I woke in a state of some anticipation for today we are going to the Eden Project. I had wanted to visit for several years but due to a certain geographical inconvenience had never managed to get here.
In 1996, about three miles from St Austell, there was once a very large hole in the ground. It was a disused china clay pit that had reached the end of its useful life. It briefly courted fame when it was used by the BBC as the planet surface of Magrathea in the 1981 TV series of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but otherwise it just did what holes do and sat there.
Later that year, a chap by the name of Tom Smit came along with a rather grand idea. I should probably call it a Grand Idea.
Fast forward to 2018 and it has two huge enclosures consisting of adjoining biodomes that house thousands of plant species from around the world. The largest of the domes simulates a tropical rainforest and the smaller a Mediterranean climate. It also has an outside botanical garden that is home to plants native to Cornwall and the UK
A pleasant young man in the Eden Project ticket office cheerfully liberated us from £55, gave us a membership card and told us we could come back just anytime we wanted for the next year. He even took our photograph. It was like going through US immigration but without the fingerprints and unbridled hostility and aggression.
There was a long walk down a winding path to the tropical dome. It was hot and humid, not surprisingly in a tropical forest. We wandered happily around the dome looking at the luxuriant foliage, beautiful vibrant flowers, and spotting exotic birds and other wildlife living in the undergrowth. We stopped for a baobab smoothie which tasted a lot like pineapple. We drank from a water fountain where a guide told us we were losing a litre of water an hour in the dome.
I spotted a viewing platform high up in the centre of the dome. At the entrance to the steps leading up to the platform we were presented with a printed sign with long list of reasons why we shouldn’t even think of climbing to the platform. Were either of us pregnant? Did we suffer from vertigo? Back problems? Mobility issues? Are we prone to sudden heart attacks or strokes? Could we cope with extreme heat? Are our knees a bit creaky? Did we eat breakfast? Remember to clean our teeth?
Madam looked at the list of warnings and up at the steel steps and viewing platform suspended by steel cables and decided she wanted to go to the lower levels and look for a certain frog. I suspect she really snuck in another baobab smoothie.
I climbed up and up with a couple of stops on the way to admire the scenery. The platform hovered just above the tops of the tallest trees, I could have almost touched them if I hadn’t been gripping the hand rail quite so tightly.
The platform was hanging from steel cables and swayed gently which added a certain frisson to the experience. The guide told me that it was 34C on the platform and they closed it when the temperature rose above 37C. She said we were 100 feet above the ground but a normal tropical tree canopy reaches up 150 feet so still had some distance to grow.
I stood for a long time, sweating liberally, and looked down at the trees and the people walking below.
We had a look round the Mediterranean dome and the outside botanical gardens and in at an exhibition hall which had a smoke ring blowing machine. No really, it did. They were all nice and worth a visit but the tropical forest was the big highlight for me.
I’m sure you have already seen (and liked and shared) my pictures on Instagram or Facebook by now.
After another night listening to the boy racers, it was time to head to Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall.
It was a mild and sunny Saturday and we waited behind a long line of cars to enter the car park. I blinked when I saw that Lost Gardens of Heligan admission was going to cost £14.50 each to look around. I blinked again to clear my vision. It was still £14.50.
The Lost Gardens of Heligan were created by members of the Tremayne family from the mid-18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The gardens were neglected after World War I and restored only in the 1990s. They include aged rhododendrons and camellias, a series of lakes fed by a ram pump, flower and vegetable gardens, an Italian garden, and a wild wooded area with subtropical tree ferns.
We headed first to the kitchen gardens where they were growing a large quantity of beans, squashes, pumpkins, brassicas and numerous other vegetables that I neglected to note. There were all in very neat rows and well tended and mostly weed free. Far better than my allotment ever looked. Pens held turkeys, geese, chickens and pigs.
We moved on to the flower gardens to find that the flowers were also growing in neat rows.
It was like visiting a well-ordered and especially neat smallholding.
In the hope of finding something more interesting we headed to the Jungle, the wooded area with the tree ferns and a much advertised rope walk. The rope walk was, I guess, about 40 yards long and suspended above a small valley. It swayed from side to side in an interesting manner and rather reminded me of a children’s adventure playground. We were a dizzying ten feet above the ground. I stood on the walk and Madam took my photograph.
After the excitement we needed a sit down, so we sat for a while overlooking a pleasant pond on one side of the valley. Two loud, amply proportioned, older American women on the other side of the valley were discussing their trip to England and Scotland and how wonderful it was.
One confided to the other “The only problem is the size of their seats. Why do the British have to make their chairs so small?”
Travels With Madam 