH up-hill in fifth gear and then when you lowered it to a “working gear” it would complain even louder. To compound matters the accelerator would get stuck when putting it to the floor, leaving me stamping in panic as the car accelerated out of control. At first I thought it might be cruise control but, on closer inspection in a lay-by, it turned out that the floor mat was trapping the pedal every time it was pushed all the way down.

Top: expectations. Bottom: reality.

As we came into Ilfracombe, the clouds parted and the Sun came out to welcome us. We rolled into the long-stay car park just as people were beginning to fill up the car parks. We booked into the Royal Britannia Hotel, a really nice hotel overlooking the bay, and fetched our suitcases. I took a shower while Sam went for an ice cream.

It took me a few hours (and a few beers) to calm down. I not-so-secretly hate driving and the slow, twisty descent into Ilfracombe always sets me on edge. I feel claustrophobic manoeuvring a car between rows of parked cars.

Pictured: me “calming down” (also, beer).

The stay was excellent; a few beers in the recently-opened Ilfracombe branch of Wetherspoons, a trip to the arcade to spend some change, a stroll to the museum for a quick look around, a meal in a delightful little restaurant called “the Smuggler’s” and then a few more beers in various pubs before retiring to the hotel room to watch a chunk of the Man with the Golden Gun on TV before bed.

The next day we rose fairly early, had breakfast in Adele’s Café, loaded up the suitcases and hit the road!

The Horrors of Driving on B Roads

It seemed a good idea at the time.

Jolly actor and comedian Robbie Coltrane once hosted a TV show called Robbie Coltrane’s B-Road Britain. In the show he specifically goes off the main roads and sticks to country lanes. He does this in a fancy old car and makes it look like a bloody good laugh. It’s not.

To be fair, most of the journey was plain sailing and we saw some lovely countryside. However, there were two points where going “off the beaten path” backfired. The first was in a narrow lane leaving Devon. We encountered a parked white van opposite a house tucked into the hill and nimbly drove between the two in a Micra, only to discover a traffic jam on a really narrow hill. Bollocks. The white van wasn’t parked at all – it was queueing! We had now blocked off the opposite lane, if you could call it that. The white van driver, upset that we had misinterpreted his turning off of his lights and engine as “being parked” (silly us!) took offence to us cutting in line and nudged forward. I attempted to reverse back but now I was on a steep hill, and the Micra didn’t like climbing the hill going forwards let alone going backwards! I couldn’t get a bite point in the reverse gear, so the car just kept slipping forward. Every time we nudged forward, the van driver would push forward an inch too, thinking we were challenging him. In the end I stuck the handbrake on, folded my arms and waited for the jam to disperse. The van driver narrowly managed to squeeze forward, and we followed him out.

The second problem was a place called “Camelford”. I don’t know how people live there as it appears to be one long narrow street wrapped around a hill. All I remember is that my claustrophobia flared right up as I did my best to stick to the back bumper of the car in front of me. My Dad would later tell me an anecdote about a lorry driver who parked up at the top of Camelford in order to make a delivery, but the brakes failed while he was in the trailer and the lorry rolled all the way down the hill into someone’s house. Delightful! I never want to go there ever again.

Wadebridge

We crossed the eponymous bridge into Wadebridge and Stephen Fry on our satnav⁹ attempted to lead us up a pedestrian walkway, and then around some back-streets. Instead, we ended up circling the manically full long-stay car park and sticking the car in the short-stay as a temporary measure.

There’s a bridge in Wadebridge. Go figure.

Our hotel in Wadebridge was the Molesworth Arms Hotel, a really nice building done out in a rustic style. Checking in, we were informed that there was parking available behind the hotel. It turned out that Stephen Fry had been trying to direct our car to the correct place after all, to the car park tucked around the back! Stephen always knows best, it turns out.

The one thing I quickly noticed was that Wadebridge was a lot smaller than I remember. Not just the size of the town, but the width of some of the roads. On reflection it was once physically bigger – I had just grown a lot since my last visit (both upwards and outwards). I was pleasantly surprised to find the combination book/toy shop was still around and exactly the same as it was 12 years ago, although it was a little more embarrassing walking around it looking at the toys now.

We found Little Brum! Who remembers Brum? Anyone?

We also found Minions, because the little smeggers get everywhere.

In the evening we strolled from pub to pub and eventually found the cinema where I watched Wild Wild West many years before: the Regal Cinema. We watched Mission Impossible 5, which turned out to be a really good film. I was amazed at how Wadebridge’s cinema is twice the size of the Clevedon Curzon (the UK’s oldest cinema) and yet it runs films at later times every single day, without much need of Lottery funding (apparently).

We retired for the night after the film. I had planned to do some audio editing for the second half of a certain project but discovered that upgrading to Windows 10 the week before had completely buggered up my installation of Audacity (it would then go on to break completely). Despite access to the wifi for the first time in a day, I couldn’t be bothered to spend the evening searching for a solution. Instead, I spent an hour studying Google Maps for where our hotel in Padstow was.

Padstow

I had threatened Sam for weeks with making her drive the 20 minutes between Wadebridge and Padstow, but I opted to do it instead. Some careful car-wrangling was required to manoeuvre the Micra backwards out of the cramped hotel car park around other guest’s cars. Fifteen minutes later I  pulled into the long-stay car park at the top of Padstow.

I was completely thrown when walking down into Padstow as one of the main stairways from the carpark was closed off due to disrepair and I’m fairly certain that it was the way I always used to walk into Padstow with my family back in the day. To compound matters, Padstow was absolutely teeming with tourists trying to navigate the tiny pavements. In a bid to keep up with my impatient walk through town while I got my bearings, Sam accidentally shouldered an old man carrying his grandson’s beach equipment and had to stop to help pick it all up. It was absolutely crazy.

We found the hotel, Symply Padstow, and booked in. Going back to fetch the luggage, we realised on the return journey that we had parked one street away. My wild goose chase pushing through Padstow had been the long way around!

Our hotel room was the best all week – we had the biggest room in the building, a loft conversion with a big window overlooking the bay. It was quiet. The beds were immaculate and very comfy. It was brilliant.

Unfortunately we couldn’t really capture the view properly on camera, so here’s Sam drinking water out of a wine glass because we’re on holiday, dammit.

Padstow remained choc-a-bloc for the rest of our stay, but we still enjoyed it. A trip to the lobster hatchery, a walk through town (with one or two pub stops) and then a stroll up over the hill to the beach just to have a paddle for a bit.

Please excuse the accidental Hobbit scene recreation.

Dinner was eaten in a fairly upmarket restaurant called “Burgers and Fish” (does what it says on the tin, I guess?). We returned to the bedroom and, lying on the bed, I realised that I was seeing spots before my eyes when looking out of the window, so I napped for an hour.

After waking and getting cleaned up, we descended the hill into Padstow once again and quickly realised that I had been seeing black spots – the entire town was suddenly infested with flying ants! We ambled from pub to pub to avoid the ants and spent many hours talking and playing chess on my mobile phone, before retiring to the room to catch a chunk of Moonraker on TV before going to sleep.

The local spider population had a good day that day.

Some pubs took drastic measures to combat the ants.

I will say that Padstow has changed a lot in 12 years. Rick Stein’s influence has brought in a lot of art galleries, upmarket clothes shops and eateries trying to compete using “indie” cred. I had never seen it quite so busy, with a lot of the foot traffic clearly being hipsters and yah-yah yuppie types. I was disappointed to see the old Padstow cinema had been re-purposed (as a café or sweet shop, I think), and surprised to see the Spar still in operation. This trip brought a lot of closure to me, as I won’t be in such a rush to return to Padstow in the future. Ilfracombe reminds me of what Padstow was like 12 years ago, and I am glad to see that the town has resisted Damien Hirst’s attempts to “Rick Stein-ify” it. It’s funny, last year when we came to Ilfracombe in the off-season (May-time), we overheard an older couple in a pub complaining about how Padstow was now “too expensive for the locals to live there”. I should have heeded their warning, but I just had to see it for myself.

The Rainy Road to Harlyn

We woke up to rain and grey skies. I had hoped that the water on the windows was condensation, but no such luck.

We breakfasted in the hotel, paid up and then I headed into the rain to fetch the car and drive it around to the front of the hotel to save having to drag the suitcases too far. Within ten minutes we were at the Harlyn Inn, much to my surprise. The roads there were very narrow but I was suddenly thankful for the small car as we had no problems with oncoming camper-vans and tractors.

The hotel staff explained that the room wouldn’t be ready until two o’ clock in the afternoon. It was nine o’ clock in the morning, so I suggested going over to Treyarnon Bay for a walk around and…well, the other thing.

Treyarnon Bay

Treyarnon Bay is at the end of one of the most obnoxiously narrow and twisty roads I’ve ever driven down. You have to slow right up at certain corners as there’s no way to know if something is coming the opposite way at the same time, and there isn’t room for both of you.

Once parked up, I went into nostalgia mode.

“The little shop is still there!” I exclaimed.

Yep. Sure is a little shop. It’s still there. Shouldn’t have been so surprised, according to the guy running it it’s been there for 40 years previous too.

“Let’s go over this sand dune, we used to fly kites up here!” I beamed.

Uh-huh. Used to fly kites here. Yep.

“Let’s just go into this campsite a min, I want to get a pic of where Gran’s caravan used to be,” I ushered.

Yeah, that’s definitely not Gran’s caravan right there. But it used to be there, in a very similar style.

“See that river over there? That’s where Jim the cockatiel stopped to have a drink when he escaped that time,” I reminisced.

The family’s pet cockatiel once got out. It’s alright, we got him back. Long story.

The more I reminisced, the more I felt sorry for Sam. She seemed to be bemused by the whole thing but this really was a nostalgia trip for me. I had been quite selfish – I’d wanted to share some great memories but in the end all I’d found were echoes of moments long-past. This was supposed to be a nice sunny walk but instead it was a slog through grey, miserable wet sands.

Top: expectations. Bottom: reality.

I led Sam up over the cliffs towards Constantine Bay.

“Let’s go summon John,” I said. A comic book joke.

“How do you summon John?” she asked.

“Ah, that’s the trick,” I replied. “You don’t. He knows where you are. He’ll get in touch when he needs you. Just hope he never does.”

Over the damp grass we padded towards the cliff edge. There were more benches than I remembered, but the one I wanted was clear to see. Where once it stood proud on a rocky outcrop, years of erosion had brought the outcrop inland. The bench clung on to the top of the cliff, barely on grass any more. It was rusted, but someone had left flowers. It was quite a sad sight. A long way to come for a rusty old bench in the grey and wet, certainly.

Someone had erected a memorial seat out of stone. Inscribed into it was a dedication to “the Captain and his purple lady”. I’ve never considered myself a captain of anything but I felt it was appropriate given the purple stone I was about to present.

…I don’t even know what a Yard Arm is. Is it a shorter version of a Metre Arm?

Looking out over the cliffs, I rummaged in my coat pocket and was suddenly thankful for the rain, as it had saved having to transfer the ring from my coat pocket to a trouser pocket.

“It’s been a nice trip,” I said. “I’ve enjoyed reliving some memories. However, I think it’s time to make some new ones.”

I got down on one knee and presented the ring.

“Samantha Josephine Dyer, will you do me the honour of being my wife?”

She said yes. I cocked up the moment by having to ask which finger the ring goes on. I placed the ring on the finger and she hugged me.

“That was a f*cking long build up to that punchline,” I mused shortly afterwards. It turned out that Sam had suspected that the moment might have came that week. “And you wanted to do a weekend away in Cheddar,” I replied.

A Sharpish Exit

My plan had been to spend an afternoon and evening in the sun on Harlyn Bay’s beach, coming back to the hotel only for drinks and to retire for the night. However, torrential rain quickly put pay to that careful plan. We found ourselves first stuck in the bar playing chess on my mobile and then on my laptop. Later on we were confined to the hotel room, both attempting to enjoy reading a book, watching reruns of ‘Allo ‘Allo and Are You Being Served and playing games on the laptop¹⁰.

I felt trapped.

I didn’t want to spend all evening in the hotel room. This was supposed to be a joyous occasion but we were stuck in a small room doing the sort of thing we could do at home! I made the decision to write off the fee we’d paid for the room and head back home that day. We had some pizzas in the bar and then made our excuses and left. I’d like to mention that the staff were very understanding and refunded us 95% of the fee despite the fact that we had used the room and en suite.

The rain came down fierce as we made a bid to escape Cornwall, like something didn’t want us to leave. If we hadn’t left that evening I wouldn’t have been surprised to find some of the exit roads blocked the next day due to flooding. As we exited Cornwall into Devon the rain slowly crept off and by the time we reached Somerset it was dry. The only blip on the journey was attempting to come off at Exeter to use the service station, only to get lost on some four-lane roundabouts and then give up and hit the motorway with intention of trying the next service station along the line.

The journey home took around three hours, and the worst part was the news that our home town had been dry as a bone the entire day!

Epilogue (and Holiday Advice)

I posted the news about the engagement that night, and the amount of likes that flooded in was crazy.

Having done this journey, mostly to get engaged in style but partially out of a selfish notion of needing “closure” regarding certain holiday places from my childhood, I only have a few pieces of advice for potential travellers out there who are quite introspective like Sam and myself:

• Although a different hotel every night sounds like a good adventure, it’s an absolute pain in the arse transferring luggage from hotel to hotel. It also means you feel in a rush to see everything now as you will be looking to move on the following morning. If possible, maybe stay in the same hotel for two nights at a time – that way you can be settled for a few days and not have to worry about moving cars and baggage.
• B-roads might be quicker, but if you get panicky about getting stuck on narrow roads, in traffic, or on hills it might be worth sticking to the main roads!
• If you’re going to do something important, don’t bet one chance at doing it on a specific day and assume the best! Give it a few days and prepare a backup plan should the weather not hold out.
• Don’t be afraid to ditch a hotel if plans don’t work out. Be warned that you might not get a refund, but it doesn’t hurt to ask!
• Jesus Christ, only take one suitcase. We took a second suitcase just for a change of shoes and toiletries but it was a mistake and made moving the luggage a nuisance. In the case of toiletries, taking shampoo and bodywash is probably a bit overkill!

Finally, just for fun, here’s a house built on the cliff edge in Constantine Bay. It’s nice to know that some things never change.

Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | November 22, 2015 at 11:03 pm | Real Life | No comment

Tags: Cornwall, Devon, engagement, Harlyn Bay, holiday, Ilfracombe, Padstow, Treyarnon Bay, Wadebridge