Continued from Part 2…
Another nice breakfast this morning, then off to the Eden Project for when it opened. It’s a long drive after the main road to the car park, then a long walk from even the closest car park to the main entrance, obviously set up to receive thousands of guests per day. We arrived shortly after opening, and were glad we came early as by the time we left it was getting very busy.
At the top of what used to be a clay pit, the biomes themselves look pretty small, but once you’re inside them, they’re absolutely enormous. Like the Tardis. In fact, it’s difficult to portray the right sense of scale through pictures, but a lot of the plants inside the biomes were huge!
We made our way down the hill to the two biomes, choosing to go to the rainforest biome first. It was extremely humid inside, both mine and Helen’s glasses immediately fogged up so we had to pause for a minute to acclimatise ourselves to the different atmosphere.
Some of the plants were many metres tall, the pictures don’t do the place justice. You can just about see someone in one of the pictures below, very small, in a blue coat.
We immediately felt the drop in humidity and heat leaving the rainforest biome, and decided to stop for a drink before heading into the next one in case it was just as hot and sweaty.
Oddly, they don’t do a great selection of drinks, and you buy water by the tin. Strange. But we had our can of water and went to the Mediterranean biome. This area was much nicer, humidity-wise, and was set up like a little Greek coastal town. Lots of tiled areas to walk, and a cafe area (that wasn’t open).
This biome was also much smaller than the rainforest biome, so it wasn’t long before we’d viewed everything.
Just as we left the biome to the joining cafe area, it started bucketing down with rain, and it was at this point I remembered I left my jacket in the car. So we sat and chilled out for 10 minutes listening to the rain bouncing off the canopy.
Dozens of people were arriving at the biomes at this point, so we’re happy we made it out early. By the time we were leaving the biomes, it was very loud and crowded.
A break in the rain gave us our chance to go back up the hill, so we took it. We didn’t want to get caught short, so skipped out on a couple of smaller areas and headed back up the hill.
Just as we got to the car, it started bucketing down again. Lucky timing! We had planned to spend a couple of hours in St Austell, but decided not to because of the rain, and instead we just stopped at a little cafe on the way back to the hotel for a proper Cornish pasty.
Back at the hotel, we rested for an hour or so before some spa treatments. Helen had a facial while I had a full body massage. They were both great, and we came away super-relaxed.
After that it was time for some afternoon tea, which was also great. Very very nice scones here.
I asked the waitress how the scones should be eaten around here, she said jam first then cream, which I strongly disagreed with! But then she said in Cornwall it doesn’t matter as long as you enjoy it, but if you go to Devon you might be thrown out of the County if you do jam-first!
Full of sandwiches and cake, we once again went back to our room for an hour or so before heading out to Mevagissey.
Mevagissey is a beautiful little town on the coast. We walked up and down the promenade as the Sun was setting, the rain had mostly abated by this time.
We dropped in to the Harbour Tavern for a drink, but the food looked so good we decided to get a couple of starters to share. No regrets, it was delicious, but now we’re both very full.
Eventually back to the hotel around 20:30ish for some blogging and bed. Even on our spa days, we still manage to do far too much!
Very pretty picture of Mevagissey at sunset. Try to relax a bit more on a spa day next time.
Beautiful Mevagissey. My favourite spot in Cornwall. If you’re there in better weather, you could try a boat trip along the coast.