Happy Birthday, Boscastle?

Life has a funny way of reminding you of things whether it is to do something or just to pause and smell the caffeine.  I have been toying for weeks with the idea of posting a former travellog/journal entry of mine from a visit that my significant other, my daughter, andI made (no second child at that time) to Cornwall, England.  I thought I would post this blast from the past as a tribute to my hubby of better (or worse) birthdays than the one he is currently spending away in South Korea today.  But what can I say?  My first life reminder came in the form of not being able to find the original handwritten memoir after remembering that the majority of my scribblings have been immortalized on a now-defunct computer that is pining away in the closet.  “Oh, n0.  I don’t need anything off my computer,”  I told my husband as he laboriously set up my new one.  I am so not tech-savvy that even if I was ambitious enough to try and retrieve the stuff myself —it would be a catastrophe on a different level other than the one I am about to relay.

So, life continues to spin its web and I brought my laptop with me so that I could post this oh-so-special tribute to my hubby while I am away from home and sweltering in drought-stricken San Antonio.—  Another clue to where I am leading with this.—  However, once again I am having technical difficulties and can’t get the wi-fi connection that I need to use my laptop at my parents house and I am using a desktop instead (the horror!).  The other equation to life’s lil reminders came in the form of Discovery Channel’s “Raging Planet.”  My parents were watching this program last nite and the current rage was floods-or flash floods to be more precise-something San Antonio could use desperately right about now.  I paused, stared at the TV and boasted:  “Yeah, that was how Boscastle was like…”  Not even five minutes later my parents yell, “Hey, they are showing Boscastle.” 

For my husbands 32nd birthday I planned a surprise mini-break to Cornwall or more specifically Boscastle–where  Tintagel, the legendary castle of  King Arthur resides.   We spent five hours in the car driving from our home in the peaceful Cotswalds (imagine the bird-tweeting music of a scenic woodland scenario) to the temultous English coastline known as Cornwall and checked into our in-the-middle of where? Bread and Breakfast before heading off to lunch in Boscastle.  We had lunch in an old restaurant (see future posting of retrieved original story) and headed off to the Witch Museum.  A must see that is no longer there.  After the dark, stuffy musuem we walked out onto the coastline in a light mist.  Luna and I wandered about as Daddy explored the crevices of the rocky coast for a bit.  As we walked back I noticed that the water of the little inlet that we had passed was getting stronger and was no longer a peaceful, stream of water.  Although alarm bells were not quite ringing, I remember thinking how quickly all of this could change and how stupid people were for getting too close to the water.  You don’t live in San Antonio without learning the dangers of flash flooding. 

It wasn’t until we stopped in the tourist shop that my spidey instincts kicked in as Greg and I heard the shopkeepers talking, phones ringing and the words “sand bags” being bandied around.  At that point Greg and I decided to leave–and he could add to this, but for some reason we decided to start making our way up hill instead of trying to head back to the B and B.  I could be wrong, but I think it had something to do with being hell-bent on seeing Tintagel, 100-year flood or not.  The water was quickly rising, but once again, being from San Antonio we weren’t too alarmed for the opposite reason—we have seen worse.  But I remember being amazed and finding it strange as I saw ordinary household items flowing out of homes and stores and down the street.  This is when things began to turn bad. 

We made it uphill, but quickly found ourselves having to turn around in every direction we went.  Roads were being closed and cars were quickly finding themselves stranded and in some cases washed over.  Realizing that Tintagel wasn’t going to happen we started to slowly try andmake our way back downhill, but soon found ourselves also unable to do that as the waters were now rising and moving quickly downstream.  As we pulled over with other stranded cars I started making escape plans in my head and unbuckled the little one in her car seat as I frantically squashed scenes of trying to unhook her car seat underwater in my head.  It was finally dawning on us what we were dealing with and how there really wasn’t much we could do other than sit put and hope for the best.  Luckily, it was right at this time that the owner of the field we were parked against opened up his gate and allowed our car and several others to pull into his field and out of the fast moving and rising stream.  Now in relative safety we were finally able to see what was going on in Boscastle below us.

We watched in amazment as Britain’s “largest emergency rescue since WWII” took place and people were being airlifted from rooftops and cars were being swept out to sea.  Mostly the cars from the car park we had just exited a short time before.  And all I can say is that it is a shaky feeling when you realize that you are part of a historical moment and surviving someting  awesome as Mother Nature at her finest. 

Somehow we made it back to our B and B, but not without it’s own trials and tribulations (namely a flooded out car and flat tire).  We decided to cut our losses and left the next day.  And although it wasn’t the birthday that I had planned for my husband it was one of the better ones, because we were together and we were doing things that we like to do.  Happy Birthday, Honey!  May the next flood be better!

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