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ing Diana's death. We spent our days smiling at visitors, answering questions and messing
around with walkie-talkies. I seemed to be the only person on the 14,000-acre estate that
appreciated Ben's odd sense of humour and we hit it off instantly.
There was a piano in the staff room which Ben spent every lunch hour playing. The
older members of staff adored him, whilst the rest of the staff - including the managers -
all found him a little bit weird. I worked a total of four summers at Althorp. Ben was not
asked back after the first year.
Perranporth was a busy little seaside village. Its bustling high street was crawling with
coach parties who were stripping the shops bare of their souvenirs.
It was lunchtime and there was an unmistakeable smell of Cornish pasties in the air. We
soon found the source; Berrymans Bakery with a queue stretching out the door. They were
clearly popular pasties, and we decided it was worth the embarrassment and possible hu-
miliating rejection, to join the queue and ask for a freebie.
The young girl who served us was very smiley and didn't really understand what we
were doing, but she checked with her manager and then gave us two huge pasties. We
pushed our bikes further up the road to where we found access to the beach and we sat and
ate our delicious pasties in the sand dunes.
There was another uphill section out of Perranporth, where we followed signs to Goon-
havern until we became distracted by a signpost for
The World In Miniature
. We couldn't
resist.
The World in Miniature
was,well,theworld,butinminiature.Mostoftheworld'smost
recognisable landmarks were there to see, in reduced sizes. They had the Leaning Tower
of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty and the Egyptian pyramids, to name but a few. We had an
enjoyable world tour in about 20 minutes. It was almost as good as the real thing.
The manager of the place, Donna, was particularly generous and she piled us high with
more pasties, sausage rolls, pick 'n' mix and energy drinks (which provided Ben with a
new drinking bottle). We asked her for directions east, following the scenic route, and she
reeled off a list of villages for us to look out for. These included: Fiddlers Green, Kestle
Mill, St Columb Major, Withiel and Nanstallon. It felt like we were characters in a Charles
Dickens novel. Actually, it didn't feel like that at all.
We borrowed a spanner from the workman who was busy repairing the miniature Buck-
ingham Palace, and we raised Pinky's saddle. Neither bike was comfortable to ride, but the
saddleonPinkyhadbeenespecially lowandwasparticularly painfulontheknees.Raising
the saddle made a huge difference.
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