Sunny St.Ives

After leaving the Isles of Scilly, we stopped over again on the Penzance Harbour car park before moving over to St.Ives for our stay on the Camping and Caravan Club Temporary Holiday Site at the Rugby Club. After sorting out a suitable pitch at the top of the site (more later?) we have put up the awning tent and off-loaded our camping stuff to give us more room inside!
AND - the sun came out for what has been a superb week, if still windy.

View from our pitch across the Bay

Bucket ready - requirement of the Site

One thing we wanted to be able to do is have enough electricity for our needs, without having to run the van engine. So far we had got a Maplins 13W suitcase solar panel though this has shown to be way inadequate other than to trickle charge. So just as we left Knutsford we bought a 28W solar panel. Together they give enough to charge the battery for our mobiles, and the lights/pump. However, they struggled to charge the laptops.

Our 2 solar panels on the dashboard

As it happened, near us on the campsite was a bloke who runs a motorvan service - we decided to ask him to put a bigger panel on the roof - a 100W. Yes, there's the expense but the result is that there is sufficient charge (even in cloudy conditions) to charge our appliances.

As the weather has been so good, we've been on the beach and into the delightful town.

This is pasty-land and the gulls give you that beady eye look!

"Give us your pasty!"

The picturesque St.Ives Harbour

The diet works! Wetsuit city!

All readers - please note the advice from the citizens of St.Ives.

It's not all beach here - we went to the famous(?) St.Ives Jazz Club to see Mike Westbrook's Big Band. They were absolutely brilliant with a full line-up - the 4 trumpets all taking solos and doing a number with flugels.

We've had a lovely fish restaurant meal and have taken a coach trip to the famous Minnack Theatre to see the comedy play 'The Complete Works of Shakespeare - Abridged' which featured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival some years ago - an excellent performance against a stunning visual backdrop.

"All the world's a stage ..."

Minnack Magic!

We're now halfway through our time here - seems we've been here for ages.
Pretty distracted by the excellent Olympics!
Well done Bradley Wiggins!