Rest Day Rosemore RHS Garden

By: Mike

 

Sunday 16th August


                                                         The flower borders at Rosemore

We are on holiday.  Nobody says we have to walk every day. Weather still iffy, so we decide on a rest day.  After breakfast (scrambled eggs on toast watery hotel coffee) we amble across the bridge, buy Sunday papers and settle down to proper coffee in the Otter café on the quay.  I browse my phone for somewhere to go for a Sunday excursion.  What’s this? Rosemore RHS gardens is at Great Torrington, just up the river.  We decide to visit.  It’s the one time a car would have been useful, but it’s taxis for us. £35.00 each way.

 Rosemore is absolutely enchanting.  We have to book, which means limited numbers of people. Also, the weather puts people off, and there were a couple of showers while we were there.  The café is closed, but they are doing takeaway. I get a pasty.  The borders and flower gardens are lovely and at their best, but for us allotmenteers, it’s the veg garden which gets our full attention.  There’s an apple orchard with varieties unobtainable in supermarkets.  All sorts of tomatoes and they are growing aubergines, peppers, squashes.  It’s interesting that they use every inch of ground.  You can’t see the earth anywhere, except in the onion beds.  The onions have been dug up and are neatly arranged on the ground to dry.

 


Did I mention lobsters? We have booked dinner at the Seagate for 19.15. We catch our old friend the 21A to Appledore and are soon tucking in.  Delicious, and we are finished in time for the 20.30 bus back to Bideford.


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