| Date: | 24th. March 2007 | |
| County: | CORNWALL | |
| Location: | Penmount | |
| Type: | Garden | |
| Sub-Type: | Crematorium | |
| Viewed by: | WALK from car park | |
| Car Park: | Free | |
| Difficulty: | Easy | |
| Distance: | xKm. | |
| Season: | Early Spring | |
| Weather: | ? | |
| Time Of Day: | ? | |
| Camera: | Casio Exilim EX-Z850 Pocket Zoom (JPG) | |
| Scene Rating: | ••••• |
The walk we made from Chapel Porth to St. Agnes on 9th. March led to some unfortunate consequences. A few days before we started, Xue had been prescribed some medicine that, we'd been warned, made her "more susceptible to ultra-violet rays." This turned out to be an understatement!
The strong wind on the headland had made it impossible for her to keep her hat on for more than a few paces (despite desperate attempts to anchor it with both her hands) and even a liberal application of factor 25 suncream was not enough to prevent her from sustaining serious sunburn on the nose and ears.
The persistent blast of the cool sea-wind had also left her with a chill and she had a miserable ten days, during which we avoided exposure to the outside world - whether or not the weather was fine.
No amount of moist face-masks, soft music wi-fi'd from the satellite TV, electricity passed through the brain or pretending to be an extraterrestrial, borg or robot was enough to give Xue a swift recovery!
It was just a question of avoiding the sun and giving the tender red skin time to heal on its own...
We decided that it was prudent to avoid open areas of the coast for a while and to confine ourselves to the shelter of woodland.
Natural woodland is, of course, less easy to find in Cornwall than coastline, but there are a number of pretty walks within a short drive of St. Agnes - and early spring is a good time to take them, when the ground below the trees is often carpeted with wild flowers.
Some of the best woodland in the area was once part of the country estates that surrounded the stately homes of landed gentry. Much of this has since reverted to the National Trust or the Cornish authorities and become accessible to the public.
One of the most popular and well-known of these areas is Tehidy Woods Country Park - which we'd been meaning to visit for some while. My parents had often walked the tracks through Tehidy Woods when they first retired to Cornwall and it had become one of my mother's favourite places - such that she was even considering having her ashes strewn there when she died.
As it happened, we laid her ashes to rest in the grounds of a mansion with which she was less familiar, but would have loved none the less. The grounds were Penhellick Mur, the mansion house was called "Penmount" and the gardens have today become the Penmount Gardens of Rememberance - a few miles from Truro.
Penmount itself was built in 1745, although it wasn't called by that name until bought by its second owner, General William Macarmick, M.P., near the end of the century. It was adapted to its present use by the Bishop of Truro in 1956.
The 18th. March 2007 was Mother's Day, so we took some flowers to Penmount in rememberance of my mother.
Most of the gardens are formal and the paths are lined with little bronze commemorative plaques, but in a hollow away from the house is a small wood which has been preserved largely unchanged.
On the day we visited, the lower entrance to the bluebell wood and some of the valley paths were closed for maintenance, but we could still walk down from the Children's Garden into the less densely populated upper part of the wood. This was also where the slope was most thickly spread with flowers.
The problem with photographs is that they can record the sight - or maybe even the mood - of a place, but they can't evoke the full experience: the warmth of the air, the fragrance of the flowers and - especially - the tranquil song of the many woodland birds.
Birdsong - and in the summer, the sound of insects - is as much a part of country living as the wide cut of the horizon and the expanses of abundant growth that frame and dwarf everyone venturing away from their man-made retreats.
The most prominent flowers on the slope were patches of Narcissi. This was very apt, since they were my mother's favourite.
This group are probably some variety of Narcissus Tazetta, but there are now so many types of Narcissus (including those called daffodils or jonquils in different parts of the world) that I would be hesitant to venture an unqualified guess!
But by far the most common flowers in the throng were primroses (Primula Vulgaris.)
Various varieties and colours of this popular springtime plant formed, as it were, the "pile" of the floral carpet spreading across the slope, amongst which other flowers added texture to the carpet's "pattern."
In many places the expanse of primroses was so dense that there was hardly any room for grass to grow, let alone other flowers - although a few hardy celandines did sometimes manage to poke shyly through the primrose mass.
Mostly the primroses were ... well ... primrose coloured ...
...(although for some reason the upload to the blog-site has made them a little whiter than the delicate pale yellow of the originals) ...
...but there was also a spirited showing of flowers with hues from pink to purple.
Some people call these "primulas" to distinguish them from the yellow primroses, but actually they are all just varieties of Primula Vulgaris and, hence, all primroses.
Nearer the path you could also find bursts of white ad yellow from ox-eye daisies.
The oxen in question seem to have learned the art of using false eyelashes...
The larger trees were mostly lower down the slope in the bluebell wood (which we couldn't reach at that time,) but there were a few with girths wide enough to require support from sturdy root buttresses at the top of the slope, bordering the Children's Garden.
Somehow, though, the plaques and the artificial flower beds that surround the trees in the upper gardens seem to diminish the naturalness of their presence, so we renewed our resolve to visit Tehidy.
Bluebell,
Cornwall,
Flower,
Penmount,
Primrose,
Tehidy,
Trees,
Walk,
Woodland,
Xue
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