Friday 18th April
Day 2

Early in the morning we decided that we were going to go to Andy's local bike shop, Clarke's, to see if we could find a comfortable helmet for me so that I can get my motorcycle licence when I get back home.  While I was getting taking a shower, Andy decided to sneak on-line and check out PFK website to see if there were any interesting messages.  While there he discovered that Matt had invited us over for a visit while I was around so he PM'ed Matt to let him know that we basically only had today to visit with him since we were heading down to Cornwall in the evening.  He gave Matt his cell phone number and by the time I was ready to go to the bike shop in Accrington, Matt gave us a call.  After a quick conversation we decided to visit him in the afternoon after we stopped off at the bike shop.

We set out to the bike shop as soon as Andy got off the phone with Matt.  When we were almost to Accrington we remembered that it would have been a good idea to bring the sat-nav with us so that we could easily find Matt's place from Accrington.  Oh well Matt lived on the other side of Burnley so it wouldn't be a problem to stop off on the way back. 

We looked at a few of the helmets in the shop but there were very few flip-faced helmets like I wanted but fortunately one of them fit so I decided to get it.  Hopefully I wont have any problems getting it onto the plane on the way home. 

After that we headed back to Burnley.  By this time it was nearly lunchtime so we stopped off at a sandwich shop on Brennand St then went to pick up the sat-nav system to make it much easier to find Matt's place.  Unfortunately for me, the directions that the Sat-nav wanted to send me on were much different then the ones that Andy wanted me to tank and in the interest of peace and quiet I decided to follow Andy's persistent advice.  In the end we were able to make it to Matt's place fairly easily once Andy and the Sat-nav finally agreed on the route. 

We had a pleasant visit with Matt where Andy was thrilled to be privileged enough to sit on the PFK 'podcast' couch.  We chatted about various topics but mostly centred on PFK and the forum along with plans for a tank that Matt will be setting up in the future.  Personally I was enthralled with the original architectural features in his home.  I would love to live in such a place.

After we finished our tea it was time to head back to Andy's and start packing for the 'real' (as Andy put it) beginning to our vacation.  We loaded up the car with all our stuff and discovered that there was still a lot of room left over, which was a pleasant surprise since we were worried that we would quickly run out of room.  Since the loading went so smoothly we had time to sit down and make sure that we had everything we needed.  Once we were satisfied that we had everything it was time to head out.  So at around 6:20pm we began our drive down to Cornwall. Andy was like a little kid the night before Christmas.

Fortunately the traffic was fairly light and moving smoothly without any accidents or construction delays.  There was a light rain at first but that cleared fairly soon after setting off.  After Birmingham we stopped for a break and had our supper at the Burger King while we were there.  After that the traffic was really light so at times it seemed that I had the highway to myself.  One thing I still love about the highways here are the abundance of Cat's eyes on the road.  It definitely makes night time driving a lot easier.  We stopped off at another service station shortly before we turned off the M5 highway to fill up on fuel since we didn't think there would be any service stations open once we got into Cornwall proper. 

If I thought the M5 was a lonely road late at night, the A390 leading into Cornwall was a forgotten realm in the wee hours of the morning.  However this didn't mean that I didn't get past by cars coming out of nowhere and disappearing into the distance in the matter of minutes!  At this point in time Andy started to get really tired and was drifting in and out of sleep, which wouldn't have been too bad if he didn't start snoring so loudly during this time.  Unfortunately during this part of the journey it started raining again but since it was a light rain it didn't make driving any harder then normal.

Eventually we made it to the turn off for St. Austin and started travelling down some smaller lanes with tall mature hedges where it finally felt like we were in Cornwall.  We knew we weren't going to be able to park anywhere in Portscatho for the night and we wanted to make sure that we found a fairly safe place to park for the evening.  So shortly after driving through a small town we found a small lay-by where we could spend the night.  Unfortunately this little lay-by was probably the busiest stretch of road we could have found, as there was a lot of traffic going by at all hours of the night.  It made sleeping soundly a lot more difficult. 

Shortly after we stopped we heard a deep rhythmic rumble during the night and wondered what it was.  Andy thought it was a bittern or something very similar.  It would have been nice to see as they are supposed to be fairly difficult to see.  Eventually we drifted off to sleep.

<< previous page - next page >>