Hartland Quay

Today we thought we would drive down to Boscastle.  We've been there a few times and even thought of staying there once but in the end decided to stay in Padstow.  It was lucky we did as our booking was for the week after the disastrous floods on 16th August 2004 when cars, walls and bridges were swept out to sea and the village was devastated.

There was little chance of anything like that today but as we drove out of Bude and were due to turn right onto the A39 we could see the traffic was at a standstill.  Quick change of plan and we turned left then pulled over to see where we could go.  Somewhere called Hartland Quay not too far away in Devon looked promising, so we aimed for there.

It was a good decision.  Although there were quite a few people there it was much quieter than Boscastle would have been and much more pleasant.  Basically, a road down to the sea with some spectacular views and at the bottom, a small pub/hotel where we had a nice sandwich lunch.  The area is used a lot for filming with things as diverse as The Night Manager, Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca' and Enid Blyton's 'Mallory Towers' filmed there, amongst several others.  This is a view from the road down; the little white dots on the shoreline are people swimming and sunbathing, and I've added an extra of the boat used in the filming of the 2019 version of 'Rebecca'.

The Jazz festival starts tomorrow so we're going to be tied up with that for the next few days.  There are sessions going on all day in different venues around the town and we have 'stroller' tickets so can dip in and out of any of them as we like.