My longest trip to date this year -32 miles - today I rode to Truro. It turned out to be a morning of 'bottoms and smells'! Not what you think, but the quaintly named Park Bottom, Greenbottom and Skinners Bottom which lay on my route! As for the smells: the aromas from the kitchen of the Inn for All Seasons on the outskirts of Redruth (clever play on "Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons" name, but I don't know if the food is as good!); next the heady perfume of the gorse flowers, which filled both sides of the hill down into Chacewater; and lastly (OK you were right) a farmer 'muck spreading' just over the hedge from me as I rode home through Blackwater. Our senses are denied so much by travelling in cars!
Truro was bustling, as ever, but I scooted through stopping off to treat myself to a capuccino in M&S, sitting in the window looking out over the Plaza below, followed by a quick visit to the Cathedral. I'd heard about a very unusual bit of theatre being staged inside: 'Of All the People in All the World' put on by Stan's Cafe (an offshoot of Cornwall's own theatre company, Kneehigh). It amounted to measured piles of rice laid out on sheets of white paper on the floor, each bearing a label. The 2 actors wearing brown storekeepers' coats, surrounded by sacks of rice, worked at a long table with scales, scoops and a printer creating more piles. One grain of rice corresponded to one person, so 'The Population of Cornwall' alongside 'The Population of Bradford' were roughly equal piles. Simialrly 'The Number of Millionaires in the World' was about the same as 'The Number of Refugees in the World'. All around the cathedral many more unlikely population statistics were compared in piles of rice: very thought-provoking. On the way out I only just noticed a medium-sized pile of rice almost hidden under a table: 'The Number of FBI Agents in USA' - very typical of Kneehigh's wit!
My contrasts of the morning were the Eastern European migrant workers picking daffodils at Park Bottom and my fellow coffee drinkers in M&S.
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