Travelling to Cornwall with my dad

30 years ago, when I was around 12 years old, I fondly remember my trip to Cornwall with my dad and siblings. My dad rented a 7-seater Nissa Serena, which was a rather ugly-looking car and sounded like a truck with its loud diesel engine. To make it worse, he got it from this local car hire place in London, which seemed a little shady. From the start, it felt like the car wasn’t in the best of health. Nonetheless, my dad decided to go ahead and make the planned 6-hour journey to see family who live in Bideford, Cornwall.

Looking back now, it’s quite amazing that my dad, who doesn’t really know how to read or speak English, managed to use a map to plan his route and drive us over 250 miles to Cornwall. He didn’t have the luxury of Sat Nav or Google Maps on our phones like we do these days.

We managed to get to Bideford Cornwall and somehow the rickety Nissan Serena got us there in good time and in one piece. However, on our journey back to London it all changed. Clearly the 250+ miles we had done to get to Cornwall was just too much for this car. On our journey back the car started to struggle, for some reason it would not go faster that 50 mph. I remember it also started to rain and from recent conversations about the trip we also found out my poor dad was suffering from a horrible stomach-ache as well. It took my dad 12 hours to drive that car back to London.

This journey with its positives and negatives got stored in our minds forever as a memory.

30 years on, a couple of days ago my dad randomly mentions he wants to go on a road trip. I asked, “where to?”, he replied “Cornwall”. Straight away I remembered the trip from 30 years ago and got excited. I could now do the journey I did with my dad, but this time with me as the driver. It was an opportunity I couldn’t miss and the weather in the UK was on top form, so it was a no brainer.

I got to planning and decided we’d head out nice and early on a Friday before the school summer holidays to avoid the tourist rush. This time we headed to Bodmin in Cornwall, as we also have family there, and no I’m not related to the beast of Bodmin, lol.

Just like the first trip 30 years ago, I decided to drag along at least one of my siblings. The drive from London to Cornwall was beautiful, especially once we were out of London. All along the way, my dad was saying that he can’t believe he managed to do this trip once upon a time without a satnav.

Along the way we stopped at the Moto Services on the M4 Westbound to check out the Prayer Room on the M4, which is the only one available at the moment in that direction. I took a video to help fellow Muslim travellers find the Prayer Room on the M4 motorway easily.

Check out the video for directions to the Prayer Room at the M4 services in Leigh Delamere. On our return trip, I realised that to access the prayer room on the M4, we had to get off at the junction 17 of the M4 and drive back westbound and then to rejoin the eastbound M4 we had to drive to Junction 18 and turn around, which adds around 30 minutes more to the overall journey.

We arrived in Bodmin nice and early, spent time with family there. As it was Friday, we needed to find a mosque to pray our Friday Jummah prayer. There aren’t many mosques in Cornwall, we found out the nearest mosque from Bodmin was in Truro, which was a 45-minute drive away. This mosque only opened on Fridays for Jummah prayers. There was one other small prayer room in New Quay that also ran Jummah Prayers, but we opted for the mosque as it was more spacious.

The Mosque in Cornwall is called the Cornwall Islamic Centre. It’s an old Church which has been converted to a mosque. Check out their website https://www.cornwallislamiccentre.org/ – It was wonderful to see so many people attending the mosque for Jummah. The community was a mix of Muslims from all different backgrounds, and everyone was extremely welcoming and friendly.

See Cornwall Islamic Centre on Google Maps

After our Jummah prayer we decided it only made sense to go visit one of Cornwall’s beautiful beaches. The sun was on full blast and the idea of cooling down in the sea was very inviting. We drove to Carbis Bay Beach, and I must say it’s a stunning beach. Often in the UK beaches are called Sea Sides and I think that’s a true reflection of what they are, as most sea sides aren’t that amazing in the UK, especially when compared to beaches in hotter countries. But Carbis Bay was definitely worthy of being called a beach, it really felt like we were in the Mediterranean Sea.

Here are some pictures of Carbis Bay.

We concluded our trip by heading back to Bodmin, spending some more time with family and we drove back to London in around 5 hours unlike 30 years ago where it took us 12 hours. It’s truly a blessing to be able to travel with my dad, especially as I know my siblings and I get the travel bug from him. May Allah reward all our parents abundantly for their sacrifices and grant them the highest place in paradise, ameen.

رَّبِّ ارْحَمْهُمَا كَمَا رَبَّيَانِي صَغِيرًا
Rabbir hamhuma kama rabbayani sagheera.
My Lord, have mercy upon them as they brought me up [when I was] small.