Report on April walk - Mount Edgcombe
Friday 7th of April was a perfect Spring day with virtually no wind and the sun warming everything from a cloudless blue sky. The Walking Group could not have had a better day for their visit to Mount Edgcumbe Country Park. Two regular walkers, Susan and David, had made all the arrangements, that worked like clockwork. Using our bus passes the 9.30am bus took us to the old Plymouth bus station where we caught another bus to Cremyll Creek, It was only a short wait for the ferry to go across to Mount Edgcumbe for the small sum of £1.50. A civilised stop for coffee was made at the Orangery Restaurant where we all gave our orders for lunch. A circular walk of just over an hour was planned. Within a short time we were standing looking over Plymouth Sound with Cormorants continually diving, no doubt for their elevenses. The perimeter of the grounds have a shelter belt of oak, just coming into leaf and flower giving a bronze effect contrasting with the greens of unfurling leaves of beech, sycamore, ash and hawthorn, with splashes of white from bushy blackthorn. Very occasionally a wild cherry was flowering. For some distance the only flowers at ground level were the three-cornered onion with attractive white flowers but a strong onion smell when damaged, and the bright golden yellow lesser celandine, the roots of which are a bundle of small tubers. Under the Doctrine of Signatures in which it was thought that all plants had a use for man and had signs to indicate their use, it was thought the tuber roots of lesser celandine resembled piles and therefore the plant could be used as treatment for that problem. Looking at the roots, piles must have been terrible hundreds of years ago.
Over the years non native plants have been introduced at Mount Edgcumbe particularly as windbreak material such as the Monterey pine and Ilex (evergreen) oak. How I wished a large drift of daffodils were our delicate native and not a much larger commercial one. We all climbed a slope to reach a folly of a ruin, offering even better views across the Sound to Plymouth. Just before our climb a very loud horn blast came from a naval frigate negotiating the Sound. From the folly it was a wending downhill walk to the Orangery through a large collection of camellias. At the foot of some banks growing in wet shady areas were drifts of the low growing golden saxifrage. Camellias like a light foliage canopy, and this was provided by a wide range of native trees, intermixed with a few exotics of which various magnolias were most noticeable with bursts of colour from tall evergreen Rhododendron arboretum, native of the Himalaya.
On arrival at the Orangery reserved tables were arranged at the far end where I think everyone enjoyed their tasty ordered meal. Just over half an hour remained for a quick walk around the formal gardens starting with the simple architectural, Italian garden, before returning via the ferry and busses. Some of us, of whom I was one, enjoyed an ice cream ( mine was honey and ginger) before getting on the ferry. This was my first outing with the walking group for about six years, I enjoyed the friendly atmosphere so it is very likely I will become a regular monthly walker - stroller.