Cornwall (III)

Now for the last instalment of our week in Cornwall.

Geevor Tin Mine is set on the northern tip of the peninsula, and face straight off the cliffs onto the Atlantic Ocean. It could be a bit wet and wind swept I'd imagine, but was reasonably ok when we were there. It is the country's largest preserved mining site, and has been preserved as it was at it's closure in 1986. It is a fascinating place to visit, and gives an insight into how tin was mined both historicaly, and up to the time it closed. The underground tour, is of a mine started about two hundred years ago, and going through the narrow and low tunnels gives a real impression of how hard it would have been working there. The shift managers room, I think it was called, really effected me in a way that I did not understand for a while. As I said earlier the preservation is based on 1986. This room showed plans and newspapers from the period on his desk. It was only a bit later that the penny dropped as to why I was feeling emotional. 1986 was the year my father died, he was a self employed quantity surveyor, and his office was so very similar to that of the shift managers! Whereas the plans were for mining tunnels, not the M25 intersection, they were on the same type of paper, and the desk and bookcases were laid out in a similar fashion.

Trengwainton Garden is a National Trust controlled garden just outside Penzance. The house itself, is privately owned and not open to the public. The gardens are narrow, but fairly extensive. The walled kitchen gardens were my highlight. The location of the gardens, and it's climate, enable tender exotic plants to be grown here, which will not survive elsewhere on the British mainland.

The Eden Project is a masterwork of recycling an old industrial site. A former quarry has been turned into a superb site of botanical beauty. The biodomes contain plants from all over the world, and are stunningly laid out. The information panels are some of the most user friendly I have come accross. There are features on recyling as a whole as well, which fit in nicely with the overall effect.

Overall we had a good week away, and would definately visit the far west of Cornwall again.

Links to some of the places visited:

Geevor Tin Mine www.geevor.com/

Trengwainton Gardens www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-trengwaintongarden

Eden Project www.edenproject.com/