Croyde - August 2009

There maybe an unwritten rule somewhere that says it must rain when I go on holiday. And by that I mean rain every day...

Perhaps if we hadn't gone back to Croyde, the scene of the last bad weather holiday. The one where I was nearly swept out to sea. Actually it wasn't as bad as that year, at least the sun did try to poke it's head out a few times.

We camped at the Bay View Farm campsite again, reasonable distance from both the sea and the pub, with fish and chips on the site.

Now here's the shocker, we managed to get the awning up without any problems or shouting of "ahhh it's blowing away." We then had a well deserved drink in the local, followed by many more drinks, until we could drink no more.

It wasn't all rain, as you will see from these lovely beach pictures there was blue sky.

It was raining all morning and then this...

Given there were reports of everyone holidaying in the UK this year (staycations and all that) Croyde was not fully booked up. We turned up without a booking to find the campsite half empty. Despite that the guy on the reception still insisted on checking over all his boards, shaking his head, before giving us our pitch in a near empty field.

Our fellow campers left leaving Burt all on his lonesome. Possibly our field was empty because it had no electric. The other fields did seem a little busier.

I did make it in to the sea again, once, on the one day where it was warm enough. And I think I may have finally cracked this body boarding malarky, as I enjoyed whizzing along at speed into the beach.

But all that said, it's our last time in Croyde. The weather was just to unpredictable there; it seems to have it's own microclimate. We'd read that this "microclimate" meant hot weather when all the surrounding areas had none, but in these days of climate change, they now appear to get rain when weather forecasts say it should be sunny. Locals tell us they've had 3 crap summers in a row now.

On the last night the wind howled a gale, with Burt rocking from side to side, as the rain lashed down, we decided it was definitely time to go home. The sun was shining when we woke. Then as we dismantled the awning and got it to the point of no return the heavens opened once again. So it's off to Cornwall or somewhere more sunny next year. Let's just hope those rain clouds aren't following Burt.

FYI - it was sunny in Surrey whilst we were away. All our plants had wilted and dried up in the heat. The chilli plants practically doubled in size! Typical.