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I said goodbye to the four Beach Buoys and their girls and we left our holiday home behind. The hotel asks you to vacate the apartments at 9am on the day of departure, which seems a little cruelly early, but I have two kids, so it wasn’t a problem. The apartment people are definitely treated as second-class citizens by the upmarket hotel. If you stay in the hotel you are given a dongle for the swimming pool with your key, if you’re in the apartments you have to put down a £10 deposit. As if self-catering living makes you somehow less trustworthy.
I thought about selling the dongle to a non-hotel resident for £20. That’d show them. But to be honest it’s pretty easy to just sneak in when someone else opens the door so instead I got my money back. See, you could have trusted me.
We breakfasted at the Meraki Coffee Co cafe which we’ve been to for the last few days. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who is going to stay in Woolacombe (which you all should). Really tasty and strong coffee (and the cappuccino came with real bits of chocolate sprinkled on top), nice food and enthusiastic staff (today, some young lads who I assume were the owner’s kids were helping out). It’s great to go somewhere where people are making the effort. It’s not always the case in holiday locations. I bought a big bag of coffee beans so I could carry on drinking their coffee once I was home. But whatever you drink when you’re on holiday never tastes as good when you’re not on holiday.
We made good time on our long drive home and were back by 3.30pm. Progress has been made on the renovations - the front wall smashed down by a drunk driver or Father Christmas on Christmas Eve has finally been repaired (we gave up on waiting on the guy who had come round in early January to have a look to get back to us). And our attic space is now all spruced up and ready for us to unpack properly (and play snooker against ourselves).
Once the kids were in bed, Catie gave me an early Father’s Day present of some fancy wine and fancy cheese, so the holiday could continue for another night. I do still have some work to do before I can take the rest of the summer off, but how brilliant it has been (aside from that one night of terror) to not have to think about work, beyond writing this fucking blog of course. Every now and again I question whether I should continue with it, certainly on a daily basis (though I know that if I stop doing it daily it will just peter out)…. But I suspect I will plough on, however dull it gets. Sadly it’s usually a bit more interesting on holiday… a bit.
