Hi, I’m Gypsy the greyhound and I thought I’d tell you about my first holiday. My owners only rescued me in November and didn’t want to leave me alone for their usual spring holiday so they hired Kissinger the Splitty. I wasn’t too sure at first when he arrived on Friday night but he smelled okay so I thought I’d have a week in Cornwall with them. On Saturday, I climbed aboard and lay on the bed on my quilt and we set off for St Ives with the Heartbeat CD playing. It was a bit of an experience as we cruised at 50mph with everyone overtaking us. Kissinger was well behaved though, he’s a bit noisy compared to my usual ride and sometimes he struggles with the hills and you have to make sure you leave plenty of time to brake. He is 40 years old after all! We arrived in St Ives and stayed at Ayr Holiday Park overlooking the beach. They have the most amazing loos there and have won awards for them. With the awning up there’s quite a bit of space and I was able to lie inside or wander out on the grass when I wanted. As I was lying in the sun another O’Connor’s Campers van arrived and set up next to us, there was a nice dog called Bill in that one! At night I slept in the van over the engine. The gas heating worked really well and I wasn’t cold at all considering it was March. We had two great days in St Ives, I ran on the beach, went to The Sloop Pub, saw a steam train and then we set off for Botallack. On the way I went around Geevor tin mine, saw the beam engine at Levant and saw old engine houses clinging to the rocky coastline in the sunset. The next day, I met another greyhound called Roman in St Just where we had a chat outside the Co-op. Then we were off to Sennen and I had a fantastic run on the beach and had a paddle in the surf. A quick cup of tea later and we were off again to Lands End where I went on a fishing boat. We stayed in St Buryan that night and went to the St Buryan Inn where they served food late especially for us and I got given some free biscuits! The next day we went to The Lizard. We went to Marazion. Praa Sands, saw the huge radar dishes at Goonhilly and stayed near Coverack. The weather was starting to turn nasty but the van and awning proved to be watertight and Pete wasn’t upset that we returned the awning a bit wet. We went all the way around Cornwall from Okehampton and surprisingly Kissinger only used £50 of unleaded fuel. He was great! My owners have told me we’ll be going again!
