You would have thought that I might have had enough of travelling but no. Early the next morning Ross and I were up and out of bed and into the car and off to Cornwall for ten days.
The journey was good and I really do like driving our Carisma but, after seven hours on the road, I was knackered.
I was grateful just to spend a day re-adjusting and wandering around Falmouth
where we were staying. I remember it well from holidays in the 80s when I would join
Gill and
Robert at Gill's parents' cottage near
Truro at a place called Feock. We trundled, had lunch, Ross slept in the afternoon
whilst I had a stroll and a drink and then we had an evening meal before an early
bed. Thus we set a pattern that was to last throughout the holiday.
I've been wanting to visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan since it was on one of the
TV gardening programmes and it was fairly sensational. My main problem with it was
that the most exciting part, the Jungle, was completely wheelchair inaccessible so
Ross didn't get to see the tree ferns and skunk cabbage.
Again we opted for a quieter day and so stayed round Falmouth eventually fetching up a
Pendennis Castle and its ramparts. Ross did lots of sketching and I began reading Daphne
du Maurier's Jamaica Inn having given up on the diaries of A L Rouse as
too much of a same thing. It's really alright. I know that this sort of novel was
dismissed in my youth as being too much like Mills and Boon but at least it has
clearly defined characters and the plot does have a psychological awareness if even if
it is gothic by tradition. I'm pleased to offer it a happy three stars.
![[Three Stars - Good]](3.gif){kind=small}
In the evening, we took ourselves off to the Falmouth Arts Centre to see Touching the
Void, an enacted documentary about a climbing accident in the Andes in the 1980s.
Everyone survived to tell the tale but there were moments when it was impossible to see
how that could possibly happen. Hanging over a precipice with a broken leg, one of the
climbers has his rope cut and falls into the crevasse of a glacier. His only route out
with his broken leg is to go down deeper into the glacier. The whole cinema was on the
edge of their seats. And as for the broken leg episode, well you don't actually see
anything, but there were heartfelt groans and cries from around the darkened room.
It's a fairly astonishing piece of cinema to which I'll award four stars.
![[Four Stars - Excellent]](4.gif){kind=small}
We elected to pass another quiet day on the Sunday and found a pleasing local beach where
Ross continued sketching and I continued with my reading. Having finished
the du Maurier, I started on Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code which is best described
as an erudite thriller; it has all the pace of a Robert Ludlum novel but it is
peppered with the sort of arcane facts that you usually only find in History of Art
textbooks. I was a bit ahead of the game with the twist, however, as there was a lot
of the material in the 1980s sensation, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,
basically that the San Greal is really the Sang Real or holy blood of
Christ passed on through His offspring. It's probably above average for this sort of
genre. But it is still average.
![[Two Stars - Average]](2.gif){kind=small}
So, we arrived at the big one - the one visit above all around which this holiday
had been planned - the Eden Project. Well, it is quite astonishing. The vista you
see in the photo opposite is a bit like being on the set of a James Bond movie. You
know that there's always a moment when you arrive at the baddie's lair and it is
some fabulous architectural concoction. I was sort of expecting the lake to slide back
and some Intercontinental Ballistic Missile to launch itself skywards.
The thing that I liked about the Eden Project was that it was educational without
being sanctimonious. I liked being introduced to loads of rare plants and having them
placed into an ecological context. But I didn't feel as though I was at school or
being lectured to.
We also liked the variety of art works scattered around the place. This Bacchanalian
sculpture was a good example. I also liked the pigs made out of cork bark. Having
finished of the Dan Brown, I ploughed on with Joanne Harris's Holy Fools, which
after the splendour of Chocolat and the disappointments of her recent novels
was a pleasing turn for the better but probably still only worth two stars.
We headed out for another garden on the Tuesday. This time it was Trebah and, frankly,
although less well know that Heligan, it was much better. It was a similar sort of
valley lay out with similar sorts of plants, rhododendrons, azaleas, hydrangeas, tree
ferns, Brazilian rhubarb, etc. But they had thought to cater for all visitors and they
had a motorised chair for Ross to borrow. As I pointed out to one of the staff, it
freed the both of us up to enjoy the experience.
Today was my fiftieth birthday. We did very little. We mooched in the morning
and, whilst Ross slept in the afternoon, I took a trip around the National Maritime
Museum. That done I settled down in my favourite dockside tavern with a pint and
began another du Maurier (this time My Cousin Rachel) which is rather good
and deserving of another three stars.
We finished the
day off with a long and most enjoyable meal at a very good fish restaurant. Probably
not the most exciting birthday I've ever had but one that was full of comfort and
joy.
Thursday brought another treat. On a visit into the Tourist Information Centre in
Falmouth earlier in the week I spotted a leaflet for Godolphin House and was impressed
by the simplicity and elegance of its design. There was, as Quakers say, something that
spoke to my condition. Anyhow, we took a trip there and it was fabbity, one of the
most numinous places I have been to for a long while.
The main house is Elizabethan and is in the process of gradual but thorough restoration.
Everything is being completely thought through and the results are stupendous. It
actually feels like someone cares about the place rather than its being a mausoleum
to some dead person's taste.
And the good experience extended right down to lunch which was served in a marquee in
the garden and was probably one of the healthiest of meals that we had all week.
And that was the end of our Cornish sojourn. A long drive back on the Friday brought us back home to a happy house and a grumpy cat. So all was well.