A wet day in Truro brought that existential dilemma faced by all Cornish tourists over recent years: get wet by visiting yet more gardens (think dripping rhododendrons), or go to the Eden Project. So, the Project it was. My first visit; and with a clear(ish) carbon conscience as I was only driving a short distance to get there, having already committed my precious carbon budget to personal pleasures (those rhododendrons, again).
It began with a heady mix of Eden's false modesty, and hubris, displayed on a large sign at the entrance which proclaims (a slight paraphrase here, perhaps):
We are just ordinary people trying to save the world
What visitors just looking for a day out of the rain make of this is anyone's guess.
Well, we had a moderately good time and didn't get wet: good coffee; interestingly different food; a good ambiance; not too crowded; and plants galore, of course. Not that all the plants seemed to be in good condition, especially in the lower part of the tropical biome which was neither warm nor humid.
I did wonder, however, where all the education was, give how much emphasis Eden places on this. We didn't see very much. Didn't see many obvious educators either. Mostly, we saw gardeners and caterers, especially the latter.
There was a lot of information, of course, mostly about the plants. But, as a general observation, I'd say that the smaller the print, the less time was spent by visitors (aka learners) trying to read it. That's a very general rule, of course. All told, I thought there might have been much more interpretation of what was there; that is, more help to visitors in making sense of what they were seeing. Unfairly, of course, I compared this experience with that of a visit to the new Tesco palace of varieties in Truro (also somewhere to go out of the rain), where there were lots of staff hanging about just waiting to help bemused first-time visitors.
A striking difference, but unfair, of course; the economics underpinning the two places are very different, as any scrutiny of their financial positions show.
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