The Tip of England

Cornwall, UK

Additional Research, Images

Cruises around north Western Europe oftentimes make detours across the English Channel to dock at the south coast ports of the UK. However, ports like Southampton, Dover and Portsmouth don’t have much to offer the cruiser – they hardly represent England at its best. So, more often, ships put in at one of these locations and then bus cruisers to the county that form England’s ‘toe’ – Cornwall – which has a great deal to see but not much in the way of cruise ports.

You might not think it as you look around, but Cornwall is actually England’s poorest county. That’s because all the old industries that kept it going for years, notably fishing and tin mining, have disappeared, and the county is now almost entirely dependent on tourism to earn a living. The legacies of the old ways live on, however: Cornwall is still the spiritual home of world mining, something that harks back to the days when it supplied the world with tin. There’s a say in mining communities that world over: find a hole in the ground and you can be sure a Cornishman is at the bottom of it.

Cornwall is the most southerly county in the UK, and, although it’s not as sheltered as other parts of the country, which means it’s regularly lashed by Atlantic storms, the climate in general warmer and sunnier than in more northerly parts.

In recent years the number one tourist draw in Cornwall has been the Eden Project. Started around at the turn of the millennium by a team led by a local environmentalist Tim Smits, this is far, far more than simply a theme park. The stated aim of the project is to teach people about the variety and range of the natural environment and to work to conserve the natural environment of earth for future generation.

Just about every plant species you can possibly imagine is represented at the Eden project. The whole site is built in the basin of an old china clay pit. Right in the west point of the pit, are the two ‘biomes’ that have become Eden’s trademark. These are transparent, steel and plastic domes each of which has a carefully controlled internal climate. One simulates a moist, tropical environment, the other a warm, dryer Mediterranean one. Each one contains a huge selection of plants, and each plant is labeled with any medicinal use that it has – continuing the theme of humans working hand in hand with the environment to the mutual benefit of both. In the souvenir shop you can buy environmentally-aware gifts, such as pencils made from recycled plastic cups, and mouse pads made from old car tires. It’s difficult to do justice to Eden in words: it is so much more than a museum. In many ways it’s a life experience, and that’s what draws the crowds.

Tim Smits is also the guiding genius behind the Lost Gardens of Heligan, another major tourist draw. Heligan is completely different from the Eden Project. Set above the tiny and picturesque fishing village of Mevagissey, the gardens are a complex of pools, hidden valleys and walkways that used to belong to Cornwall’s wealthy Tremayne family. They were ‘lost’ in the sense that after the First World War, when the family fortunes declined, they fell into disrepair. During the mid-nineties Smits and a team of dedicated volunteers took up the challenge of restoring them to their former glory, and today wandering around Heligan is a wonderful, mysterious experience.

Mevagissey itself is well worth a look around, although it can get awfully crowded in the summer months. While you’re here it would be a good idea to sample the local cuisine. The food in Cornwall is rather like the sort of fare you’ll get elsewhere at restaurants in the UK: excellent, whatever the French tell you. The county’s distinctive dish is the Cornish pasty. This meat and vegetable pie is made by folding the ingredients up in a bag of pastry and baking the resulting packet in an oven. Cornish pasties were originally invented as an ideal lunch snack for tin miners. Tin is toxic, so miners would hold the pasty’s crimped edge between their fingers. When they’d eaten it, the edge could be discarded.

Cornwall, no matter how crowded, is a delightful place. Most cruise lines that run excursions from the south coast ports along to the county tend to do so in the spring months, before the UK national tourist season really heats up. So grab your hat and your Cornish pasty, and prepare for an adventure in one of the most exotic – and, to outsiders, little-known – areas of the United Kingdom.