Cornwall

On the recent Bank Holiday weekend we got up at stupid o'clock and jumped on the motorway and headed south and west to Cornwall to meet Bel, Andrew and William, and Seeph and Michelle.

We'd hit some traffic trouble on the way down (which meant it took closer to 6 hours than 5) so we arranged to meet the rest of the crew at the Eden Project. The Eden Project is a series of Biomes located in an abandoned quarry, filled with plants and trees from ecosystems ranging from the UK, through Mediterranean, all the way to Amazonian and African rainforest. The setting is incredible, like something from Mars, and the environment in each Biome felt like you were really there...

This was all once a bare abandoned quarry - about 10 years ago, in fact...

Now there are towering biomes filled with tropical and mediterranean plants

The girls in the gardens

The boys facing off with a monster representing all of the waste that they would produce in their lifetimes...

From there, we headed back to our hotel in Mevagissey. The other guys had warned us that we were staying in a pirate village...we'd thought nothing of it, but every shop had pirate flags flying and we began to wonder. When we got to the harbour, there really were pirates - or at least people re-enacting pirate lifestyles, lead by Captain Deadeye Jack (who even had his own shop). The town was hosting a pirate festival, the pubs had pirate karaoke and the restaurants had special pirate menus. But even without the pirates, Mevagissey was a great town, with great seafood and a really nice vibe, and our B&B (Tregoney House) was a great base.

Pirates on the waterfront at Mevagissey

Sunday dawned as perhaps one of the nicest days we've seen in our time in the UK, and we made the most of it. Our first stop was the fort/abbey at the top of St Michael's Mount, which was accessible because we'd timed it right at high tide. Half of every day it is an island, the other half it is joined to the beach by a narrow causeway. It has been like this for nearly a millennia, and as a result has had an interesting history and a big part to play in many of the wars which have taken place in this part of the world over the years.

Bel, Andrew, William, Seeph, Michelle, Sarah and Stephen at the top of St Michael's Mount

From here we travelled further round the coast (past Penzance, where we resisted the urge to tell the world about our aptitude as a modern major general) to the Minnack Theatre, an open-air theatre which has been carved into the cliff-face. The shows there were sold out, but we were fortunate enough to stumble on the rehearsals for their performance of Evita so we settled in for a while to watch.

I stole this photo from their website because we forgot our camera - imagine this, but with even fewer clouds, and an amateur theatrics society doing Evita on the stage

But we couldn't come all this way just to turn back, so we moved on to Land's End, the South-Western-most part of Great Britain. There isn't much here except for a rather tame amusement park and a sign which points to New York and John O'Groats (the Northern-most point) - but it is nice to say that we'd been.

We travelled back to Mevagissey via the B3306 - which "Whats on South West" calls one of the most romantic spots in Britain, and was certainly a stunning drive - all rolling hills, cliffs and exposed rocky outcrops. It was a bit hair-raising at times, as well, since there really wasn't room for two cars at once in some places...I was very grateful that Seeph was driving.

We spent that night back in Mevagissey, dinner and then drinks with the whole crew (including William - although he slept through most of it)...but it couldn't be too late a night since we wanted to get an early start the next morning to beat the traffic.

Cornwall is a beautiful part of England and well worth the visit...and we would have loved to have more time there - if we had the chance we wouldn't have just gone there for the three days but instead would have stretched it longer, since 5 hours each way is a long way to go for a weekend!