8 days in North Wales

We have just spent 8 days in North Wales with Jan. It is hard to know where to begin to describe our adventures without saying on this day we saw 'this' and 'that' and the next day we saw 'something else'. We saw so much, had some great adventures while enjoying the company of a kiwi. In summary after a leisurely morning of ringing up our family and making lunches we took off to spend four days in a Bed and Breakfast in Betwys Coed (silent w), another four nights on a canal boat, and one last night in Iron Bridge before dropping Jan off in Tewkesbury to continue her adventures with an English friend. While wandering through Beaumaris I saw this little poem on a cottage and it again occurred to me how lucky we are that we have the opportunity to see so much. William Davies (1871-1940) wrote:
'What is life if, full of care

We have no time to stand and stare
No time to turn at beauty's glance
and watch her feet and how they dance
A poor life this is if full of care
We have no time to stand and stare'.

The area is rich in history with its fair share of famous people, wonderful natural and manmade sites so this blog can only be a glimpse of an area full of sharp contrasts.

It's famous people
Thomas Telford, civil engineer by trade, designed and built the Menai Bridge known affectionally to the Welsh as LLanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
and to the English as
The church of St Mary, in a hollow of white hazel, near to a rapid whirlpool and to St Tysilio's church and near to a red cave.
That was not the only bridge he built - also we saw his name on the little stone bridge we walked across at Betwys Coed and the aqueduct we sailed and walked across on the Llangollen Canal in the Dee Valley. The aqueduct in 1805 was initially built to carry slate from the nearby quarries to the English cities. The railways very quickly led to the demise of the canals and the canal companies faced bankruptcy until someone had the clever idea in the 1880s of advertising the first horse drawn pleasure boats - and now it is a real tourist industry but without the horses.

Henry Robertson built the railway viaduct in 1800 which ran alongside the aqueduct but we didn't learn much about him except I think he died before it was completed - but worth a mention because the viaduct is quite spectacular standing higher than the aquaduct. The Darby family from Ironbridge were responsible for the industrial revolution, so the local museums state, as Abraham Darby I found cheap ways to make iron by using coke (looking on the internet coke is 'A hard, dry carbon substance produced by heating coal to a very high temperature in the absence of air' and 'Coal is a fossil fuel formed in swamp ecosystems where plant remains were saved by water and mud from oxidization and biodegradation. Coal is a readily combustible black or brownish-black rock' - something else for the quiz night at the pub). The Darby's also when tunnelling for coal found natural bitumen in a tunnel which we wandered through and was used to seal boats and went along way to feeding and clothing the generations of Darby's - which came to four after we went through some museums. Ironbridge is known for its bridge over the River Severn (quite small up in the hills unlike down near Bristol) designed by a Thomas Pritchard and built by Abraham Darby III. The Darby's - well the first few generations anyway - were strong Quakers and there are no portraits of the family as the religion forbade it - so no one can remember what this remarkable family looked like. By the fourth generation some had turned to Anglican and the photos and portraits of those leaving the church now hang in museums. Quakers were denied entry to the clergy, government and law and could not attend universities and as they rejected their career in the army there was not much else for them except industry and commerce. We drove passed their houses where all the Darby kids grew up and although big and multi storied it looked quite austere from the outside.

Water, water everywhere
It did rain alot (August is the gloomiest it has been since records began 100 years ago they say) and many of the rivers were high if not in flood. But during our four days on the narrow boat it rained a little bit at night but not much during the day. There isn't really a lot to write about our trip on the canal as you can imagine it was reasonably relaxing and slow. Harry enjoyed the driving and I had a little go but I certainly wasn't used to sitting doing nothing all day like someone else I know. All joking aside there is quite an art to the steering of a 50 foot long canal boat and Harry did take to it quite naturally. Jan and I awarded him the 'canal boat skipper award' with Caramello coming a close second. Harry learnt how to reverse when meeting another boat in a tunnel or on an aqueduct and Jan and I learnt how to push on poles to get us unstuck from the mud (some areas were less than 2 foot deep, but the depth of mud seemed to be endless), how to operate locks (a seven year old showed us how to do it initially but we got the hang of it quite quickly) and to tie pretty secure knots so we didn't float away at night. We bumped (literally) into some other kiwis and talked to another couple who had come over and bought a boat - there way of seeing the country. One day we came across a barge that had come lose from its moorings (needed Jan and I to tie the knots or a stronger rope I think) and as we pushed it back to shore so we could tie it up we managed to get stuck in the mud and so did the barge. Another couple of boats joined us to help sort out the fiasco offering to tow us - an offer we nearly took advantage of - how embarrassing - until we found that a lot of regulars had ropes especially for that occasion. Another day, some nice canalites rescued a sheep from the water and went everywhere trying to find a place to let it off the boat - from a distance it looked as though they had completely lost control but they were only trying to avoid stinging nettle along the sides of the canal - which incidentally hurts and is very irritating (have I said that before?). Anyway, the sheep can dine out on that one for a while. We didn't venture down the Frankton canal which had 7 locks in 50 metres and was only open between 10 and 2 in the summer to help conserve water. There were lovely blackberries along the canal where we couldn't stop, and when we could the first day we found 7 (Jan had optimistically made us take 2 containers on our walk), and the second day we found 31 (we only had one container to fill that day) and then we gave up as they were somewhat sour (lack of sunshine we concluded). Our theme song was 'slow down you move to fast' theme as 4 miles per hour was too fast when passing moored boats. Not only were there people on the boats of all shapes and sizes but dogs wandering up and down the roof, cats and cockatoos - some boats looked as though they could be home to mice as well. One day we went for a walk and I pointed to the sky and said to Harry 'there is blue sky', 'where' was the answer', 'behind the tree was my reply' - most of the time it was cold but when the sun did come out it was hot and we sat with our faces turned upwards to that big yellow orb in the sky and it occurred to us why some people are sun worhsippers. The Dawdling Dairy boat sold produce such as tea bags and icecreams and the Cheese Boat sold, you guessed it, cheese (we bought a chilli and garlic). The boat was well equipped with everything we needed but the beds were a size best suited for Caramello rather than Harry and I. After deciding a double wasn't big enough for 2 (Jan's double was fine just for her) we moved the beds to make 2 singles. They were so narrow and high we didn't get much sleep and so we ended up moving the mattresses to the lounge floor and got a much better nights sleep. The boats came in all sizes - narrow and long - some with painted jugs and watering cans on their roof, or vegetables and flowers growing - or just the plain old rented ones like ours. We got good at looking ahead for the next obstacle, (eg boats coming the other way on a one way bridge, tunnel or aqueduct) and cruised passed many a cute little house and pub (never when we needed a drink or food though). We watched people reading books, eating, sipping wine, having their hair curled and enjoyed our home cooked meals. Grey water (from showers and dishes) goes straight into canal which didn't stop some boaters from eating the perch they cooked but we stuck to gammon, sausages, pies (from the deli - not quite home cooked but the veges were - we ate a novel one which we don't know the name of but looks and tasted like a cross between a broccoli and a cauliflower). The most memorable thing about the boat is that we weren't time bound - goodbye to watches, hello to are we hungry yet- lets eat, is it getting dark lets stop and moor while we can see.

On to the industry we saw which plays a major role in the economy of the area. The area is known for its iron (we visited an iron museum in Iron Bridge where the first iron bridge was built in the late 1700's by Abraham Darby III). The iron industry soon became the largest in England in the 1700's . The bridge was privately owned by the Darby's and everyone had to pay a toll including the Prince of Wales when he visited in 1979 (I think it was a pretend halfpenny cos we didn't have to pay a toll). There were no exemptions, as Quakers didn't approve of that so all mail coaches, officers and those in uniform and the royal family were required to pay.

At the Iron Museum the tale of Wilkinson (nicknamed 'iron mad' wilkinson) who designed and built the first iron boat was told.

'Wilkinson's coffin proved to be very troublesome. At the time of his death in 1808 he had outgrown the coffin he had made and he was temporarily buried in his garden in Cumbria, while a larger one was cast. The second coffin wouldn't fit in the rock-hewn tomb so he was once again reburied in his garden. He was finally buried for the third time with a 20 tonne cast iron obelisk over the top of his gravestone'

Mine owners did provide housing to the workers, but I could only imagine how tired I would feel working in an iron mine 6.00 am -6.00 pm each day and 6.00 am - 3.30 pm on Saturday. Later changes to hours was 6.00-5.30 and 6.00 -1.00 on Saturdays - not sure if that would give me enough rest but I guess every hour helped!!
Some of the Welsh countryside has been made into beautiful surroundings (the Quarry gardens in Shrewsbury is a good example of wonderful flower gardens in what was once a quarry) but in other areas man has left it's mark particularly around Snowdonia. The slate stands high like mountains while the occassional bush attempts to grow. Blaunau Ffestiniog must have been the bleakest town I have ever experienced. Perched on the side of the quarry, with no shopping centre obvious to us, the houses were grey matching the hills of discarded slate, there was little greenery, parks or play areas for the children - but surprisingly the teenagers spoke fluent Welsh. All I could hope was that the houses were warm to compensate for the mist which continually hung around the hills.
There was copper mining in Almwch, coal and clay mining at Ironbridge and pulp and paper at Chirk. Ironbridge was also known for its tile and china creations - well worth a look. The impact of all this industry came home to roost when in 1952 houses slid down the hillside due to the land subsiding after clay mining under the homes - a bit like Waihi in the North Island with gold mines.

Now on to the natural beauty of the hills and the mountains
I will remember the craggy rocks, rolling hills, flattened grass (by the wind), tree lined gorges, low lying plains, water falls, steep cliffs and the sea. Snowdonia - visiting the peak was on our agenda and the first fine day - incidentally our first day (and probably one of the best) we caught the little train to the top of the mountain - not quite to the top of the track as it was closed for maintenance. But the top was only 45 minutes away - after scrambling up lose shingle paths against the wind for a few minutes I decided to leave Harry to the high road, while I walked down the hill on the low road. Harry continued upward with energy equalling those of the most enthusiastic climbers and Jan took the middle road on the train. The comment from the train driver was that this was a typical mountain, subject to changing weather conditions which Harry discovered one moment a photo opportunity the next it is gone - and the local saying is 'if you stop it is dangerous, if you move it is fatal' - an inspiring message for those wishing to venture to the top. I think that Jan was the wisest as both Harry and I suffered from sore thighs and calf muscles for days after the 2.5 hour downhill walk. We did enjoy the scenery and felt quite righteous hobbling along the streets as we visited other attractions. I was surprised at the number of families walking up hill (a good 3-4 hours I reckon) with young children saying 'are we there yet' - they weren't too impressed when I said less than half way!! Anyway, time to marvel at the engineering feat of the train builders. 2 viaducts (one with 14 arches) spanned the gulleys, and the train used a rack and pinion system to pull the steam engine and its one carriage up the hillside (there were about 4 engines with a carriage each and they had also recently invested in some diesel engines as well - just not the same).



Betwys Coed is a little village in a gorge - and it reminded me of a ski village - lots of outdoor sports and clothes shops and pubs, on either side of a pretty little river. It was cold and wet but still quite pretty. We wandered the village each night to find a pub (they don't do food well in the town I am sorry to say), and up through the gorge and visited waterfalls (Conwy and Swallow) and a little stone house built not far away. The Welsh for this house is Ty Hyll which could mean either ugly or rugged house, and it was so cute with chimneys and walls made of uncut stones of various sizes I decided it wasn't 'ugly'. The garden was damp with moss and lichen growing everywhere reflecting I think the highish altitude and the wet weather. (It rains 6 months of the year a blackboard outside a cafe said which welcomed 'muddy boots' and provided 'free towels' for customers). Along the rivers you can white water raft or canoe or swim. One night the shop across the road was broken into - and the alarm woke us all. Jan had been awake and looked out to see the getaway car - the police wanted to interview her but were on holiday when she was in the town and back to work when we had left so we didn't have to arrange police protection for her. The shop was selling wet weather jackets for £140 on sale but the one I liked was still sitting the window when we left.

South Stack (an unusual name until we learnt that Stack is Norse for barren and it lived up to its name) is one of the most furtherest West locations in Wales and home to wonderful cliffs and wild seas. Rock climbers enjoyed the sheer cliffs while we enjoyed the scottish heather and decided to take the safer route down a steep and stony path of 400 steps which wound down to a light house.

We did drive to Caernarfon one day, but the wet day probably didn't endear us to getting out of the car. It too had a castle and some gallant actors were putting on a show in the stormy conditions and we sat in the car overlooking the town having yet another picnic in the rain. I can remember wondering at the council for fencing and locking the gate to a grass area that housed a modern Stonehenge with little other areas around for people to sit and at the timeliness of royal mail who collected from the post box mail at 15.01 every day except Sunday.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside (have you noticed?) and we did wander around the bays at Porthmadog and Borth-y-gest one wet and windy afternoon. Over the estuary and around the corner was Portmerion where we had been before with Anne and the little beaches and coves with golden sand were similar to what we had seen before. Another picnic in the car.

Nature at its best
While lunching at Amlwch one day (on the North Irish Sea) we saw porpoises playing happily in the sea. They were a little distance away, but we could see them jump and follow boats into the harbour. At South Stack they said they would probably have been porpoises and so Harry and I looked at each other and said 'what is the difference?' Back onto the net I discovered porpoises are 'certain toothed cetaceans having a blunt or rounded snout; derived from sea hog or hog fish' while dolphins are 'marine mammals - forty species. They vary in size from 1.2 metres (4 ft) and 40 kilograms (88 lb) (Maui's Dolphin), up to 9.5 m (30 ft) and ten tonnes (the Orca or Killer Whale)'. I am really going to have to join that quiz team. While working the loch on the canal we saw a cow lick her new born baby calf and then saw it stumble and take its first steps to find its milk supply. We saw ducklings on the canal, foals lying in paddocks. Why were they all born in Autumn rather than spring time? While feeding the ducks we noticed one had a broken wing while another an aggressive nature. We fed the broken wing duck and others but not the aggressive one. Did this action of ours teach the duck to be less aggressive or contribute to his aggression - the latter we thought.

Castles, Churches and Cathedrals

We visited a number of castles (well only went into the one in Shrewsbury), but walked around a number. Our favourite was probably the one in Conwy where we walked the wall around the city built by King Edward I - 22 gates most of them still standing but some in better condition than others. We enjoyed the town from a height, looking over roofs to train tracks, the harbour and marina and the castle. Rather slippery so we took our time in late afternoon dull skies. Shrewsbury also boasted a castle - rather picturesque in its surroundings of brightly coloured begonias, petunias and fuschias - and now a home to the regimental museum - where the biggest surprise to me was a pack of playing cards used by Americans - on each card was a different Iraqi - the most wanted list - designed to embed their faces in the Americans memories). We had a quick look through the castle - where an elderly gentleman showed us a room renovated by Telford in the 1800's - all character of the original castle lost in these rooms - the mayoral suite and a room used for wedding ceremonies. When asked how old the castle was we were answered 'oh its a few years now' and when we asked how big Shrewsbury was we were answered 'oh there is a few people living here now'. (Did you know you can't get married anywhere here - only in places that have been deemed a 'marriage' place so it isn't just the weather that puts the English off garden weddings). Shrewsbury also boasted a city wall - most of it now demolished (due to the construction of the new St Chad's church) except for a few metres along the side of the park leading to the quarry. St Chads had a lovely old church and at one stage Telford had warned the parishioners it would collapse. It did, and now only a small part is left on the grounds. The old St Chad had collapsed earlier on - Telford had told the parishioners it would and it did. We saw the oldest gravestone we could read in the cemetery - for John Benbow who died in 1651. Back on to the net - he was the son of Roger Benbow and Margaret Leckyn of the Newport Benbow line. During the English Civil War, he served in the Roundhead or Parliamentary army, and later crossed over to the Royalist Army. The King at the time awarded him for bravery. He was captured at the battle of Worcester, 1651, court martialled and executed (loyalty was a risky thing in those days). Coming a bit closer to the 2000's the new St Chad's had a roll of honour. It was sad to see that on the opened page the town had lost 5 Private T Williams, 5 Private J Williams and a number of other men from the Williams families. Beaumaris also had a castle but we chose to wander around the little village with its quaint shops, old gaol and courthouse, and tudor houses and lovely gardens rather than visiting another one.

Jan said that in England a city is defined by whether it has a Cathedral or not - quite different to our population based system. Betwys Coed didn't have a cathedral but there were 2 churches - one beside our bed a breakfast built in the 1700's and one further down the road that hosted summertime concerts. We were in luck and heard a wonderful Welsh male choir (Cor Meibion Betws Yn Rhos - was their name) singing one night in English and welsh, together with a soloist and a harmonicist (did a duet with 2 harmonicas - rather amazing). Chirk church also had a lovely atmosphere - founded by Myddleton Family and was unique as it has 2 aisles. One part was burnt down one christmas day sometime in the 1800's and was built in the then current design - so one church two very different roof lines and design but still with character. To get to Chirk castle we took the pedestrian route (thank goodness none of us were wearing stilettos as we marched through paddocks, with sheep and cows to a castle which looked like a mish mash of architecture - but the iron gates were amazing.

Towns, Villages and Cities

On the way up we stopped for lunch at a little village called Penbridge. It boasted a number of buildings built between the 1200 and 1500's. They had been aged by a process called dendochronology which ages the wood used in the beams in the houses. All the houses were on a lean, looked about to fall over and I did wonder about the future investment of retaining its value. We also visited a little market in Llangollen to purchase food supplies for our canal trip and discovered that one market stall had NZ teeshirts, Irish teeshirts and Australian ones but no Welsh ones. We bought some dish washing brushes as we can't seem to find them in Bristol you know the ones with a handle and bristles). But Shrewsbury was the town for us. Tudor buildings galore, wonderful gardens. Home to Charles Darwin for 27 years and proud of it - it boasted shopping malls alongside the narrow streets with names like Fish Street, Butcher Street and Dog Pole.

Funny sayings

'A man is not complete until he is married and then he is finished'.

'In March 1830 the following tale was told 'was catched in bed with another man's wife at Worcester by the woman's husband, and the husband stuck a pickel in his backside which caused him to run away without his cloths and after that he offered 15 shillings to make it up'.

Woodchester Mansion and Our Visitors

After spending a lazy Saturday morning watching the rowing (we got to see the Ever Swindell twins in action - but missed our rowers in Lane 6 as the camera person focussed on Lanes 1-5), swimming and athletics we decided to have a second try at finding Woodchester Mansion. The web gave us directions and it looked after about 30 minutes that it was just around the corner... 2.5 hours later after a few wrong steers from locals we wandered down the reasonably long path to the house only to be told by the volunteers that the National Trust wouldn't let them put up signs as they were expensive and the house wasn't open enough. We were glad we didn't give up - but I have decided that if I read about more interesting things in the newspaper I just might forget what I read quickly. (We did note that the Olympic games commentary the other night had an article on the Chinese number system and 8 means good luck. Our tickets into the mansion was 0888 and 0889 so we figured we were very, very, very, very, very lucky to have found the house). The mansion is situated in a park with 5 dams which we could have walked around if we had not taken so long to find the place. It was built in the 19th century, around the 1860's, and I shouldn't say built as it was never finished. The Leigh family were well off but were generous with their money (they built a few catholic churches around the area, supported poor and poorly people including a monk) and had four children (1 who died young) who studied, enjoyed life and never worked - there were six grandchildren who presumably did similar things but none of them had children so the family tree ended. So, while the house was being built (it had been designed by William Bracknell a young local architect who also designed Tortworth Court where I had my work meeting the other day and Birmingham cathedral) the money ran out, and the house was left as though the stone masons and builders just put their tools down one day and walked away. From the outside the house just looks old, broken glass or no glass in windows, broken tiles and a door with no porch (the porch was removed to a church that was being built as there was not enough money to complete the church). Outside are gargoyles in the shapes of dogs and other animals (they are connected to the gutters and when it rains the water flows through the gargoyles and out of their mouths making a gargling sound - hence their name. It helps to keep the water away from the foundations - in what could be quite a cold and wet valley). The statues at the top which are purely there for decoration are called grotesques. So, I had to look up the definition as some of the statues were of animals and quite nice 'When used in conversation, grotesque commonly means strange, fantastic, ugly or bizarre, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as halloween masks or gargoyles on churches. More specifically, the grotesque forms on gothic buildings when not used as drain-spouts, should be called grotesques or chimeras rather than gargoyles'. The abandoned house, complete with unfinished chapel has now become a Grade 1 listed building and is being restored to the point where the builders walked out. From the outside, glass was broken or had never been in place, roof tiles where broken (slate is apparently made by watering limestone, letting ice form in winter and then in summer it is easier to break into thin tiles). We wandered through the lounge and dining room where the ceilings had not been completed and fireplaces on the two upper floors were suspended from the walls, where the library architecture finished mid-air because the shelves had not been put in. A builders ladder stood with only a few rungs, wooden beams were still in place which would have been removed once the concrete and stone work had dried, victorian tools were scattered everywhere, doors led to nowhere. We wandered into the bathroom complete with stone bath, faucets (shaped like gargoyles) and a shower room where cold water would have spurted from the ceiling - one of the few nearly completed rooms. The small kitchen was not complete and the spiral staircase still had wooden banisters with rope around them to stop people falling down and pieces of wood were placed on stone work to prevent them being damaged during construction. Upstairs were uncompleted bedrooms (some with dirt floors, some with no floor at all as the plan was for them to be above the lounge and the dining room) and some with no ceiling, others with incomplete ceilings and one completed where one of the sons used to live (apparently his fiance refused to marry him when she found out he was living in one room and the bathroom). Besides a caretaker that lives in the house (a bit eerie on a stormy night me thinks), greater horse shoe bats and lesser horse shoe bats (I think size determines if you are greater or lesser but not really sure) are residents and with the benefit of remote cameras we could see Mum and babies happily living together above the top floor. The organic farm down the road means that there are plenty of insects for the bats and they enjoy their quiet and secluded accommodation with no intention of leaving. I think it will be a rare occurence to find another house like it and no wonder people consider there might be ghosts (the cellars did feel quite eerie - but perhaps that is because they were cold and wooden cases that long ago held something still sat on the muddy floor). On the way home we followed a truck piled with hay bales and everytime he went passed a low hanging tree, or bush too close to the road it rained hay on us - better than rain I guess.

Saturday night came and at 9.00 we were down at the bus stop to pick up Georg, Jutta, Sarah and Julia. We had been looking forward to these few days for a long time where our house would be home to some friends. Harry had borrowed the work van (well it is a 15 seater bus and we felt quite special riding around on Sunday with our picnic on 3 seats, us on 6 and and the others empty - Harry enjoyed being bus driver for the day). In the morning we went to Berkeley Castle, the old church next door (oldest gravestone was 1665), and the butterfly house before driving to the Slimbridge Wildlife Centre. I won't write much about the places because we had been to them before - but there were a few highlights like managing our lunch at a picnic table rather than in the car, we saw lots of little chicks of varieties of bird species and we learnt a few things...A warm welcome comes from the fact that enemies storming the castle had hot oil poured on them from holes in stairwells and castle walls and o.k. comes from the fact that armed forces would report back 'zero kill' as good news that their teams were returning in tact. Georg, Jutta, Julia and Sarah have spent a couple of days now getting lost in Bristol. We told them all our horror stories and how locals say it is 'dead easy' to find somewhere and they don't feel so bad taking hours to find the house when it should have taken 20 minutes. They have been to Stonehenge, an abbey we haven't been too which was featured in the Harry Potter movies, Bath and we took them to the Suspension Bridge for a walk in the rain and return to London on Thursday morning. It has been lovely having company and we are already looking forward to the next time.

Lost Gardens in Cornwall

Saturday morning dawned and at 7.00 we hit the M5 along with most of the rest of Bristol it seemed. Heavy traffic consisted of cars towing caravans or trailers laden down with surf boards, bikes, roof racks and camper vans filling the three lanes heading south. We got the impression that many of the occupants were wishing they could sing ...
'We're all going on a summer holiday,
no more working for a week or two,
fun and laughter on our summer holiday
to make our dream come true.
We're going where the sun shines brightly'
(yeah right !! nothing like a bit of optimism).
but somehow the grim determination on their faces reflected the rain and mist outside.
We found the Lost Gardens of Heligan quite easily and spent a few hours wandering around the gardens after filling ourselves with sausage sandwiches and cups of tea and talking to the wet and cold parking attendant directing the few cars into the car park. The garden has been owned by the Tremayne family for more than 400 years and is described as one of the most mysterious estates in England. "At the end of the nineteenth century its thousand acres were at their zenith, but only a few years later bramble and ivy were already drawing a green veil over this “Sleeping Beauty”. During the First World War the gardeners gradually enlisted in the war and the garden was gradually attended to by nature. After decades of neglect, and a hurricane in 1990 the garden was bought back to its former glory around 2000 - but there is still work to be done. A motto etched into the limestone walls has to be searched for but you can still make out the words “Don’t come here to sleep or slumber” with the names of those who worked there and the date they enlisted. So, the history and the environment kept us intrigued for a few hours and added that extra dimension. There were pictures of what the buildings looked like before restoration, either run down or completely overgrown.



Other agricultural highlights included

• a manure fired pineapple pit (bit like a green house really)
• rhododendrons and other trees left to themselves for so long - so rather than growing tall, they are sprawly and looked like fun to climb
• bee boles (where the bees lived inside these little houses - a bit like modern apartments really - but with straw housing inside called skeps)
• a melon house used to grow cucumbers and melons (incidentally the cafe food was made with all the vegetables and fruit grown in the garden - and how we wished we hadn't had those sausage sandwiches)
• well landscaped gardens with sunflowers and hydrangeas (two of my favourites) and then cobble stoned ravines following paths down to a valley and pond
• a squirrel who had learnt to eat the nuts provided for the birds (grabbed one and then hung upside down to eat before returning for another one - we did wonder if he could eat them all but didn't have a couple of hours to sit and wait to find out)
• two mud statues - one of a gentle giant and one of a mud maid (featured in children's stories) they were coated in yoghurt to get the plants to grow on them
• the Thunderbox room (where the toilets were long drops - with graffitti on the walls)
• and a multi cultural theme where owners and gardens made visits to places such as Italy and Nepal and came back with designs for gardens. The Italian garden was complete with kiwi fruit plants planted alongside the wall (two male kiwifruits and so no fruit) restored using a photo from the 1920's

AND GUESS WHAT a New Zealand garden complete with a whare, wonderful totara tree, kowhai trees, silver fern, pongas and so on (boy did it look great). There were some well travelled owners and gardeners who sailed out to get the plants and then back again to design and plan a New Zealand nature reserve in England. There is even a photo of the head gardener in 1920 standing at Pukekura Park in New Plymouth. So, we spent quite a bit of time wandering around the garden (nostagically nibbling the pineapple chunks that Jill had sent us from NZ - we shared them down to the last one which we had half each). The garden had like the rest required some love and attention and about the time that they were working on it along came the successful New Zealand exhibition at the Chelsea Flower show. After the show the exhibitors looked around to see who they could gift the plants to and wallah found the Lost Gardens of Heligan (so if anyone asks us if we have been to the Chelsea Flower show we can say 'yes and no' or 'sort of').



We did take our tent and sleeping bags but as their was still a very large hole in the black clouds (I wonder how many other ways I will be able to describe rain before we finish living here?) we envisaged a wet and sleepless night so we settled for a hotel room in a little town called Fowey (pronounced Foy). It is described as 'A seaport redolent of its long history of trade, piracy and smuggling. Fowey is a maze of tiny streets and quaint cottages. A pretty harbour looks across the mouth of the River Fowey to the village of Polruan on the opposite bank'. We were told smuggling is still common today around the bays and it is not uncommon for drugs to be washed ashore. We enjoyed a wander through the narrow streets (had to put our umbrellas down when cars came - Harry got the right idea and folded his down over his head while I stood in a doorway and as the first car came along the window wipers swished the water off the window and on to me. I soon learnt and stood looking as silly as Harry did - its a bit like wearing a tepee on your head). Fowey is a pretty little village - with a harbour full of boats, a little church and Georgian castle (private so you can only admire it from the steep wall surrounding it). The next day, we woke to a ray of sunshine on our pillow and jumped up ready for breakfast (but by 9.00 the breakfast makers had not yet surfaced so we took some cereal from the counter and left to eat fruit and muffins in another car park). Spurred on by the sunshine we took a walk along a Cornwall cliff. The walk took us from Polkerris (another little fishing village with nothing really except a cafe, pub, boats and little beach - real sand and the same colour as the Kapiti Coast - where you can learn to windsurf, sail, stand-up paddle surf or sit-on kayak) through the country side (to the moo of cows being milked and the squawk of crows), through an area called Menabilly Barton (just love that name) and along to a house that became the home of Daphne du Maurier in 1943. We walked beside an artificial lake that was built to light at night during the Second World War to act as a decoy for Fowey. We then climbed a very steep hill to Daymark Tower - I stopped on the way to look at the view. We couldn't resist climbing the 100 or so steps to the top. The tower was built in 1832 to help mariners to distinguish the rocks at Gribbin from the similar looking ones a few miles further round the coast at Falmouth Bay (we'll go visit there in September I hope). Besides the red and white stripes, and its steep steps to the top (they overlapped so the steps weren't even as wide as my feet are long) it is unique because it was built in a rectangular shape rather than the traditional round lighthouse shape - maybe that's because it isn't really a light house - just a day mark. Fabulous view from the top - there is nothing more invigorating than standing somewhere high above the cliffs and white water with wind whistling through your hair (I can hear some of you saying 'yeah right' but I am very serious). We could see the chimneys of the china-clay works (there is a museum we were keen to see - but since it had stopped raining we decided to make the most of some dry skies) and Fowey in the distance one way and Carlyon Bay the other (where we went on our first camping trip). From the Daymark tower the fun started - mud, puddles and prickly vegetation. Imagine Harry and I straddled across puddles with nothing to hang onto but blackberry, stinging nettle and thistles. We did laugh at ourselves especially when in muddy shoes we tried to explain to others who were heading in the other direction how muddy it was - we didn't need to really - our shoes, dirty legs and shorts, and muddy bottoms said it all (yes we each took our turn at falling over). Incidentally it took Harry 45 minutes to clean our shoes the next day (I was late home from work - convenient that was but definitely not planned!!). Anyway after that adventure we deserved a lunch at the local pub the 'Rashleigh' named after the earlier owner of the farm land and formerly known as a 'pilchard palace' where the fish were cured but were not on the menu that day. It began to rain and so everyone crowded in from the outside 'would walkers please leave their muddy shoes outside' was the notice on the door - so everyone ate their lunch in barefeet and holey socks and as it was rather crowded we shared a table with a couple of Englishman and whiled away an hour or so while eating cottage pie and drinking lattes.

We were told by these two that there wasn't much to Plymouth so to prove them wrong we drove there next to have a look around. What a pity it was the end of the day, as we could easily have spent a couple of days catching boats around the harbour, out to the break water or even to Mevagissey not far from the Gardens of Heligan, exploring the war time buildings and the lovely old hotels along the foreshore. I am sure that there were areas that had significantly suffered from the decline of the naval shipyards but there has been a real attempt to make the place interesting and well kept (I guess in a way a tribute to all those Pilgrims). At what used to be huge storage sheds and factories there are now apartments - some occupied others derelict buildings awaiting their turn for renovation. We went up to the Hoe (hill overlooking the harbour) and ate some comforting hot chips in the rain while listening to the music of a showground before heading home.

The blog has been a bit late in being written this week. I have spent too much time watching the Great Brits at the Olympics - trying to pick and choose the sports that just might have a few kiwis participating - a bit hard with just the highlights being shown - but have managed to see some rowing - and for other highlights we have looked on the web.

Did you know that when Eastenders finishes every night there is a huge power surge (lots of jugs put on to boil for that cuppa) and for those few moments England has to purchase power from France so I am told - and I thought that Coronation Street would be the guilty soap!!