What was once lost

There was a slightly overcast start, but it was warm and the forecast was good. We had decided that we would visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan. It was November 2004 when we last visited (right at the start of this blog). It would be interesting to see how they had changed over the years.

We headed off in convoy. The SatNav in the Skoda seemed to be in a mood for pranks and obfuscation. It started by directing us down a dead-end road and at the bottom told us to do a U-turn. That was a good start. It then took us down some tiny lanes as we found the most obscure way to get to the Gardens. (The Gorse Fox hadn’t realised that was one of the settings for navigation; maybe it was having difficulty with finding something said to be Lost).

The car park was already very busy, but we went through to the gardens and despite the numbers, it seemed almost empty. We began by taking the woodland walk round the perimeter of the property. The strange heads and bodies formed in the ground have now matured, but still catch your eye as you go past. We looped back along the Butler’s Walk, but due to warnings of the steep paths, we didn’t venture down to the Jungle Walk.

The tree canopy was lush and some of the views were glorious as we peered across deep valleys and across open meadows. It was a perfect walk for refreshing the soul.

As we looped back, we stopped for a coffee at the Steward’s House. For Covid they had adopted a double-queue system. First you queued to place your order and pay, then you dropped to the back of the collection queue to await the arrival of your order (in strict sequence). It was a good idea but didn’t really work very efficiently, mainly because there were insufficient people helping in the small kitchen.

We moved on to the walled gardens and the greenhouses, then on to the Italian Garden.

This was fairly busy, but remained quite tranquil. Finally, we arrived at the gift shop. This is where we parted company with J&T as they had to get back for some spa treatments. 

The Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox stayed put and examined the wares available in the gift shop (including a £50 bottle rum - yes , that’s £50 for 50cl of rum). Now, we like rum. We don’t, however, wish to purchase the distillery. The bottle remained on the shelf.  

Escaping the shop we settled down in the restaurant for a cream tea before returning to the hotel.

We have spent the afternoon soaking up the sun on the lawns. It was much quieter today as the Duchess of Edgbaston was obviously out and about tormenting other people.  A waiter wandered back and forth with pots of tea, glasses of rum, and glasses of phillistine and tonic(*).

(*) The Gorse Fox likes a gin and tonic, particularly on hot days (keeps the malaria at bay, don’t you know!). He is not, however, a connoisseur and has never really got into these trendy new gins. When ordering he admitted to being a phillistine, and just wanted an ordinary Gordon’s or the like. Over the week, this has now just become known as phillistine and tonic.