Wheal Of Misfortune!

If you've been wondering why Carbis Bay usually gets sarcastically referred to as Cardboard Bay, here is a f'rinstance of what the place is really like.

Customers visiting the Tesco in Carbis Bay should take care when parking their cars. In particular, they should try, if possible, to avoid driving the car into the 25+ foot hole where a mine shaft has opened up!

Back in January a spokeswoman for the store announced that contractors were going to be brought in to repair "one very small uneven surface of the car park".

This has now turned into a fairly substantial operation to fill in what a spokesperson for the general public has described as "a bloody big hole".

The uninitiated (and gullible) might think that Carbis Bay is some ancient settlement that has perched on the heights above St. Ives since the dawn of time. Actually, almost all of it, including the name, is a relatively modern invention. In deed, it was only in the 1950's that developers started building west of the main road and for many years the place was just a collection of mines, hence all the 'Wheal' and mining-related place names.

Tesco's hole belongs to the old Wheal Providence mine but it has, of course, now been renamed by the locals as Wheal Tesco!

Flip Flop

The streets were cordoned off, the police patrolled the streets and the crowds gathered in their ones to witness the resurrection of the not-even-vaguely legendary St. Ives Pancake Race.

For those of you who missed the extensive coverage on Sky Sports Live the race featured fearsome competition between five girly entrants who flipped their pancakes womanfully down Fore Street from The Union to The Sloop.

We had to make a pile of pancakes, some of which we managed to flog to the unsuspecting for charity and so, all in all, a bad time was had by all!

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