Just got back last night from another weekend away in Falmouth, Cornwall (starting to imagine I live there!) Anyway, this wasn't exactly a holiday as one of my old school friends is getting married this year and asked me to be his best man, I agreed and, of course, it was my duty to organise the stag do! He loves the West Country and beer, and so do I! So we decided to spend a weekend in Falmouth, all very civilised of course (we're both in our 60s!) no strippers or being tied naked to lamp posts etc. more seafood lunches and evenings in interesting (and quiet!) pubs or bars drinking local artisanal beers!
To mix things up a bit we decided to take the train down to Falmouth from Reading (which was convenient for everyone) and I booked us all into a hotel right next to Falmouth Docks station to minimise walking with bags etc. I'd never visited Falmouth Docks station (we usually use Falmouth Town) but it's literally at the end of the line (see picture above)! Total travel time door to door was around 5 hours which was not too bad I reckon, hard to beat that using a car (with stops) and the departure time was a civilised 10:30 am arriving in our hotel around 3:30 pm ready to hit the town!
Having arrived in Falmouth in the late afternoon we headed out to our first port of call, a pub called Beerwolf Books, part pub part bookshop, it's usually quiet early on and there's usually a great line up of beers available to try, it was a big hit and the chaps (6 of us) thoroughly approved! We supped a couple of cold ones in there and by around 6pm people we getting peckish! At that point we retired up the hill to the Seaview Inn which is a pub and also an Indian restaurant, we ordered a range of street food like dishes and tucked into a couple of Verdant beers and delicious grub, at closing time we headed back to our hotel and were all tucked up in bed by 11:30pm (as all good OAP's should be!)
The next day we were all up by 9am and headed down to breakfast, after that we had a wander up the road to Gyllyngvase beach (see above) where I'd promised the old codgers a paddle in the sea! Paddle ticked off we stopped for an hour in the beach cafe there for some cold drinks and then headed around the coastal path to Swanpool beach and the Beach House restaurant for some lunch and refreshments. I've talked more about the seaview Inn and the Beach House in a previous Falmouth post so won't dwell on it here suffice to say that both places were a big hit with the boys..
After lunch we headed back to town and played a couple of games of pool in the Games Room (a pub games venue off the high street) things got quite competitive and we overran our time by a good margin, however, they didn't seem to mind and we had a great laugh taking the mickey out of each other over our atrocious lack of skill and coordination! When they finally kicked us out we wandered up to the Moor (a square in Falmouth) and picked up a cab to take us down the road to the neighbouring town of Penryn where the Verdant brewery (and their excellent Pizzas) awaited! The beer selection there was as impressive as ever (see above) and we settled in for an evening of conversation, laughs, drinking games and good ale!
I think we got back to our hotel around midnight (honestly can't remember) and all slept like logs! Now, our hotel wasn't that posh, it had to accommodate a range of budgets, but it's the only hotel in the world I've stayed in that delivers 6am morning wake up calls via Herring Gull!! (see above) At around 10am we all took a much needed head-clearing stroll into town for some breakfast, a couple of sausage baps later we felt able to have a little walk around some of the sights of Falmouth and the harbour stopping for cold lemonades (it was warm!) along the way. After lunch we headed back to the hotel bar for a quick pint (of Verdant Lightbulb) before jumping on the train home, it bookended the weekend nicely and we all sat on the train for the next four hours satisfied that a cracking weekend had been had by everyone!
