When Covid waved its nasty little wand and sent us all to our homes like the bad fairy in Sleeping Beauty, much time was spent bucketlisting and planning for the day when someone - anyone please! - might release us. Plans made at that time had a dreamlike quality, a sense that they might - or might not - ever happen.
One such plan was hatched involving ourselves and three couples - old and dear friends who used to holiday together in Salcombe every summer when our children were knee-high or barely anything more. Bigger plans had been offered up involving all four families, our combined 14 children, their spouses and children and so on. Totally unworkable and a logistical nightmare. Start again. So we booked a house on the beautiful Scilly Island of Tresco for just the eight of us and as I write, we are here and it is perfect. But back to the start of our journey when we, from North Yorkshire, had the furthest to come.
We set off early Friday morning to begin our holiday with an overnighter in Bath staying with my oldest and most dear childhood chum, Alps. She's Alps and I'm Stigs. Don't ask! We always say we'll go to Bath and do a touristy thing or two but actually we hunker down and chat and it's so, so good for the soul. Up and off early the next morning with just over 200 miles to go down the M5. It was deliciously quiet southbound and bumper to bumper northbound, this being the end of the half term/Jubilee holiday. We try not to say out loud how quiet the roads are/how brilliant not to be in a queue/how well the journey is going etc because that ALWAYS ends in disaster. But I must own up to some moderate patting on the back that we weren't at an airport queueing for hours, but I did do it silently!
We arrive in Penzance first and in time for a very nice crab lunch at a little cafe near the front. Then on hearing that two of the other couples (couple 4 not arriving till Monday) had just landed (not literally) at the heliport we joined them in the departure building. Actually there's only one building, arriving or departing. There's rather a lot of folks in there already and definitely more than one helicopter-load. Hmmm? Greetings exchanged amid much laughter as it's a lot of years since we've all been together. Then one lot of passengers are ushed out to the helicopter and take off.... And ten minutes later they're back. Tresco is fog-bound!
We wait, drink coffee, chat and hope for a window in the weather. But increasingly it's looking like no one is going anywhere - on or off the island. Ahead of the game, my beloved starts to look for places to stay nearby because the fifty or so people looking disconsolate in the waiting room are all going to need places once the nice feller from Penzance Helicopters gives us an update. By the time the inevitable happens we are already booked into a holiday cottage in St Erth that looks half decent and is only a few yards from what proves to be a rather nice pub.
So night one of the holiday - or rather night two for us - is spent in a pretty cottage in St Erth and we feel lucky to have found somewhere to stay. By the time we've had a few wines and a nice supper it feels like a good result all round - except that the alternative transport brilliantly organised by Penzance Helicopters on Sunday is not a 15 minute flight but is a 2 hour plus ferry to St Mary's and then a smaller ferry onwards to Tresco via Bryher. Not being a good sailor I know that I will be staying on deck throughout, regardless of weather, which turned out to be damp and cold for the majority of the voyage. But as we pull into St Mary's the sun breaks through and having hopped on another, smaller boat, finally we arrive less than 24 hours after originally planned.
To be continued...
https://penzancehelicopters.co.uk
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