Port Eliot

Port Eliot, seat of the Earl of St Germans, has opened to the public for the first time this year, under a deal with the tax man - show the paintings to the public, don't pay death duties, or some such. The idea of going to see the famous round room with Lenkiewicz mural has been tempting us for a while, so we finally made our minds up to go today, before it's too late.

The day had started hot and sunny (Ty and I met six adults, three and three quarters children and five dogs down at the creek in the morning, all revelling in the good weather) but by the time I was due to leave to meet my friends it was pouring with rain. This didn't bother us too much as we were only going round the house, but there was a one-day-only special Daphne du Maurier day going on which should have included garden party amongst the rhododendrons, etc, and was a bit washed out.

The Lenkieweicz mural is amazing. He started by the door and worked almost all the way round the room (it isn't quite finished) over many years, coming back every so often to do a bit more. The improvement in technical skill, maturity and vision is, I suppose, something that happens to every artist over a lifetime, but it is unusual to see this all in what is essentially the same painting.

The rest of the paintings are mostly family portraits (dark and boring for the most part) and one room 'designed' to display some rather nice lace which reminded me of a violently unbalanced version of Miss Faversham. Very clever, very well thought out, but somehow deeply disturbing.

By the time we had finished doing the house the sun had come out again so we took a muddy walk round some of the grounds. Looking for the maze we found a swarm of bees high up in an oak tree, there were canada geese on the river Tiddy, which at high tide was pretending to be a lake, and we found some amazing trees, including Ophelia the beech, a Montezuma pine (so we were told) and a cedar I could happily live in. Altogether a very pleasant couple of hours - and it was just as well we didn't stay any longer, because on the way home the heavens opened again.