Biggest Waves Ever Seen

After staying in all day yesterday and having a massive stitching session on Venice while I watched The Osbournes, Con Air and season 9 of the X-Files. At least I achieved something: Venice is nearly done - just the sky and cloud patterns to stitch now. I'll take a pic and post it later on tonight.

So after feeling a little cabin fever after staying in all day I decided to venture out today so I left about 8 this morning, stopping off at MacDonalds for Breakfast before I drove to Newquay. It's about an hour away from Penzance. There was this bus riding my tail most of the way there. It's bad enough when it's a string of cars - but a bus - honestly! Still I made it in one piece and found a place to park.

Even though I've been in Cornwall a year already (yes it's a year now and counting), I've not visited Newquay in this time and have never explored it before. To say that I have never been there is not true, for Sean drove me there in August 1999 (eclipse week). We drove there, drove through the town, he got pissed off cause he couldn't find anywhere to park and then we left. So much for Newquay.

I started exploring my going around the top of the headland near the harbour and eventually found my way down on Fistral Beach.

Fistral Beach Webcam

I can clearly see why Newquay is the surfing mecca of the UK. The waves today must have been about 6 or 7 feet high. I've never seen bigger waves, even the ones hitting St Ives last July during a storm weren't this big! I sat in the downstairs beach cafe bar and read the paper before walking back to the town, and getting slightly lost coming back through the golf course - I kept my head down! FORE! lol

Newquay town center is not as bad as I expected - I've been told that it's the "Margate" of Cornwall, it's a little bit more upmarket than Margate. But the amusement arcades are the same. I had not been there more than 10 minutes when I was lured into an arcade with 2p shove machines - my one gambling curse! lol. I spent £3 in 2ps over the course of the next half an hour or so, but I did manage to get 2 bagpuss keyrings and a pig key ring out of them so the £3 wasn't completely lost.

Then I walked past a Somerfield supermarket. The first one I've seen in over a year. I went in there and stocked up on three multipack bags of Golden Wonder Salt and Vinegar crisps - I love the taste of them and most shops don't sell Golden Wonder crisps anymore. So I went to Newquay and bought: Crisps! How strange. lol

I then searched for somewhere to eat lunch and eventually found a Shark Bar cafe that was doing Sunday lunches. They were doing roast beef so I had that. The meat was a bit tough - but the potatoes and vegetables were nice and there was plenty of everything - too much really because I couldn't eat it all and had to save room for my carrot cake pudding!

After I had eaten I walked back down to Fistral beach - this time finding the road which makes getting there so much easier. I did intend to sit and do a bit of stitching on Venice - but it was a little windy - and I just couldn't take my eyes off those huge waves.

I'd love to be able to surf myself - one of my favourite movies is Point Break with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, and after watching that I "get" the whole surfing ethos and the thrill of the ultimate ride - but I can't do it myself, and even trying is probably going to mean I drown myself!!!

• first of all I'm extremely unfit
• a poor swimmer
• I have a phobia about my head going underwater (probably because I nearly downed as a toddler in a paddling pool).

I think I might try body boarding when it gets a bit warmer. This is just floating in on half sized surf boards in the shallows - much less energetic and dangerous.