In need of a rest?

Day 13 – Rest Day

To Eden Project / Lanhydrock

www.edenproject.com

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/w-lanhydrock/

Mileage: 23.8 miles

Cycling time: 1hr 56mins

Well, it certainly does know how to rain in Cornwall. It was incredibly wet overnight! Fortunately by the time we got up it had dried out and we were able to sit out in the conservatory to have breakfast without being disturbed by loud, drumming noises on the roof. Stewed fruit from the garden, yoghurt, milk and butter from the house cow and eggs from the hens outside were all on offer, along with good coffee, tasty bacon and toast (with home made jam and marmalade too).

Our bikes had to sleep outside, so we were pleased that our temporary bin bag bike covers had kept the worst of the downpour off their mechanicals. It felt very strange heading out without the weight of our panniers to hold us back. If we hadn't had to pedal straight up a steep hill there might even have been some decent acceleration in evidence! Really nice little country lanes took us all the way to the Eden Project, about 10 miles to the south. Definitely some ups and downs involved, with hedges lining the edges, grass and moss growing along the centre in places and a beautiful woodland glade to keep us entertained.

12 years ago this was just a muddy clay pit!

We managed to get a special bike parking ring complete with stripy, knitted cover (no, we've no idea why either, there were just several like that) and locked our bikes up for the first time this holiday before putting our helmets and other bits into the cycle lockers and meandering down to the entrance which (at 11:30am) was pretty darn busy.

If you haven't been before, the Eden Project is an incredible feat of vision, engineering, teamwork and eco-principles – well, well worth a visit if you're down in Cornwall. The main drawback is actually its popularity, with astonishing numbers of people there, most of whom seemed to be in the shop whilst we were attempting to buy bottled water! Very good, reasonably priced food available too, with the majority of fruit & veg in the meals grown on site.

It's a bit hot in here

The Biomes (massive air bubble greenhouses to the uninitiated) were especially amazing. We were just disappointed that that 50m high (yes, 50m above the Biome floor) observation platform was out of commission, although we'd most likely have melted at that height as it was very, very warm inside anyway.

Wandering away around 4:30 we decided to take a longer route back in order to at least see Lanhydrock House and had a very enjoyable whizz down the hill into Bodmin and even (shock horror) along a maintained off road cycle path for some of it. We passed the steam railway station too and generally got a much more favourable impression of Bodmin as a lively, interesting town than we had the night before.

Feeling pretty tired (we were like that on our previous rest day too) we conked out for a bit on our return and listened to The Archers Omnibus on the iPlayer before we had our showers. After various snacks during the day we weren't really hungry for proper dinner. So we just strolled along the lanes to the Co-Op for pasta salads, rice pudding and Schloer which we munched back at base in the conservatory. Just gearing up now for our final couple of days cycling – we're going to be very sad to have to stop and go back to the normal routine without new places to explore and enjoy.