Not Dead Yet: Padstow

The weather had picked up and out of the wind Sunday was a pleasant, quite warm day. Just right for catching the bus to Padstow.

I was a little puzzled as to why the bus ride, according to the timetable, took nearly an hour, when it was only about 10 miles away.

It soon became clear why the route took so long, the bus would deviate off the main road to the airport and then to tiny villages, sometimes a couple of miles from the road, to go to stops, where no one either got on, or off!

Not only that, some of these lanes were only wide enough for the bus, so no vehicles coming the other way were going to get by. A lot of reversing had to be done by oncoming traffic.

Then there was the idiot who had gone to church and parked in such a way, there were only about 2 inches to spare either side for the bus to get past. As the car already had a scratch on it, the driver asked a passenger to get out and take a photo of it.

In another lane, the male driver of a car coming the other way, didn’t pause in a place where we could have passed, he tried to force his way down the lane, shouting at the bus driver to back up. The bus driver stood his ground and said it was company policy that they were not allowed to reverse round blind bends. Thankfully the bus driver had the patience of a saint and while the car driver ranted and raved, he just calmly sat there saying, he didn’t mind, he was getting paid and would wait all day if need by. The car driver wouldn’t have looked foolish at all if he had just reversed the necessary 5 metres in the first place, instead of making an utter twit of himself for nearly 10 minutes and then getting himself a round of applause from the passengers when he finally did reverse.

Padstow was pretty, although full of tourists. Silly us, it was our first warm, sunny Sunday, should have thought about that. We had a walk round, enjoyed a pint of local ale, sitting in the sun on the harbour wall and then headed back to the bus station, which conveniently has the Rick Stein, take away, Fish & Chip Shop right by it. What better way to fill the time, waiting for the bus, than sharing a beef dripping fried Cod & Chips? The trip was worth is for that alone!