Near death, Peeing in Public and Countryside Cows

The Road Trip

It has been called the English Rivera by the Lonley Planet. The south western rim of the English coastline is a popular vacationing spot for the English and a great place to catch the last of the autumn sushine. For £75 you can rent a car for three days. It's a great way to see the English countryside, just make sure you bring along plenty of knickers with you because the getting there could leave you in a wet mess. Countryside roadways are barely two car widths wide and with trucks and coach buses coming at you from behind blind corners, it'd be a surprise if not one passenger came away from the experience unsoiled if not alive. Holding your breath won`t help.

Padstow is a quaint little fishing
village in Cornwall. It's famous for its cornish pasties and incestial family lineages - "this is me wife, me sister and me goat" jokes a local Englishman who will be left unamed.  Walking along the emerald green cliffs overlooking a sea of breaking white caps you can spot kite surfers taking advantage of the tantamount surf. Opposite the bay you can see a bank of honey coloured sand, lush green pastures and a 32 hole golf course. You can see the moving bodies of people and farm animals who inhabit the island or have made the £3 ferry ride across to visit. This sandy formation is called Rock. When the tide goes out it leaves acres of open space for exploring. Gusts of wind kick up the sand blowing it about like the a Middle Eastern desert; sand bits stinging your face like millions of tiny needle pricks. Everything was peachy until the annoying  little pangs of nature came calling and a toilet was no where in sight. I decided to brave it and attempt going behind a big mound of rocks and tall grass. In full squat and keeping in mind the delight of near reprieve, I failed to notice some tourists who had been slowly making their way down the cliff directly to my right. Oblivious, I shifted my gaze and saw a man staring straight at me, with a camera. In one fowl swoop I hiked up my pants and trying to save myself any more embarassment, walked quickly, but with as much elegance as I could muster, to catch up with my family feeling the burn of judging tourists` eyes all the way. Barely 100 meters further we found the public water closets.

An English countryside trip wouldn`t be complete without a bizarre incident with farm life.  Take the narrowest English road add some traffic, then throw 30 rushing cows and bulls into the mix. It`s one of the craziest things I`ve witnessed in England, other than die hard futbol fans. The splotches of  white and black hurling at you is like watching a farm tsunami. You haven't seen the shepard and dogs several yards behind yet, so you think Old McDonald's farm's just let out  for the afternoon hay sale.

The Limey