The Lost Gardens of Haligan

Friday, September 1^st.

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 -18^th century to the beginning of the 20^th 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.