Wednesday 15 July 2009

Day 4 - South West Coast - St Austell - UFOs and Rainforests at Eden Project

From there I shook a leg across to the Eden Project near St Austell. I heard about this futuristic environmental site long ago, and being a willing earthy type, I always wanted to go. It’s well worth it.

From the outside, there are five or six massive space-ship-like, honeycombed white domes. It’s futuristic looking, and when it was launched back in the day, it was a futuristic concept. These days we've has come to realise how we’ve messed up the earth, so whereas the Eden Project was an implicit warning to the world when it launched, today it’s simply confirming for us what we’ve now known for some time.

What’s impressive is that the site on which Eden is built used to be a massive mining pit, and what’s arisen from the dust is all the more special because of it.

Inside each dome is the recreation of different natural climates and habitats from across the globe. You can get really hot and sweaty in the tropical biome crammed with rainforest, and then cool off in the Mediterranean one. It's worth the £16 entry fee, which all goes to the charity which runs Eden anyway.

It was packed with people, and is clearly a big hit. For me, it was a melancholy experience...I
wondered what things would be like in the future...would the world be one big concrete megalopolis, and we’d have to visit a habitat “zoo”, like Eden Project, just to remind ourselves what deserts and rainforests were like? That’s a dumb thought I guess. I hope it is!


The river in the rainforest biome


Outside the UFOs


The Mediterranean biome






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