Friday, September 1st.
John and I enjoyed a full English
breakfast out in the yard on this beautiful sunny day. We spent some
time talking about travel with our hostess, Karen, and her husband
who has just retired from a career in renewable energy. He has
travelled around the world working on windmill farms, including
Canada. He also drives a fully electric car, a Telsa, and loves it.
They have three horses, three dogs and one daughter still living at
home. Really nice people.
Since it was such a lovely day, John
decided we'd go to the Lost Gardens of Heligan. This is a huge estate
that belonged to the Cornish Tremayne family from the mid -18th
century to the beginning of the 20th century, and still
form part of the family's Heligan estate. Six of their nine gardeners
died during the First World War and then it fell into disrepair and
neglect for years. The restoration in the 1990's was initiated by the
same man, Tim Smit, who created The Eden Project, when he visited the
ruins and saw the potential. We spent a couple of hours wandering
around the gardens and down through 'The Jungle' where there is a
large area of semi-tropical trees and plants including tree ferns and
colossal rhododendrons and camellia trees. There were also several
large monkey puzzle trees. They had a summer program on site for kids
and a small farm with horses, sheep, west highland cattle and two
emus. Upon seeing the emu I heard a man say, “They do rather look
like a untidy bush on legs.”
After we left there we drove back to
Exeter via the moors. We arrived back to John's house about four, to
be met by Chrissie and Maya. I walked up to the local bookstore and
bought John a copy of Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly
Everything' as a thank you for being such a great Cornwall tour
guide. I also bought a book for myself called 'Prisoners of
Geography, Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About
Global Politics' because I have finished the 'Fractured Lands, How
the Arab World Came Apart', which I enjoyed. I learned quite a lot
about the history of the Arab world from the First World War from the
book and talking to Mohammad in Iceland. The new book is about the
role of geography in the politics of the world.
Chrissie prepared us a delicious quinoa
and halloumi salad for dinner and we spent the evening talking and
drinking a bit of wine.
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