The Garden House & Tavistock

 

At my request we took a day off from hiking and bimbled instead, though Joff was a willing conscript. 

First stop was The Garden House, a few miles south of us near Yelverton. It’s not a massive garden, but beautifully varied with sweeps of my favoured prairie-style planting, jungly bits, wild meadow bits, an acer glade and more.

The walled garden is a riot of hot colours, and in fact it was pretty warm, so we had a spell on a shady seat trying to track the daredevil aerobatics of huge dragonflies and diminutive damselflies.

After a light lunch we headed back to Tavistock, a place we both liked. We learned some stuff about tin mining in the area - I didn’t realise there were tin mines this far north - and followed a short heritage trail taking in remains of the old abbey.

A window designed by William Morris tempted us into St Eustachius church. This is a detail of it.

The Guildhall and town hall are substantial and serious looking, and tucked behind the latter is the panier market and butchers hall, all built in the mid 19th century.

The market is mostly crafts, though there was also a stall selling all manner of guitars and ukuleles. The town seems to boast a higher than average number of independent shops, which adds to its attractiveness.

We were already quite tired by the time we spotted the former railway viaduct which you can now walk over - we normally like to get to the highest point of any new town or city that we visit. Having decided that we could live without it, we settled instead for bringing some pimped-up flapjacks back to the round house for afternoon tea.

Back to the hiking tomorrow for our last day.

Em x