We’ve known of Padstow’s literary fame in connection with the novelist Rosamund Pilcher which has primarily centred on Prideaux Place but I heard the other day of another connection.  I may be stretching things a bit by describing it as “literary” but Padstow and specifically The Met are a large part of “The Power” by Colin Forbes!

A guest staying with us had bought a few books from a charity shop to read while she was here and suddenly found herself reading about the hotel she was staying in.  This is one of Forbes books that I haven’t read so I think I will have to search it out and get my own copy.

At last we have our web cam installed and working.  The next thing is for us to get it added to our web site, I’m not sure if this will be a quick addition or something we’ll need to add to the jobs for the new site but I can put a link to our web cam here.

We had the de-brief from this years swim today and thankfully it was fairly brief as all went so well!  The two main items of news to report are the total raised and the provisional date for next year:

Total raised so far - a record £16,200!  A big thank you to all who have swum, sponsored and otherwise donated to this great cause.

Next year’s date - subject to getting use of the estuary for the afternoon - is Saturday 24th July 2010.

The message from the organising committee is that we could not have done this without the help of all those involved from the canoe clubs to the sailing club, Rob, the Harbour Master, who is responsible for everything that happens on his patch of water and all the river users who take a day off and lend us their boats.

I received an e mail today from our friends at Cornwall Sustainable Tourism (Coast) about the growing problem of rubbish in the sea.  With such a high coastline to hinterland ratio and also with so much of our economy depending on the sea this is something I feel strongly about.  If you have time do please look at the Surfers Against Sewage website and also the SAS petition to try and do something about it.

As well as organising the petition both COAST and SAS do carry out practical events to keep our coast and coutryside clean.

This report is just to let you know that we have all our photos on the web, Claire just wants to make sure all her friends and family know that her picture was taken from a very difficult angle!  Have a look here at the photos.  Giles, along with his wife Debbie, look after our gardens but he has another string to his bow which is photography and he took all these photos.  Here’s his potted biography and his gallery.