Week 2: Frogpool to Trenewan

The Fowey waterfront

This week’s virtual journey brought me past two well known botanical gardens: the Lost Gardens of Heligan and the Eden Project. The contrast between the deep green of these sites and where I’m actually running every day was stark enough that I thought it’d be fun to post photos of both.

Here in Fort Collins, it’s been a warm, mostly dry week with just a few passing thunderstorms. This stretch of greenery-lined roads on Google “street view” shows the effects of Cornwall getting on average 35 inches of rain per year, compared to Fort Collins’ annual rainfall of 16 inches!

A few photos from this week’s runs at Pineridge and Maxwell Natural Areas:

Sunrise over Fort Collins, from the first ridge of Pineridge Natural Area.

The pink of the early-morning sky reflected in Dixon Reservoir, Pineridge Natural Area.

Rolling two-track road above Maxwell Natural Area, with Fort Collins in the distance.

A lot of my slithery friends were out on the trails this week too, but this was the biggest, enjoying the warm day at Spring Canyon Park.

By contrast, here are some of the landscapes I (virtually!) ran past this week in Cornwall:

The Lost Gardens of Heligan, outside Mevagissey. One interesting tidbit about these gardens: They grow pineapples using “pineapple pits” which are kept warm naturally, by using freshly rotting horse manure! Apparently the pineapples never come in contact with the “fuel.”

If you get the feeling someone’s watching you at the Lost Gardens of Heligan… you may be right!

Pretty rolling hills just past Grampound, and the Tremethick Brewery (more on that below).

Tree-lined road just past the Eden Project in Bodelva.

The ferry across the Fowey, looking back on the village of Bodinnick.

Near Trenewan, where I ended the week (mile 72.5 of 1083.8).

Fancy a pint?

Unlike the Naylor brothers, who pledged to “abstain from all intoxicating drink” during their 1871 walk on this route, I’m not at all opposed to popping into interesting-looking pubs along the way. Here are a few along this stretch of the journey:

Dr. Jenkins tending a barrel.

I “ran” right past the Tremethick Brewery in Grampound on Wednesday. Founded in 2016 by Dr. Dean Jenkins (a retired geriatrician), it’s a very new business compared to some of the 13th-century pubs we’ve seen elsewhere in Cornwall, but it adds to Cornwall’s reputation as the “UK capital of beer,” with more breweries per capita than anywhere else in Britain. Tremethick is Cornish for “doctor's house,” since the brewery is built by a doctor/brewmaster, on the site of old stables that were previously part of a home site known locally as “Dr. Stewart’s house.”

The Polgooth Inn, a pub founded in the sixteenth century, has been a community meeting site for the nearly 500 years it’s existed. By the eighteenth century, St. Austell was a hub for tin and white clay mining, and the Inn was used as a pay house for the miners. Apparently, this didn’t last long, as the miners’ wives became frustrated their husbands were spending their wages on beer and sandwiches before returning home. Over the years the bar was also shared by chickens, ducks and even the odd horse, with many locals still remembering having to wipe their feet on the way out of the pub. Today, sanitation laws mean that it’s a lot tidier, but well-behaved dogs are still welcome. They offer lots of vegan items, and prepare meals using the vegetables grown in the pub’s garden.

Drink a beer with horses and dogs? Count me in.

Sustenance for the Hungry Vegan

In addition to the Polgooth Inn, I came across these other yummy-looking restaurants with vegan options:

Archie Brown’s in Truro (there is also a location in Penzance) is a health food store with a cafe. Founded by Helen Swift in 1991, the cafe later absorbed a health food store, and now both sites have cafes and a retail space.

The Cornish Vegan, also in Truro, offers an all-vegan menu of “comfort food” favorites like vegan “fish ‘n’ chips" (made with banana blossom “fish”), burgers, and a vegan Reuben sandwich.

But judging by the online reviews, they’re best known for offering a special all-vegan cream tea, which includes two scones, clotted “cream,” and a pot of tea.

The cafe also offers a huge selection of cakes and other desserts by the Little Green Vegan Bakery, in St. Agnes… and they look delicious!

Finally, all four dining establishments at The Eden Project offer vegan options… even their ice cream shop! The Eden Project, built on the site of some former china clay pits, is now a site where a range of ecosystems have been replicated so that the public can walk through a rainforest, or a Mediterranean landscape, or experience the flora of Western Australia, all on one site outside Bodelva. The gardens have an educational mission to teach people about sustainability, so it makes sense they’ve made vegetarian and vegan options a priority.