 Anyone for tennis? You will need to provide your own balls and raquets but the hard court is there for anyone at this Caravan Club members only site.
That is not the only unusual extra here, as there is also a bungalow on site for your non caravanning friends to rent, and the final, not so welcome, extra of a large electricity pylon with attendant humming wires slap bang in the middle of the site. The wires do not cover any of the pitches but they do go over the warden’s office and the toilet block.
The site is kept to the usual high standards of the Club with an immaculate toilet block and laundry facilities. There are 60 pitches including 13 hard standings in the middle of the site which have open views across the valley to the local wind farm and beyond.
Do try not to be put off by the wind farm, which you can’t hear, and the pylon because this is a perfectly placed site to enjoy this part of Cornwall. It is situated only one minute from the A39, which despite being a single carriageway road is labelled locally as the Atlantic Highway, and less than one mile from Camelford which has a selection of restaurants, fish and chip shop and general stores which can supply most things. If you really need a supermarket the nearest one is at Wadebridge, ten miles away.
 You are six miles from Tintagel with its romantic castle ruins where King Arthur is supposed to have been born, and six miles from Boscastle the lovely little fishing village which has been rebuilt after the dreadful floods of 2004. You can learn all about what happened in the little museum and then climb the cliffs overlooking the harbour to visit the coastguard lookout station which was originally a folly built by a local resident. Was it to assist or deter smugglers? After that climb you will have earned the cream teas served in the several cafes around the harbour.
Seventeen miles away is Padstow or Padstein as they refer to it. Rick Stein seems to be everywhere. There is his famous restaurant, his café, his bakery and his shop. But to me the best thing about Padstow is that it is where they sell Morris Cornish Pasties. Apparently they are recommended as the best in Cornwall by the Daily Telegraph and I can wholeheartedly endorse that, twice!
 From Padstow you can get a ferry across the Camel to Rock or it is fifteen miles drive from the site. There isn’t really anything there apart from lovely sandy beaches but you can walk across the dunes or across the golf course to St Endoc Church which is where John Betjeman is buried. Its probably about the same distance to walk there from Polzeath, a surfers’ paradise, but with a path suitable for wheelchairs along by the side of the river Camel, it makes for far easier walking.
So if you are old enough to want the easy walk or young enough to play tennis all day, you can have it all here.
Jenny Sargeant
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