Not a Cheap Date
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 4 ~ Thursday 5 September ~ Tresco
Amanda posts some cards outside the Tresco Stores, next to Tresco Bicycle Hire.
It has to be said that Tresco Stores came as a bit of an unexpected surprise. Although we'd pre-ordered the basics, we still needed to pick up a few things, so we popped in yesterday. "A few things" rapidly escalated when we discovered not a slightly sad convenience store, but an emporium fit in every way for Surrey Waitrose folk like us!
Want some kaffir lime leaves? Of course, sir. And just the plain Cornish sea salt, not the smoked flakes, thanks. And, err, reassuringly expensive...
With few exceptions, the only transport on Tresco is electric or human-powered.
We are choosing the latter option.
This is one of the few others.
As well as being simply a place to stay, Tresco is famous for its Abbey Gardens which attract visitors from all over. That's where we're off to now, and it's close to the airfield.
It's one of the few places you can see red squirrels in the wild these days. They're not exactly native, though, having been brought here in 2012 and 2013. And goodness me, the 2013 batch came from Surrey and arrived by helicopter, just like us! See this BBC News article.
The people on the bridge are hoping the red squirrels will come into view but haven't realised that they can walk round to this side of the tree.
The weather is a bit dull, but there's plenty of colour here.
The subtropical climate allows a lot of exotica.
This bench appearst to have been repurposes as a lichen farm.
This is not just any old pheasant, this is Lady Amherst's Pheasant. It's a native of China, brought to Brtitain in the 19th Century by the aforesaid Lady Amherst, but it never really thrived and the wild population is believed to have died out around 2015. That said, online birding circles seem full of raging arguments about whether any still exist. This one behaves in a pretty tame and domesticated fashion, but its origin appears unknown to the Internet.
Various works of sculpture are dotted around.
And many of the plants are quite sculptural themselves.
Oh look, another red squirrel!
A sculpture of a sculptural plant. How confusing.
More art, a little shell house.
Closeup of some mussel shells.
On further investigation, though, there's more to this than just an interesting little curiosity. Tresco Estate, the business, is owned and run by the Dorien-Smith family who live in the abbey, and the shell house was designed by Lucy, Mrs Dorrien-Smith herself. I quote from this blog https://outsider-environments.blogspot.com/2022/11/lucy-dorrrieu-smith-shell-house-in.html
In 1987 a storm destroyed much of Abbey Garden. In the context of its restoration, Lucy Dorrieu[sic]-Smith came up with the idea of providing the garden with a shell decoration situated in a structure on the hill.
She asked the renowned shell artist Mrs Blott Kerr-Wilson for advice and then single-handedly covered the walls of the structure she had designed herself, with colorful frescoes composed of shells found on the isles of Scilly, a project that was completed in 1994.
It's not been the brightest of days, but the garden has still been very pretty. We will try and find a chance for another visit when the sun is shining, but for now it's time to go back to our cottage for the evening.
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