Happy Campers in Cornwall…. .

So, we’ve been ensconced on the campsite we’ll be working on in deepest darkest Cornwall now for exactly three weeks.  Doesn’t time just fly?  Now I would like to say that I haven’t had time to get around to updating the blog because we have been sooo busy learning all aspects of campsite work and I’ve not had even so much as a minute to myself.  Alas, that would be a lie.  I’ve had oodles of time to get a blog post out but I just keep finding other things to do.  What you will notice as you read on through this post is that there is a distinct lack of photos.  The camera hasn’t really seen the light of day since we arrived as I’ve been travelling light when out and about, just enjoying it all without feeling the need to photograph anything and everything.  However, that has in turn caused me a problem.  Thoughts of writing a blog post without all the pictures to add colour to it has left me mute.  Having no pictures to break it all up means I’ll actually need to write something worth reading and that has been enough for me to put it off day after day after day.  Anyway, I had an email yesterday from one of my regular readers (aka my Mum) asking me what had happened to the blogging.  (Note to self – You can run, Jane, but you can’t hide).  Suffice to say it has galvanised me into action today to get a blog post out come hell or high water.  Of course I found other things to do until this evening before making a start though!

For all you regular readers you will know that we are down in Cornwall for the next two months or so to work on a campsite during the mad summer rush of the school holidays.  Campsite work has always been something we’ve talked about doing as it would appear, from the outside looking in, to be quite a nice lifestyle choice with a mix of indoor and outdoor work.  After having been in continuous travel mode for over two years we fancied a longer stint in the UK this year and a chance to stay put for a little while doing something different.  Instead of volunteering through Helpx we thought that as we were looking to be stationary for a couple of months at least then we might as well see if we could get some paid work.  So, in keeping with our motto of trying things we’ve never done before when we are on our travels we applied for a couple of campsite jobs.  There were lots we could have applied for but we specifically only really wanted just two to three months and most of them are for the whole season.  I have to say we were also quite picky about what we applied for.  We wanted something not on a main road with plenty of walks and cycles direct from the site, a pub or two we could walk to and for the site not to be too big.  That’s not too much to ask is it?  It appears not as where we are has ticked all those boxes with the added bonus of a Lidl within cycling distance.  And a Wetherspoons should we need it!

So, here we are at Lanyons Holiday Park not far from Redruth which will be our home until sometime in September.  It’s a smallish family run site with a mixture of privately owned static caravans, a couple of holiday lodges and four touring fields.  The owners and staff have been exceedingly welcoming and genuinely want to make our time here a happy one.  We arrived a week before our start date to get to know the site and the local area although having been born and bred in Plymouth and taking most of our holidays in Cornwall before moving to Wiltshire twenty some years ago we know it quite well.  It’s been really great being back in Cornwall visiting some old haunts even though the traffic seems to have doubled in the ten or so years since we were last here.  That and out of town retail outlets.  I don’t remember retail outlets this far down in Cornwall before.  Tim has joined the village male voice choir to go some way to fill his musically starved diary and those re runs of Doc Martin we’ve been watching have come in handy for understanding the local lingo.

After our first week of gallivanting around the local area we were more than settled in and ready to get cracking with some work.  Incidentally, we couldn’t have had better weather since we have been here.  It’s been sun, sun and more sun but with a nice breeze to keep the temperature just under boiling point.  So what have we been doing workwise?  Well, Tim has been happy as a pig in sh dreamland getting to use all the different boys toys helping with the mowing, strimming and caravan moving whilst I’ve been trained up in the office to cover a couple of days a week in there when the school holidays start.  Sandy, the campsite pooch, is in charge of maintenance and likes to sit in a bed behind the ride on mower to over see things.  At fourteen and a half years old he’s an old hand and couldn’t be happier when he’s in the thick of it.  If he’s left behind he howls and howls!

Aside from that there has been plenty of painting, cleaning, sweeping, mopping, hoovering, dusting and bin emptying.  Oh and ironing.  Yes, I have had to get reacquainted with an iron.  I haven’t used an iron in over two years and even before that it rarely saw the light of day.  I was very happy to do most of the ‘pink’ jobs in our previous life as I worked less hours than Tim and didn’t have a commute but I’m afraid I drew the line at ironing.  It was every man or woman for themselves on the ironing front.  I only ever ironed anything if it would really look like I’d slept in it if I didn’t iron it so getting to grips with ironing again has been a steep learning curve!  The site has two holiday lodges and four static caravans that they rent out which we’ll be doing some of the changeover days for.  Hence the need to iron the bed linen.  Ironed bed linen?  Who’d have thought! To be fair it’s all ironed under one of those press type irons but I’ve had to learn how to fold a fitted sheet to get it flat under the press.  Jeez, that was a mind bender.  FITTED sheets are called FITTED sheets and not FLAT sheets for a reason.  This is because they do not fold FLAT.  Period!  Still, it’s another skill to add to my CV.

There we have it then.  We are thoroughly enjoying campsite life from the inside looking out and happy to be a part of a community again, even if for a short spell.  Our friends, Nik and Phil, came down for a fleeting overnight visit and treated us to a meal out which we really appreciated and it was lovely to see them for a good old chin wag.

All in all then the campsite life is suiting us perfectly.

Proper job!