Lu slept like an absolute trooper last night, and so woke up in a cracking good mood this morning, and we snuck downstairs for a special Nanou no-rules breakfast, to let her parents have a lie in.  Two bowls of cereal, a dippy egg, a cup of tea and a slice of toast later, she declared herself ready for the day.

We had errands to run and so I took an approximate route in to Penzance to Sainsburys, and then we left the car in the harbour car park and re-traced the footsteps of all the children who came before her, to the tootiest tourist tat shop in the whole of West Penwith. You know the kind – or, at least, you do if you’re of an age to remember seaside holidays when a stick of rock was the height of sticky, glamorous achievement rather than an ironic piece of ‘vintage confectionary’!  (This statement makes me sound both old and like a Daily Mail reader.  Send help!)

This shop has a very tired, dusty shark in the window and sells pirate flags, rock pool nets, flip flops that are well past their perish by date.  It has carousels full of dusty shells – cowries, spiky shells, abalones, all manner of mostly-not-available in Cornwall shells.  It has cuddly octopuses, souvenir voodoo keyrings, t shirts bearing the legend “my grandma went to Cornwall and all I got was this lousy t shirt” and so on.  When my children were small, there was a fishing port just along from the main harbour and in the early morning you could visit and buy fish straight off the boat.  We often did, and walking back to the car took us past this shop.  As far as my children were concerned, it was a treasure trove of forbidden delights. Everything it sells – EVERY.THING – is so tatty that they were more or less strictly forbidden even to look through the window.  But every once in a while they would confound me by saving their own money, and then we would go in.  And spend hours – HOURS – picking over the smorgasbord of tat available to them for two and a half of your British pounds.  And then I would have to take the treasure home, and resist the urge to put it directly in the bin.  And I would curse the plastic, knotty friendship bracelet, or the churned out chip of ‘precious crystal’ or whatever tatty bit of nonsense they had squandered their precious pennies on.

Anyway.  Rules like this don’t apply to grandchildren.  In fact, as it turns out, Lu legitimately needed a rock pool net and so we had to visit this shop.  Plainly such nets are not sold anywhere else in the holiday capital of West Penwith.  So we picked our way along the harbour, looking at all the tied up boats, and the seagulls, and the strange hedgerow man picking amongst the stones in the dry dock. And we crossed the busy road, and there it still is.  I can’t remember its name.  We know it as the shell shop.  So we chose a net, and we looked around the shop.  Lu was unimpressed by the shells, but she wanted to get a voodoo keyring for her mum, and then we found one for her dad.  And then we found some cuddly octopuses and so I offered her one (because she was known, in utero, as The Kraken) but she said she thought it should be for her sister.  So we got it for her sister.  And when that little haul came to waaaayyyyy more than two and a half of your British pounds we decided we were done, and picked our way back over the harbour wall, and into the car and home again.

It’s amazing how rules develop a great deal of ‘give’ between kids and grandkids.  It’s absolutely unimaginable that I would ever have bought my own kids anything in that shop, but one small, blonde grandchild makes eyes at me, and suddenly I’m happy to drain my wallet…

Our plan for today consisted of Sennen Beach.  Which is truly the best beach in the world.  All my children have learned all of their sand-eating skills on this beach.  It has rock pools, surf schools, rocks to clamber over, and sand that goes on FOREVER.  It is a surf mecca, and just blissful.  I have spent many of the happiest moments of my life on Sennen Beach.

Today’s visit had a slightly melancholy purpose, as well as general family fun.  A year ago, almost to the day, we had to have my dog put to sleep.

 

Genil was a podenco, and generally the derpiest dog that ever lived.  He loved a beach, and we have kept his ashes on top of the grandfather clock in the living room for a whole year, waiting for a suitable beach to leave him on.  Genil also loved running, people, other dogs, wind and chips.  Sennen Beach was perfect for him.  So this morning, despite the rule that says dogs aren’t allowed on Sennen Beach between Easter and September, I took him to the rocks under the lifeboat house, and scattered him amongst the rock pools.  It was all very quiet and lovely until later, when we were walking along the seafront as the tide rolled in and I saw a little cloud of dark sand swirling into the sea.  Happy adventures, big dog.  You will love it on the beach.  And I love that you are in a place that I love, and that has drawn me back my whole adult life.

 

Otherwise, it has been a remarkable day on the beach for small people.  Lu has discovered that the sea is SPLASHY!! This is very exciting news.  I mean, she hasn’t actually braved it into the whole sea; just some left behind pools.  But it was properly splashy and she loved it!

We were also very entertained by Sennen primary school, who seemed to have every year group out on the beach doing games, this afternoon.  The smaller children were skipping and catching things; bigger children seemed to be running and jumping and the biggest of all were surfing.  If school sports had been like that when I was a kid…. etc. etc. It looked like amazing fun!  Also kite surfing.  I *so* want to have a go at that.

 

 

There has definitely been lots of sun, blue sky and adventure, today.  I think we may go back to Sennen tomorrow – perhaps via Mousehole, to check whether the storm kitten is still there.

 

 

We finished up with a little walk along the seafront, to the lifeboat house.  There’s a lovely art gallery just beyond the life boats.  And the working harbour, which yielded some more nice pictures.