Wed 20 Oct - Cornwall - The Eden Project

We were up at a reasonable time for the first time this holiday and were planning on visiting the Eden Project if it wasn’t too expensive. We have visited there once before when we stayed in Dorset in October 2001. We diverted to Cornwell on our way home on the last day but both Nat and Hannah were far too young to remember. It would be interesting to see how it had changed over the last ten years. Originally you could still make out much of the original clay quarry and of course the plantings, both in the domes and outside, were in their infancies.


We’d just passed the infamous, see previous entry, “out of stock” Tesco’s when we passed a girl whose hair was holding up her boobs. I can’t remember exactly what she’d done, as there was hardly time to take a photo, but it must have been unusual for me to note it in my phones holiday diary notes; shit, this will bother me for months now!

We were soon passing through the outskirts of Truro having already passed Truro College which impressed Nat greatly. He’s thinking of moving to it so that he can go surfing. Truro, which is the county town of Cornwall, what little we saw of it appeared to be very pretty and boasted an enormous; at least it looked enormous to us, Cathedral. We weren’t able to visit this time round, by the time we were passing it on our way back it was rush hour and Deb was too tired to attempt to drive through an unfamiliar town in such traffic conditions. On passed St. Austell the north to eventually arrive outside the Eden Project. We parked up and caught the shuttle bus to the entrance; yes it’s that big and that busy that the car parks require shuttle buses, you don’t even get shuttle buses at the NEC and that’s f**king gigantic! Shuttle Buses I Weres Gobsmacked Big Time My Mens! (Yes I know that sentence is WRONG).

The Eden Project is an astonishing project that consists, in the main, of two gigantic geodesic domes, one housing an Equatorial Forest, the other a more Semi- Tropical / Mediterranean climate. Outside of these there are extensive ground full of plants, features, other buildings and all sorts of peculiarities. All these “item”, including the domes, are located on the floor of this former clay pit (!) and are reached via ramps, steps, elevator or road train.

We paid for a family ticket, £50 but free to return anytime during the following 12 months, and made our way out onto the viewing platform. From here we walked down the ramp to the quarry floor. This seems a reasonable enough point at which to embed the photos…enjoy!



The first thing you notice, aside from the domes of course, as you descend to the quarry floor is a giant robotic statue that bears kind of a resemblance to a Man/Dinosaur/Doctor Who Monster. This statue/construct, known as WEE, is made up of the total amount of electronic waste the average UK citizen will discard during their lifetime. It’s bleeding enormous and certainly makes you consider our throw away, built in obsolescence, lifestyle (yes I’m as guilty as everyone else in my pursuit of the perfect mobile phone). I wouldn’t be quite so bad if much of this stuff was recycled but I’m sure that most of us are well aware that, at least until recently, the majority of it ends up corroding away to uselessness in the numerous landfills up and down this country.

When we got given out tickets the kids also each received a treasure map filled with clues that they had to identify as they made their way around the project. Nat showed little interest in his but Hannah, with Deb’s help, assiduously searched them out and, I believe found most if not all of them…well done that soon to be sulky little girl!

We made our way around the outside of the project before entering the domes themselves; as you can see from the photos above (which I may or may not have yet got round to individually labelling) there was an awful lot to see and do. Hannah managed at some point to take umbrage about something, I’ve given up asking, and I discovered the free Wi-Fi network and managed to upload an AudioBoo (a spoken blog entry) to Twitter and Facebook while I was negotiating my way round the outer perimeter…wow!

With Hannah alternately stalking off and coming back I found I spent most of the time going round with Nat who, unlike Deb and Hannah, would wait for me when I stopped to take yet another photo. Eventually we’d seen most of what there was to see outside and finally we entered the main building that accessed the domes. Before doing anything else we went into the cafeteria to get something to eat. We had pasties, chips and drinks. I had another rattler!

Finally, we logged our tickets, so that they were verified and our year long passes were secured, we bought additional tickets to visit the overhead canopy, Deb bought some bottles of water, thank God, and then, all this done, we entered the Jungle. At first the heat and humidity weren’t too noticeable and to be honest all through the visit the heat wasn’t the main problem. As we ascended to the top of the dome the humidity built up and we started sweating copiously. The equatorial zone didn’t seem greatly different from our last visit; I imaging that the plants grow so quickly in these conditions that they are constantly having to be cut back so the growth we’d seen the first time was little different to what we saw now. Eventually we reached the top, having taken numerous photos and videos on the way and having stopped to be rained on and listen to the thunder. We halted at the entrance to the above the canopy experience and waited to be advised of when we could experience this. We weren’t kept waiting long, about ten minutes, but we were very near the top and the humidity was pressing. My top was utterly drenched with sweat and it felt as if I’d worn it under a shower. It was going to get wetter and then colder!

At last, it was time to ascend to the walk up which led to the platform suspended above the canopy. The walk up was rather unpleasant; we were walking a walkway suspended by wires that swayed whilst you walked. Added to this it was made of perforated metal so if you looked at the steps, as you approached them, you’d become disorientated by the view of the jungle you could see through the gaps. The best strategy was to gaze upward toward the roof of the dome as you ascended. The platform itself was even more wobbly than the walkway and Hannah really didn’t like it and wasn’t able to stay up for very long. Certainly if you weren’t careful and if you suffered at all from vertigo you could get very dizzy very quickly.

All that said, the view was spectacular and if you can stand the humidity combined with the wobbliness, your vertigo isn’t too bad and you can afford it then I’d recommend you spend that money and enjoy the experience!

By the time we were back down to the normal top of the dome our clothes were literally stuck to us; worse still as we descended the temperature dropped and our clothes cooled rapidly. By the time we reached bottom we were both soaked and chilled. This made the Mediterranean Dome a much less pleasant experience than it should have been! Advice do the Mediterranean Dome First!

Anyway, we made our way down to the entrance, stopping to try, what I at least thought, was a rather delicious fruit cocktail. Then stopping to drink these in the bamboo hut and play chess on the bamboo chess board using the bamboo chess men. I won, I bamboozled them…bam bam!

Out of Africa, kind of, and into the cold October weather; we hurried across to the Med dome hoping to stay warm and dry off. This proved that what I said above was correct, visit this dome first. We wandered around in this temperate climate shivering but gradually warmed. The major inhibitor was that our clothes were now both soaked and cold.

I snapped and filmed as we made our way round and at one point Nat and I, yes Hannah was once more off with Mum, made a film about spotting wild Harley Davidson motorcycles living wild in the wild! While we wandered I’m sure I spotted climbers swinging from the dome structure and later I discovered that in fact you could come here to learn certain techniques.

After we’d seen everything we left the domes and began to make our way back to the main entrance. We went via a final building that housed a number of odd displays, see photos, and I’m not entirely sure what it was all about. Deb later told me she felt the same way.

We took the lift up to the top, stopped long enough for Nat and Han to bash out a few tunes on the recycled oil drum percussion set, crossed the bridge and finally discovered and perused the enormous gift shop located by the main exit. After some time spent here we returned to the shuttle bus that dropped us off at our car park and we drove home.

It was a shame we couldn’t stop at Truro so we’ll have to do so next time we’re in Cornwall. Eventually, we arrived back at Cowenden. During one of those odd times when there was a mobile signal I received a tweet from , among others, Stephen Fry advising all that he’d had been cast as Sherlock Holmes’ cleverer brother Mycroft in the currently filming sequel to Guy Richie’s movie, which, coincidently, was the one we’d watched last night…Spooky!

We had a “ploughman’s lunch” for tea, went swimming and finally to bed at the end of a long and fun day.