Lost Gardens of Heligan: Part II

The jungle at Heligan has a board walk encircling and crisscrossing the water at its centre. The long hollow in which it sits is so sheltered from the British climate that it is possible for its tropical plants to survive and thrive, as you can see from my pictures.

 After feasting our eyes on them, we left the jungle before attempting to follow the very steep walk down to the bottom pond. (Fortunately for us old fogies all the steep bits were marked on the map we got with our entry tickets so we were able to avoid most of them.) We crossed a field that was labelled the East Lawn to reach the Sunken Lane which we followed down to the Lost Valley with trails beside a river. It also had interesting features such as charcoal kilns and a charcoal sculpture, plus a shepherds hut on wheels that was doubling as a bird hide. I took the picture of the odd shaped tree in my Wordless Wednesday post along the trail here.

By this time we had been on the move for nearly two hours and were beginning to feel it, so again we avoided the steeper paths and skirted the estate via the Georgian Ride till we arrived back at the Grey Lady and retraced our steps through the woodland walk to the exit. We were wearing stickers that had been issued to allow us to enter the gardens as often as we liked on the day we bought our tickets. We needed sustenance but there was a lot more to see.

After a satisfying lunch of local produce in the café, hubby opted to take Jade back to the car and wait for me. I just couldn’t leave before a quick gallop around the more formal areas of the northern gardens. I took more photos of course. So look out for Part III to come.

PS I found a much better photo online of the Mud Maiden. Click the link to see it.