Something dropped through the letterbox on Monday morning, so I wandered downstairs to see what it was. I had been expecting something from my mum, but this was a thick jiffy bag with a book inside. I hadn’t ordered a book, so had a slight panic that I’d accidentally spent yet more money buying something I didn’t need (and I definitely didn’t need it if I’d forgotten all about it...). But I got a really nice surprise when I opened the envelope and pulled out a little note on New Scientist headed paper along with the book.
So the disappointment of not getting a place on the project was made up by getting a nice new book and knowing that I was good enough to be shortlisted, and it was very kind of New Scientist to send me something even though I wasn’t successful.Day = made.
Our next bus was only a short 10 minutes or so, and it was to take us round to Mevagissey. The views along the road out across St Austell Bay were really pretty, but by the time I managed to get the camera out and turn it on we’d gone past the clear views so all I managed to get was a photo of some bushes haha. 
The boat ride was lovely and smooth (which I was really glad of as I end up feeling really queasy on bumpy boats), and we got some lovely views on our 40 minute journey.
Although the sun we’d had earlier in the day disappeared it still stayed pretty warm, and it was actually quite busy along the coast path. The first half of the walk was a lot of up and down hills, so being as unfit as I am I got worn out pretty quickly, but once we got to Par the rest of the walk was pretty much flat and went pretty quickly.
At one point “nature called” so I went round a corner into what I thought was a deserted field, as you do, and it was just my luck that as I was half way through an old man walked slowly over the hill towards me. It was clearly obvious what I was doing, but I couldn’t exactly stand up and try to pretend that I was doing something else. Major cringe. What then made matters worse was the fact that the man then decided to stop and talk to Steve, so I had to just stand around in the field waiting until he’d gone. I didn’t feel so bad when the man eventually left and Steve told me that the man had only started talking to him because he’d accidentally said “Hello sexy” to the man thinking it was me coming out of the field :p
Our room was amazing. Lovely big bed, massive TV on the wall, comfy sofa, big fancy bathroom, and our own balcony with chairs and sun loungers. We realised later on that we must’ve been given the wedding suite (which would explain the seat by the window at dinner), and our suspicions were added to by the fact that all the hotel staff who served us seemed to know which room we were in even if we’d never seen them before haha. We reckon they thought that either we’d just got engaged or Steve was going to propose to me :p.
After having showers and getting changed into non-walking clothes we headed down for dinner. I forgot to take photos of my food, but I had a trio of smoked fish (which I think were haddock, trout and salmon) to start, chicken with spring onion mash, root vegetable pureé and green beans with butter and pepper for my main, and lemon tart for dessert. I was so full afterwards, but it was all so delicious and really well presented.
In the morning I had a tasty full English, then we set out to make our way home via a stop in Charlestown. Charlestown is quite small, but it was packed with people. We round the Shipwreck and Heritage Centre, which had lots of interesting information and artefacts from shipwrecks, then a random section about natural gas in the middle which was slightly odd. We had fun being kinds and playing on the remote control boats though haha.
Afterwards we went on board the tall ship docked in the harbour which has been used as a set for lots of films and TV programs including Mansfield Park, the new Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland, Doctor Who and loads more.
There was a slightly random comedy sketch going on next to the ship with a bunch of people dressed up as pirates acting out an execution. I don’t know if there was really a point to it, but if there was neither of us got it, and the acting was quite bad and the costumes were a bit rubbish.