August was full of family fun this year. We closed the site for a weekend to new campers in order to make merry as a family, with my brother and his crew, a cousin and her lovely red setter, my sister and her tribe and even our mum camped.
The campfire got used lots for cooking and brewing tea and general chatter and watching stars with a bevvy or two. And it was a delight to hear children's laughter and guffawing from the adults. So huge thanks to Caia, James, Jack, Poppy, Adrian, Kate, William, Sam, Amanda, Wendy and Gaia, Graham, James and Dominic for making our time together so special.
It also gave me the excuse to fend off the campsite maintenance and gardening chores in preference for some beach-time and I enjoyed several hours with family, toes in the sand, trying to tan those portions of me that are usually hidden by shorts, wellington boots and a strappy top, whilst gossiping, reading or generally watching family antics.
Porthminster Beach was very popular with the family. An easy ride from the campsite to St Erth Railway station, a short train trip along a gorgeously pretty route to St Ives and then straight down onto the beach from the platform.
Porthminster always seems to have the guarantee of sunshine, even when the rest of the landmass is in cloud, there are beachside cafes and restaurants, a mini golf course, toilets and it is a short and pleasant walk into town to some great bookshops and clothes boutiques and any amount of art and food outlets.
Even the inclement days didn't stop our fun with part of the family decanting to our cottage and packing in for rainyday lego and warhammer, silly hat games and makedo lunches.
And rainydays meant I got to spend even more time with my nephews - playing with ponies amongst other things - than perhaps I would otherwise have done if they had been visiting sights throughout this end of cornwall.
Sometimes you just have to ignore the rain though and get out into our landscape anyway. We had a fab afternoon with waterproofs donned, down on the beach at Marazion rock pooling, finding rock gobies, baby montague crabs and the vicious velvet swimming crabs, the starfish often are more difficult to spot, but all the more splendid when you found one.
I had a very damp horseride with my sister-in-law, where the imagination had to work really hard to conjure up the view of St Ives and Godrivy and the look-back to Penzance and MountsBay that we should have had, riding up over the moor from Castlegate Quarry to Nancledra. But the tack needed a clean anyway so another rainyday opportunistically gave way to a tack cleaning session in the kitchen and coffee with a friend.
And we had a grand walk out to Logan's Rock and a climb up for the compulsory "rocking the rock" with the view of one of my favourite beaches, Pednevounder on the climb away.
The new queen of compost loos got christened and well utilised over august.
And we also took charge of a couple of pigs on the farm, which the kids loved to feed and to pet and we hope will fatten up for christmas!
Generally though, August passed us by fast and furious and time
seemed to be in short supply, which is why the August blog page is being
written in September! But the gates are now shut to campers and Ashfarm is just me, the dog, a good book and the rest of my motley crew and menagerie.
Thanks to everyone who has stayed with us this year and special thanks to all those who took the time to write something in our visitor's book. If you forgot, or couldn't find the time whilst packing up, you can always add something to our page on ukcampsite.co.uk online. Have a very lovely autumn, winter and see you all in 2016 season!
Keep peaking in at the blog though, to see what happens out of season and say hello to me on twitter @ashfarmcampsite
