Cornwall

On our way down to Cornwall the motor way was flanked on each side by woodlands, really pleasant and preferable to the concrete barriers we found in many places in Europe, but it does mean that you don't get a good view of the countryside. However once we got to cornwall we would see around us, right?  No way - the roads are bounded on both sides by high hedges, stone walls and earth banks. Also once you are off the major roads the country lanes are single lane only and our rental car at times was scraping mirrors on both sides in the hedges.. Even when there is a slight widening for passing traffic it is only possible to squeze through By pushing both cars into the hedges. In any case it has been driving Gillian round the bend as our GPS plunges us down roads that would not in any sesible country qualify as a private driveway.

For the first 4 days the weather has been, in my opinion, miserable with cold windy days.  However today (Thursday) we have had a warm sunny day and enjoyed an outing to the Lost Gardens of Heligan.  These gardens were part of an estate until the 1920's then fell into disrepair.  In 1991 a project was started to restore area to its former glory and the results are impressive.  There are 2 area, the gardens and the estate, but we only managed to get around the gardens starting with the New Zealand section which is a path through tree ferns, pitisporums, rimu, titoki and manuka with an undergrowth of ferns.. Other areas included an Italian garden with a small pond, a large walled flower garden and a "kitchen garden" that is more like a large market garden with an area of over an acre containing every sort of vegetable you can think of, many of them being heritage varieties they are trying to save.

The previous days we had 2 outings, the first to the Tamar Otter Park which is a privately run animal park.  The otters were in enclosures heavily surrounded by notices warning against putting hands hear the animals as apparently they are capable of removing a finger.  The otters movement reminds me of flowing water, particularly when they are moving as a group, but the smell is not that of clean water.  They smell pungent and strong.  We were given a talk about the otters as they were fed and another about 6 of the park's dirds of prey, though due to the location they did not fly them (the last time they did they lost a peahen to an eagle).  In the forest area of the park they had deer and wallabies roaming.

From the park we drove down to visit the Jamaica Inn, an old pub in the middle of wht had been Bodmin Moor.  There is a museum in the pub covering smuggling, shipwrecking and the author Daphne du Maurier who stayed there and wrote some of her novels there, one of which is entitled The Jamaica Inn.  After laeving the inn we tried searching for Dozmary Pool, the reputed lair of the lady of the lake who gave Arthur his sword.  We could only see a corner of it from the road, but it did not sem exceptional being a small lake surrounded by grassland.  We then headed east to find a stone circle called the Hurlers mentioned on the map near Minions. This turned out be 3 circles in a north south line on a genltly sloping moorland. At the top of the slope there is supposed to be a prehistric setttlement, but we did not go that far.  On the way here we passed a sign to Trethevy Quoit and not knowing what this was we went back to investigate it.  The Quoit turnd out to be a megalithic tomb or dolmen consisting of several flat tones set upright supporting a huge capstone roof.  This would have been covered with an earth mound.. The habit of ancient people of draging huge stones around the countryside is bizarre given the lack of technology, buyt I suppose they were a status symbol.

The other outing was to Tintagel where there is an ecellent display of information about the castle and the area in the information centre and then visited the Great Hall of the Fellowship of the Round Table, an establishment founded by a wealthy businessman in the 1920's.  Here there was a 10 minute sound and light show of one version of the Arturian legend and a wander through the great hall itself with stained glass windows of the shields of various knights complete with a potted history of each.  I was astonished by the amount of effort put into filling out the characters of these mythical folk and noted the author had not tried to sugarcoat the sins of the knights who were not perfect beings.

Anyway we have 1 more day here before heading to the Cotswalds for a week.