Mission to Minehead

Minehead is a town on the north Somerset coast and also borders the northern edge of the Exmoor National Park... it was also the location we selected for a 5 day break over the Christmas and New Year holiday. N, MO, JO, GO, NS, TS and yours truly set off on the morning of the 29th and arrived there mid-afternoon. We stayed in two largish, open plan cabins which were fully equipped with kitchens and two bedrooms in each.

After an excellent dinner, orchestrated by masterchef's MO, NS and N - out came the dreaded 30 Seconds! MO of course won again and would continue to do so whichever team he was in. Even when we switched to playing Rummy he would still win... a fact which he would continuously remind us of.

The bedrooms were pretty small with barely a foot's worth (30cm) of space between the edge and the wall. Naturally storage space was limited and of course when I came to put some of my clothes away in any of the drawers I discovered N had beaten me to it.

Day 2. After a lie in and a fry up breakfast we headed off into Minehead town centre to see what was about. We decided to split up... N and I took a ride on the West Somerset Railway which is the longest heritage steam railway in the UK and the others went and splashed around at Butlins. To the uninitiated Butlins is a holiday camp. You stay in chalets in a self contained complex which has swimming pools, a funfair, restaurants etc. The people that stay there tend to be lowlife chavtypes... tattooed and shavenheaded - and that is just the women!!! Anyway the others bought a day pass and enjoyed themselves immensely. Meanwhile N and I took the steam train ride down to Bishops Lydeard which was about 20 miles or so away. We had a quick look around the railway museum there, before getting the train back to Minehead and rendezvousing with the others.

New Year's Day... and we headed off in the afternoon to Lynmouth which is a small, picturesque seaside town about a half hours drive from Minehead. Our route took us across part of the National Park and on that particular day it was pretty misty which made driving a bit hair-raising! In Lynmouth we had a bit of a wander before ending up having tea and coffee at a local pub.

At long last it was time to go home... of course the temperature was still freezing and typically the windscreen on our car slowly froze up and we ran out of screen wash - so I had to pull off of the M4 and chuck a bottle of water over the windscreen and wipe it down. 3 hours or so later and we were home.