My Cornish Holiday (Part 2)

The view from our cottage

After two nights at a hotel and a day out at Slimbridge, we spent another day travelling into Cornwall and to our base for the week at St Austell. We are now officially on our Cornish Holiday! Our base for the week was a small cottage with good sea views.

The sea!

The next day, we went to the Secret Gardens of Heligan. Dad has always wanted to come here and it was a nice day for a visit. It may seem to be a day out looking at pretty gardens, but there were wildlife to be had here. Even at the cafe, several birds were searching under picnic tables, unnerved by people that were sitting on them. Song thrushes, blackbirds, robins, house sparrows and chaffinches all kept a watchful eye from the fences and walls before coming in to grab the crumbs dropped for them.

Blackbird

Robin

Song Thrush

This place had some interesting sculptures to look at. They were all made of natural materials and gave the gardens a sense of fantasy.

Giant's Head

Sleeping Woman

Grey Lady

Charcoal Sculpture

A field of poppies covered a corner of the gardens red. You don't see a field of poppies this often these days. It was wonderful to see.

There was a patch of mixed wildflowers too

Dad took us to the Jungle Garden which had a rope bridge to cross over. It was a bit nervy to cross but we did it without too much problem despite taking a bit of time crossing it. I'm not too good with heights but was glad when it is over.

The Jungle Garden

My parents test out the scary rope bridge. Mum was not keen!

Robin sunbathing

Mating damselflies

House Sparrow

My favourite part was a building called The Hide and it was just that, a hide. Feeders outside it attracted many birds including rooks and a nuthatch and even a couple of squirrels. The rooks demonstrated that they could use the feeders too, even if it was with as little grace as possible. The squirrels on the other hand were showing off their acrobatic skills by leaping onto the feeders from a nearby post or by tightroping across the wire that held them up.

Male House Sparrows

Male and Female House Sparrows

Greenfinch

Goldfinch

Rook

Rook feeding from the feeder in its own fashion

Grey Squirrel

We looked at other gardens such as the Italian Garden, before leaving for an icecream.

Mum admires the flowers

The Italian Garden

A sea view with some Foxgloves

After our visit to the gardens, we went to Mevagissey to have a look around the harbour. There were some interesting plants growing on the cliff here. Then after a quick look out at sea, we went to Charlestown for our evening meal.

Mevagissey Harbour

Herring Gull

English Stonecrop

Sheep's-bit Scabious

A nice day to be out at sea

A scene of the coastline at Mevagissey