Exploring Cornwall

Surprisingly for me I didn't just go to Cornwall to eat, I also had the beach in mind. Uh, yeah. So the famous British weather ruined that idea but I still had a great time exploring rainy coastal villages and towns with my buddies. Mevagissey was one of our first stops and it's super pretty, we walked around the harbour and I saw my first ever jellyfish which was really cool.

We stumbled upon this cute little soap store which had loads of vegan options, some of them even had the vegan society logo! Their bath bombs smelt amazing!

We popped into this little grocers to buy some fruit to snack on and were super surprised by the vegan delights hidden inside, they had a huge variety of non-dairy milks as well as Alpro soya desserts.

One place that we did plan to visit just for the food was Falmouth, we went specifically to dine at Wildebeest Cafe which was so great it's getting it's own post. After lunch and a fair amount of walking I spotted this sign out of the corner of my eye! How exciting!

Annie's Kitchen had two kinds of vegan cake to choose from, I was stuffed but Nick took a piece of chocolate cake away and it looked really good.

Falmouth also has a health food store where you can pick up a pasty and some snacks or staples.

Falmouth is also one of the places you can pick up a vegan Cornish pasty from a traditional pasty shop, we were super excited when we spotted King's Pipe Pasties but they'd sold out already. Womp womp! Don't do what we did and rock up at 3pm, you need to get in there early!

The next place to tick off of our Cornish to do list was The Eden Project, I can't believe it's taken me this long to plan a visit and we were super lucky as it was a lovely sunny day.

The Eden Project has been focussing on increasing the wild bee population for the last couple of years, they've planted a wild meadow and a lavender garden, both of which are attracting bees by the bucketload. It's great. So much of the food we eat wouldn't be available if it wasn't for bees so we need to do everything we can to help them flourish.

The Eden Project seemed to have a few vegan options available, I spotted a vegan looking salad and a sandwich in the shop near the entrance / exit and the cafe just inside the entrance to the Mediterranean dome looked like it had some vegan friendly options. It was all on the expensive side though and as we weren't 100% sure we'd find anything to eat we came prepared with some snacks and sandwiches. Yup, that's a Muscolo di Grano smoked seitan slice and Pringle sandwich. Thanks for the genius idea Sal!

We spotted vegan chocolate in the gift shop.

And we were all excited by the juice bar, we love juice!

I went for the Revitalise which has spinach, mint, ginger, apple and lemon. Juice cheers!

We all really enjoyed The Eden Project, the Rainforest Dome was my favourite part but I also loved exploring the outdoor areas and riding the little land train. The dinosaur stuff they had on because it was the school holidays was super fun too! I would have liked it if somewhere so focussed on conservation sold a lot less animal products but I guess you can't have everything!

The last stop on our journey was The Monkey Sanctuary which is based in Looe Bay. They focus on rehoming monkeys from the pet trade, they have an anti-vivisection stance and they're definitely vegan leaning - the cafe is entirely vegetarian with a lot of vegan options which is a great start. I first visited The Monkey Sanctuary five years ago and I've been dying to go back ever since. They're one of the charities my not-for-profit bakery Operation Icing donates to and it was fantastic to see how the monkeys are doing and to hear some talks by the volunteers. I didn't take pictures because the monkeys really aren't meant to interact with people and I wanted to keep a respectful distance. They have loads of space but we were all saddened to hear the stories of how they ended up at the sanctuary.

We wound down in the cafe before our long drive home, it's in a lovely spot and the volunteers were super nice and happy to tell us what was and wasn't vegan. Nick ordered a the Traditional Burger and I went for the Hotdog. They both came with hand cut wedges.

The cafe use Fry's products for their mock meaty offerings which is great because they're one of my fave' vegan companies. The hand cut chips were delish and you know how I feel about hot dogs!! This was a good filling lunch but once we discovered all of the cakes that day were vegan too we dived right in. Sal went for the Carrot Cake with Lemon Frosting and everyone else had a slice of the Chocolate Cake.

The cakes were great and I was impressed at the size of the piece you got for your money too. This was a great end to our trip and I would definitely recommend a visit to The Monkey Sanctuary if you're in Cornwall.