Cornwall Tour - Sunday 1st May

Now as you may know Lou is quite hooked on this Weight Watchers thing, so she dragged Hamish for a run at 7am in the pouring rain to kick start the day (feeling very guilty about the fudge and chocolate cake from the day before!)

The weather did not improve at all – the plan today was to head back east to an attraction called ‘The Eden Project’ (more on that later).

On the way we spotted through the mist and gloom a big castle type thing in the distance. Being crazy young Bandit’s we took a detour to see what it was all about. We found St. Michaels’ Mount just out of the town of Marazion. This was a big castle on an island that is accessible by a granite path at low tide; it was really cool and looked very impressive. If it wasn’t a howling gale then we probably would have walked the whole thing but Lou was wearing very inappropriate shoes and was a bit grumpy.

The history behind the Mount is that the ancient Greek geographer Pytheas, visited the island in the fourth century BC. If this is true, it is one of the earliest identified locations in the whole of Western Europe and particularly on the island of Britain. It was originally built as a monastery in the 8th century! (man that’s old).

Happy to be back in the warmth of the car we tootled off to the Eden Project. Now this was Hamish’s choice of activity but it actually turned out to be a hidden gem. It is a garden essentially including the world's largest greenhouse. The complex is dominated by two gigantic enclosures consisting of adjoining domes that house plant species from around the world. Each enclosure emulates a natural biome. The domes consist of hundreds of hexagonal and pentagonal, inflated, plastic cells supported by steel frames. So it is very futuristic.

It is primarily targeted at kids to teach them all about the environment so we fit right in...

There were some really cool flowers and sculptures as well as the biomes (which Hamish insisted on referring to as ‘Thunder domes’ or ‘Bio domes’). There were 2 biomes, one was the rainforest and one was the Mediterranean one. It was really cool, except our camera kept fogging up in the humidity of the rainforest.

In the Rainforest biome

In the Mediterraenan biodome

One of the highlights was their café - to keep in theme with the environment and all that hippy stuff, the majority of the food was vegetarian and they had a system where you helped yourself like a buffet and then you went up to the till and told them what you had. I am pretty sure they get ripped off a lot, as their prices were quite expensive. But the food was good and we were left full.

Back on the road again we wanted to take a scenic route to our next destination of Torquay. So we ended up Paignton that is like the town before it. I don’t know what the Gods were playing at but we arrived in this town and found they had a massive motorbike rally on. Hamish had a huge smile on his face. Once all that was done, Lou insisted that we needed to have cream tea as we were in Devonshire and we hadn’t had cream tea yet. This journey to find a nice place took us up the main street of Paignton. What a scary sight. We have established that all English seaside towns must have a main street full of gross pubs, cheap takeaways and little casinos. They also do things like build a cinema on the seafront. Obviously no one comes to these seaside towns to actually spend any time on the beach or in the sea.

Lou excited about finding more motorbikes

Anyway we found a half decent café and actually had a really good cream tea, clotted cream and jam must be one of the world’s best combos.

We then continued our short trip to Torquay for the night where we came across a really interesting sight. We were driving down the main road which hugs the coastline and there were these massive waves that were coming up over the barrier onto the road with so much force that there was seaweed everywhere! Because we like cool stuff like that we parked up and went to go have a look. That’s when we noticed a few police cars and saw that a yacht was being smashed up against the rocks! We hung round and watched for a while and it was clear from the behaviour of the cops that there were no people on board so we just watched as all the boards and rubbish from the yacht was being swept round everywhere.

There is a yacht in there somewhere....

We found our hostel and checked in. Then we went exploring in Torquay and found pretty much the same things that we had seen in previous seaside towns, although it did seem a bit nicer. Especially as it’s tourist tag line was “The English Riviera”. Now we haven’t been to the actual Riviera but I really hope that it’s not windy and cold and grey and have 24 hour Bingo pubs….

Torquay’s historical economy was initially based upon fishing and agriculture but in the early 19th century the town began to develop into a fashionable seaside resort, initially frequented by members of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars while the Royal Navy anchored in the bay and later by the crème de la crème of Victorian society as the town's fame spread.

We had yet another budget dinner at the hostel and another early night.

Highlight: The Eden project was much better than expected, reminded me of being on a school science trip.

Lowlight: The weather was bit rubbish.

Interesting fact #1: Torquay was the home of the writer Agatha Christie, who lived most of her life there. The town contains an "Agatha Christie Mile", a tour with plaques, dedicated to her life and work.

Interesting fact #2: Torquay was also the setting of Fawlty Towers.