Gardens Galore, by Cathy
After leaving Plymouth, we took the train to St. Austell. Or, perhaps I should say that I took the train to St. Austell, as Jeff and Mick didn’t make it off before the doors closed. Uh oh. Luckily the next station/town, Truro, was close and our first transportation crisis was minor. Plus, Mick and Jeff really enjoy telling me how they’ve seen one more city than I have. We stayed for three nights in St. Austell, a very small town known primarily because of its proximity to the Eden Project. The “project” part of The Eden Project was taking an eyesore of an area that was once a china clay mine and making it into an “Eden.” The man behind this is Tim Smit, an archaeologist turned music producer turned sustainable development advocate.
The bus stop at the site is surrounded by lush green lawns, blackberry bushes, and lots of flowers, but this is quite ordinary for Cornwall. After buying our tickets and stepping out of the visitor center, however, we encountered the image we’d seen on brochures and online. And it was awesome. (the true meaning). Two massive biomes that look like ginormous semi-transparent golf balls partially buried in the earth. The smaller of the two is the Mediterranean biome and the larger one is the rain forest biome. Stretching over the top of these two structures, starting on a hill high above, is England’s longest and fastest zip line – and every so often someone flies over, body parallel to the wire, arms outstretched, and sometimes, vocal chords engaged!
Each biome is like a self-contained world. In the rain forest there are birds and tropical flowers, waterfalls and ponds and giant palm trees. In the Mediterranean biome there are California poppies, cactus, grape vines, and a full vegetable garden, including dozens of varieties of tomatoes. All this is done with a commitment to sustainability and reducing fossil fuel usage by taking advantage of solar, geothermal, and wind power. Interesting and humbling for all of us was a display on the wall, similar to this: If the World Were 100 People.
The day after the Eden Project, the Lost Gardens of Heligan were sort of a let-down (despite being Tim Smit’s impetus for the Eden Project). The property’s history is interesting. An estate dating back to the 1200s, its owners gradually added to the size and complexity of the gardens. In WWI, it served as a hospital for soldiers and in WWII it was a base for American troops. After WWII, the house itself was leased, then later sold, and the gardens were left unattended until 1990, when Tim Smit and one of the property’s descendants decided to restore them. The property is definitely pretty, and we did enjoy walking across the rope bridge (Mick loved hand-feeding a bird while waiting in line), but the walk along the public trail from Heligan to the darling harbor town of Mevagissy was even better. The highlight of Mick’s day was finding a toad on this walk, while mine was probably the delicious cappuccino that warmed me after getting soaked by a wave crashing over Mevagissy.
Our last night in St. Austell, we decided to splurge on KFC. Mm hm. Due to a scheduling mix-up, we lost our original hotel room and ended up at the Travelodge, which shares a parking lot with both KFC and McDonald’s (a foreign experience it was not). According to KFC’s sign, the chicken is 100% British, so we thought we’d better see if we could tell a difference. The verdict – nope. Jeff and I did have a good time impersonating British chickens though (imagine “ehw bahk, bahk, bahk” a la Judi Dench), much to Mick’s embarrassment. We also found the Egg McMuffins and soft-serve ice cream at McD’s to be the same – and we tested those several times.