Dreaming of The West Country
I doubt if she remembers, but I once spent some time in the same hospital ward as this writer. Her daughter was kind enough to bring me in some Cornish unpasteurised cheese, for which I had a hankering. It was excellent and that was a very kind thing to do.
Now here she is again, making me feel horribly homesick. Never mind, I’ll be home for Easter, and plan to take my sons down to the Eden Project, which I still haven’t visited despite its being on the doorstep. I can’t wait.
I defy anyone to read this amd not want to be there. Holland’s nice, but it’ll never be thw West Country.
Cornwall
Virginia Spiers
Wednesday April 5, 2006
The Guardian
Pink magnolias tower out of misty woods above Caerhays castle, just inland from the breaking waves and wet sand of Porthluney Cove. Beyond the rainswept beach, inside crenellated walls, a drive above the lake curves through greened pasture towards the sheltered woods and castellated mansion, designed by John Nash and built in 1808 for the Trevanions. Since early in the 20th century, when they sponsored Chinese plant hunters like Wilson and Forrest, the Williams family have built up a collection of camellias, rhododendrons and magnolias.
Deceptively fragile, large-petalled magnolias, ranging from white and cream through pale to deepest pink, overhang flowering camellias and primrose-studded slopes. Some of the older trees, such as the Magnolia veitchii, have massive trunks. The relatively young Caerhays Belle, raised in 1951, is also spectacular with thickly blossomed branches hanging over battlements.
Perfect blooms were entered into every magnolia class at the recent spring show at Boconnoc. Pointed fluffy buds on later specimens and the shocking purplish pink of early rhododendron Ostava hint at brilliance still to come. Up the hill, exposed to Atlantic gales, isolated trees on tops of hedge banks are stunted and lopsided, but primroses and lime green Alexanders thrive in the mild and damp atmosphere.
Towards Vose, some 40 pickers work their way across a large daffodil field. By St Ewe church porch, the large namesake Williamsii camellia is still laden with flowers and underlain with fallen pink and brown petals. Back home in the Tamar Valley, in the few remaining steep gardens now overgrown with regenerated woodland, old clumps and ragged rows of Magnificence, Fortune, Firsts and Carlton are past their best. The later Actea, Croesus, Lucifer and Sunrise are coming out, all in time for Cotehele’s postponed daffodil display at the end of the week.
