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This is in continuation of my previous post on Cornwall, where on the first day we had spent some time exploring and experiencing the coastline around Fowey in South Cornwall. The next two days we intended to visit two of the most famous gardens of Cornwall - The Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan.

The Eden project is not your local beautiful garden, it is much more, a world famous site and a unique botanical fete.  It is a very ambitious project that attempts to assemble the vastly varied flora of the world at a single site. 

We decided to walk the 3.5 mile distance from our hotel to Eden using the walking directions left behind by an American tourist who had walked a lot in these areas. Our sense of heart-thumping, adrenaline boosting adventure was fulfilled when the footpath led us straight through some dense undergrowth into a pasture with around 30 cows and bulls, and the usually docile creatures violently chased us off the pasture back onto the path! I can still recall all the bulls snorting at us from behind the gate of the pasture. We later got to know that many footpaths in Britain lead through pastures which the farmers don’t like one bit, and so we shouldn’t have hoped that help would arrive in case we had been cornered by the beasts and gored to death. A passer-by joked - “Those cows don’t know that you won’t even eat them?”

Anyway, all this meant we took an eternity to reach Eden using an alternative walking route (the main road). The park is built in a huge crater site and has three main areas - The outdoor biome, the rain forest biome and the mediterranean biome. The two indoor biomes look like huge blisters or bubbles, appearing to have landed straight out of space.

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Recently had the chance to visit Cornwall in the UK for a three day trip with my friend. Honestly, the reason was purely because I couldn’t get my visa for Spain in time for the intended trip to Costa del Sol and Madrid, and I desperately needed some sun and sand. However, having said that, Cornwall is arguably the most beautiful part of England.

The County of Cornwall is at the south-western tip of Britain, and the tip basically stretches out into the sea. So Cornwall’s north coast faces the Atlantic while the south coast faces the English Channel.

The area, although being small, provides a varied option in terms of landscape and activities. The north coast is grander with more golden sand and surfing beaches, while the south is more sheltered beaches with coves and bays. The very tip (called Land’s End for obvious reasons) is more remote and rugged than anywhere else in England. Newquay and St.Ives’ are a couple of popular towns on the north coast and Falmouth, Truro and St.Austell on the southern coast. Since we had three days and we did not want to keep driving around everywhere, we decided to choose between the north and the south. We eventually decided to go for South Cornwall, as the beaches are less touristy and more quaint, it is quicker to reach by train from London and also has a couple of extremely popular gardens that we wanted to check out. On top of it we learnt that Daphne Du Maurier, who wrote ‘Rebecca’, one of our favourite novels, based it around the area we were intending to visit. That made the excitement two-fold.

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Essentially, we had only a day and two nights in the beautiful hilly heartland of North Wales, Snowdonia. Wales is Castle country, North Wales only more so. We had booked our bed and breakfast at Queens Hotel in the shadow of the majestic Harlech castle, a short walk from the beach.

That is the beauty of the mountains of Wales and even Scotland at times, the sea is never far away. Turn the corner around a hill and you are greeted with splendid views of a bay, with yatchs (or sometimes a cruise ship if you are lucky) or simply blue expanses. We reached the hotel at dusk and had just about enough time to walk around town hunting for some good food (it is another matter that the vegetarian Indian fare we finally managed to find was pathetic). The hotel owners were Welsh and had a cute little kid who kept running around and trying to converse with us in a mish-mash of Welsh and English. We were to find later that Welsh is seeing a revival as a language, and most Welsh make it a point for their children to learn it. In a time, when everything else is dictated by commands from London, I guess it is a sane method to preserve one’s distinct heritage.

Snowdonia gets its name from Mt. Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales and second highest in Britain. Many enthusiasts spend a few days in the area to scale the mountain and its adjoining peaks, and detailed tracks and trails are available readily with tourist offices, hotels as well as online.

Our day in the region though, was mainly planned along a drive, which I charted out using websites and google maps. It read something like this -

Harlech to Beddgelert (pronounced Be-”the”-gelert) - 30 min drive

Beddgelert to Betws-y-Coed (pronounced Betoos-ee-Coed) - 30 min

Betws-y-Coed - Blaenau Ffestiniog - 25 min

Blaenau Ffestiniog - Criccieth - 40 min

Criccieth - Portmeirion - 20 min

Portmeirion - Harlech - 20 min

All these difficult names do not appear that difficult to the Welsh and also highlight how different the two languages are. What we decided to skip were as usual, the more beaten paths, namely the Caernarforn Castle (the most popular castle among visitors because of its size and the fact that this is where the Prince of Wales, currently Charles, is anointed; but then we were already visiting what I think were more enchanting castles in Harlech, Criccieth and Cardiff) and the Welsh mountain railway from Porthmadog to Ffestiniog (the oldest running railway in the World, a kid’s delight but again very similar to the mountain railways of Ooty and Darjeeling).

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What do you call it if you wait till winter to write a post for the amazing trip that happened in summer? Lazy, that’s it. Well its better that I write now than not at all, so here goes. I was looking for a good break around the summer bank holiday in UK in end August and zeroed in on Cornwall (in England) and Wales as the two possible destinations. The fact that Wales offered what Cornwall offered to an extent in terms of beaches and offered much more in terms of hills, is what set us up for Wales.

I had already done a semi-road trip of Scotland a couple of months earlier and knew how to better things up, so planned my itinerary meticulously. There was just going to be the two of us and all was set up for a nice romantic summer break. We had four days, so there was just enough time to include both South and
North Wales in our trip. The two parts are dramatically different and four days is the absolute minimum to visit both, better stick to one if you have any lesser amount of time.
Our itinerary looked like this –
First day – London to Cardiff by bus. Hire car in Cardiff and drive to Tenby in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, Spend time in Tenby
Second day – Pembrokeshire coastline, Pembrokeshire towns, evening drive to Harlech in Snowdonia, North Wales
Third day – Explore towns in Snowdonia
Fourth day – Drive back to Cardiff in morning, spend time in Cardiff; take the bus back to London in evening.

The journey by bus from London Victoria to Cardiff Central was very comfortable and as fast as a train (much cheaper as well), we stopped at a highway café and clicked this pic there. It took us less than 3 hours.

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