Well not quite, but flaming Barrels of death! Taking a day off work, we grabbed Corde, or he grabbed us and we set forth on a mini weekend road trip. Heading out from our place we went to Ottery St Mary for Guy Fawkes night.

This sleepy little town hosts a Tar Barrel festival every year. Each of the 9 pubs in town sponsors a couple of barrels each. These full size wine barrels have been soaking in Tar to make them burn hotter and longer. The 'contestants' then take it in turn to lift the barrel onto their shoulders, (they have very thick protective gloves and back padding) and run around with the barrel. There is some bizarre scoring in there somewhere, but we weren't interested in that aspect of the night.

The craziest thing about this was the fact that they were running through the crowd. Not a light sprinkling of people but tens of thousands packed into the small cramp streets. As they run through the street, the crowd parts only meters before them like the Red Sea before Moses. There are flames, sparks and burning embers flying everywhere. People are getting burnt, clothes ruined, crushed in the crowd, all the time cheering on the contestants. Awesome!! La Tomatina was crazy on the scale of people and amount of tomatoes. This was just stupidity. I'm going back next year!

Oh yeaa, there was a bonfire and a mini fair ground.

Eden Project
The next day, nursing our burns and tattered clothing, we headed further southwest into Cornwell to the Eden Project. It is a collection of Bio-domes, each with a different artificial climate. Don't get me wrong, this was impressive, but I was expecting more. The domes did hold different climates, but I was expecting a very scientific angel of the whole site. More of a grand scale experiment, not just a tourist trap, which it was. You don't get overly stung on admission, but it was actually designed as a tourist attraction, not a scientific experiment. Which on some level I found rather disappointing.