Looe Club Site Visit Sept 2024
We started this trip with a short two night stay in Devon on the last week of summer, on the Sunday we changed campsite and county, we moved from Stoke Gabriel in Devon to Looe in Cornwall. We had decided to avoid the dual carriageways and follow the A3022, A379, A374, & A387, this took us to Kingswear and the ferry across the River Dart, then to Torpoint in Plymouth and the ferry across the River Tamar, a first time going wheels wet for “Phyllis” the VW_T5 dampervan-van.
We arrived at the Looe CaMC club site at 1.30 pm, checked in and after a little confusion found the pitch that suited us best, near to facilities for Myrtle's frequent loo trips! We had a quick lunch and then began setting up the awnings etc... had a major ooops, I had forgotten the Kadar connectors for the drive-away awning to attach to the dampervan-van’s Fiamma cassette, luckily we had storm straps that came with the van go awning for vehicles that could not or didn’t use Kadar connectors. We was impressed with the campsite, it has a small swimming pool, crazy golf, tennis court, ballpark and a decent children’s playground to keep the little persons out of trouble. The site is set on different levels with lots of hedges separating the site into discreet nooks and crannies.
Our first official day of the trip was a bit of a miserable day, mostly light rain showers, some heavy, we decided that we wasn’t going exploring Looe today, but to have a quiet campsite day, during a break in the weather we went for a short walk to the local village of Barbican so I could pick up some beer for tonight’s dinner, Fluffy the staffie-doodle was not happy she really didn’t want to walk today and was on a go slow, the village turned to be further away that I had anticipated and we ended up doing a 3 mile round trip.
Tuesday’s weather was better, light clouds with plenty of sunshine, after a quick breakfast we left the campsite and caught the bus into Looe. We arrived before most of the shops were open, so wandered around the narrow streets down to the beach, and then back into the town. We had a traditional Cornish pasty (well it would be rude not to!) from Sarah’s Pasties, who was highly recommended as the best place to buy one in Looe. I can see why Looe is popular it is a lovely place with a nice beach, picturesque harbour and filled with shops selling local goods as well as some of the more familiar chain stores.
Wednesday was another sunny sunrise, although a bit chilly with the wind, after breakfast we caught the bus into Polperro, a small fishing village just west of Looe. Now this was what my idea of a typical Cornish village is, loads of white washed cottages built into the hillside, with winding narrow paths a small working harbour and a small beach. We had a rather disappointing Cornish cream tea at Pasty Takeaway, the scone was a generic supermarket type and there was a building site making loads of noise. We wandered around the quaint local shops and ended up at the small Polpero Heritage museum, a little gem with loads of local history information ranging from the fishing industry to smuggling. Before we caught the bus back we shared a tapas style lunch of baked scallops with a small side salad with bread and then shared a second better cream tea.
On Thursday we did not move from the awning, it was absolutely bucketing it down its started at 9am and did not stop until after 10pm that night.
The forecasted yellow weather warning for Cornwall had been cancelled overnight, we woke up to a clear blue sky, we had a quick breakfast and went back into Looe for a last visit. Had a second breakfast after we got off the bus, could not get near parts of the harbour this morning as they was filming an episode of Beyond Paradise, which was set in and around Looe and Polperoe, we did see Kris Marshall the main star of the show. Had a fish and chip lunch next to the harbour wall before catching the bus back to the campsite to pack up ready for the trip home tomorrow.The awning had mostley dried out by the time we got back, we just had to dry of the ground sheets and some of the built in ground sheet. We wound out the cassette awning so that we could have our dinner and site outside.
