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.