Cornwall Part 3

The day before our last day in Cornwall Bronte, Chris, Kim and I went to the Eden Project (the others fancied a cider farm and walking).

The Eden Project is a large botanical garden with outside plants and then two biomes, one which creates a rainforest environment and one which creates a Mediterranean environment.

The tickets were about £30 which is pricey but you can visit as many times as you like for a year and walking around you could tell it must cost a lot for the upkeep. Everything was geared towards conservation and sustainability.

We had a nice morning ambling about the plants and reading the plaques. The Mediterranean Biome was a pleasant temperature and they hold weddings in there.

 The Rainforest Biome was boiling hot.

It had a waterfall and huge water feature which made it humid as hell, it had it’s own cold room you could rest in part way round. I think in the summer when there are a lot of visitors it must be horrible to queue in that heat.

Roul roul partridges live in the Rainforest Biome as well as lizards.

Once we were done and had had coffee and cake (vital part of all trips out) we took a ride back up to gift shop up a ridge in a tractor and we could see all of the gardens from above, it was built in an old mine.

After that we met Mum, her boyfriend Kerry, Charles and Ellen back at Crantock and took a trip down to the beach.

I made a highly artistic sand sculpture as I’m not much of a sunbather.

Then we looked round the caves and rock pools the others had found a few days before.

One of the caves had carvings in them, they had been head height but over time the sand had eroded away which made them look a lot higher up.

Charles and Chris headed up a sadly unsuccessful crabbing expedition which mainly involved them throwing bits of bacon in the water and poking rocks with a hot pink fishing net.

And then we walked back up the beach which took ages because it was a very large beach. We were lucky with the weather whilst we visited but the sea was freezing.

The next day we left Cornwall and drove back to Wiltshire.

We stopped off in Devon.

For a good old cream tea (for any American readers a cream tea is a pot of tea that comes with scones, clotted cream and jam – not tea with cream in it).

Once back in Devizes, Bronte showed Kim and I the miracle that is Derek’s Deals. Derek is the manager of a Spar shop who seems to have a lot of time on his hands and has become a cult figure in Devizes. Every week he releases a new youtube video every week detailing his savings often with a current affair theme. The video the week we went had Kim Jong Un in it.

Then we visited the white horse carved into the hill near my Mum’s house and petted the cows.

Mum drove Kim and I to Heathrow the next day, Harrods and a lot of the other shops were cashing in on the latest royal wedding. We picked up Kim’s Auntie Debbie a themed tea towel.

Our flight back was a day time flight this time and it was lovely, we had a nice lunch.

And watched some movies, although I was distracted half the flight wondering what the hell this man’s belt was supposed to be made of and why he thought that gold, silver and orange was a winning combination.

Then we had a little snackette before landing.

I had to have my photo taken a billion times re-entering the USA and made a game of it by pulling stupid faces until a security guard told me to stop smiling. Spoilsport. And that was our trip to England.

Cornwall Part 2

Our second day in Cornwall we went to St Michaels Mount which is a tidal island with a castle.

When the tide is out you can walk to it from the mainland across a cobbled pathway, when the tide is back in you have to sail there or get a bit wet.

It was very pretty to look round, the style of the old fashioned buildings had been preserved, there was a free tour and a couple places to buy snacks and ice creams.

A few people still live on the island that work on the island for the National Trust as well as Lord and Lady St Levan who live in the castle.

A movie was filmed here a long time ago and they painted a mural on the side of a cottage of St Michaels Mount, they were going to paint over it once filming was done but everyone liked it so they decided to keep it.

We paid for a ticket to see the castle, you had to climb a steep cobbled hill to get up to see it.

But the view was worth it.

There was a church at the top and quite a few stately looking rooms with the usual castley type things like weapons etc. There was a picture of the Queen up there showing her visit a few years before.

I was wondering how the hell the Queen and Prince Philip made it up the steep hill but I asked a staff member and they said they were driven most of the way in a golf buggy and then the back entrance to the castle has a lift – cheaters.

So that was nice, we stopped for an ice cream and got fish and chips on the way home.

The next day Bronte, Chris, Kim and I went to St Ives (the others had a beach day) for an explore. We found an arcade and were wowed by Chris’ shooting skills… I wouldn’t want to be a pest on his farm!

We introduced Bronte and Chris to pacman smash air hockey where 20 little pucks come out at random intervals confusing the hell out of everyone.

Bronte won some key rings which she broke 5 minutes later and Kim and Chris showed off their dance skills on dance dance revolution (Chris wasn’t as good at dancing as he was shooting).

We walked around St Ives harbour and browsed the shops.

Then had a coffee served by an over enthusiastic waiter who was so friendly I thought he was going to sit down with us and drink our coffee for us.

That evening Kim and I met up with my lovely friend Amy who is working as a doctor in Truro.

We hadn’t seen each other in years so we got to catch up over pizza, we shared a dessert pizza too which I hadn’t had before (thin crust is the best).

Cornwall Part 1

We visited Cornwall after stopping off briefly in Wiltshire, the first stop was in Padstow.

It was imperative to fit in quick pasty stop, there is no pasty like a Cornish pasty.

We used to have summer holidays in Padstow when I was a child so parts of it seemed familiar and parts of it I couldn’t remember at all. Kim had started the Cornwall questions – “Is this where Cornish Hens are from?” she asked looking round as if expecting to see one…. “Err…probably?”

It definitely felt bigger, we found the old house we used to stay in on our holidays ‘Mermaid Cottage’ although it had been repainted a different colour since the times we used to stay there.

After a mooch around Padstow we left to go to Crantock where the Airbnb we’d rented was. I hadn’t tried Airbnb before but it was really simple and because it was split between 8 of us it worked out to be cheap. The house we stayed at was new and the owners lived in an apartment to the side of it so we saw them briefly a few times, they’d left us some homemade scones which were very nice. One of my colleagues and I at work in Connecticut have a long standing debate over the definitions of scones, biscuits and cookies. What she calls biscuits I call dodgy looking scones, she thinks scones are triangular, she thinks what I call biscuits are cookies… and I think she’s wrong on all accounts.

So we had a snoop round and dumped our luggage.

My sister Bronte had organised a grocery delivery so we put all of that away.

There was a lovely garden with lots of seating and a fire pit.

Then we walked down to Crantock Beach which was massive but very lovely. We didn’t realise quite how fast the tide was coming in though so Kim, Charles, Ellen and I had to outrun the tide for a good few minutes while Bronte and Chris succumbed and just let it take them.

Bronte’s boyfriend Chris expertly grilled on the barbecue.

 And then we played my brother Charles’ cards against humanity which was very funny.