The Amazing Travels

Eden Project

July 6 - thought I'd mention my birthday is a week away. Today we drove to Cornwall, which looks amazingly enough like Devon except instead of "Devonshire Cream Teas," they had "Cornish Cream Teas" Fun, huh?

So in essense, we drove 2 1/2 hours to look at plants. Lots of plants. They were cool plants, and there were lots of them... but they were still just plants.

The best part of the journey is when we reached the green lin with the light green line through the middle = The A30.

[Journal Diagram = Omouse's Guide to British Road Maps]

Blue Lines - Motor ways - unfortunately none go the way we wanted. :(
Two Green Lines - A road with two lanes in both directions. Almost as good as a blue line.
Green Line - A Road - One lane of traffic each way, but still has roundabouts and is rather (green squiggly line).
Red Lines - B Road... looks okay on the map, but avoid if you want to get anywhere anytime soon. (really squiggly red line)
Orange and White Lines - travel at your own risk.

Okay, really... The Eden Project was once a chalk quarry and has now been turned into a huge botanical garden site with two grand biodomes. The British really do take their gardening seriously. I cheated and got the student rate of 6 Pounds while everyone else went for the full price of 12.50. Starving, we stopped at the cafe at the front entrance and had paninis. I had a nice one with cheddar, peppers, and a basil pesto. The others had bacon (ham) and tomato chutney... which still makes Clare's face munch up.

I made the mistake of saying "Oh, it's not really hot in here," when we first walked into the tropical humid biodome. They razzed me when we got further in and I took off my jumper.

In the temperate dome, I was very tempted to pick the ripe apricots off the trees and eat them. The California section was a bit disappointing. They didn't have any manzanita.

On our way back home, we decided to try and find an cream tea and ice cream place in St. Austell, a nearby town. Coming out of the Eden Project..

The only problem being is St. Austell's is horrid and there was bupkis there in the way of cream teas or ice cream.

As I was saying before Mel so rudely interrupted, we had to follow this old couple in a blue Mazda that was going about 20 mph slower than legal. When Clare finally overtook them, just before the roundabout, she missed the sign, went completely around, took the right road and ended directly behind... the blue Mazda!

After St. Austell's being a bust, we had dinner at a motorway services stop and drove home witha stop at Tescos for food, phone minutes, toilet, cough medicine, pens, and petrol. We're home again, scribbling madly in our Journals and eating sticky buns, chocolate and tea.

posted by omouse @ 10:46 PM