Nerd_on_Safari: Your 'Wall Correspondent

'tis a strange thing to come halfway around the world to sit in generic conference rooms with your countryfolk, discussing your country, and then to emerge outdoors and be reminded 'I'm in England'. But I do feel that I have been engaged in an intensive Cornwall studies program: the Cornish migration to Australia, Cornish primary industries, Cornish economics, Cornish mining etc and so on, are all things that I've learnt about in the past few days.

And now you get to as well!

With regard to my previous remark that the university seemed unprepared for my arrival, and the supplies of coffee seem barely humane, let a lone adequate, there has been some explanation for this state - this campus has only been open for two years, and this is the first international conference held here. For this latter reason in particular we've had a very warm welcome - both from staff around the campus, as well as the Provost, and even from the local MP.

The conference is being held at the University of Exeter's Cornwall campus, which is part of the Tremough campus of the Combined Cornwall University (or something like that... ). The campus is shared by the university and a range of other higher education bodies in Cornwall. Until this opened there was no university in Cornwall, the only English county not to have one. Because of the collapse of fishing and mining in Cornwall the economy was one of the poorest in Europe. An application was made to the EU to help fund the university, as a project to stem the flow of 19-31 year olds out of Cornwall. In the past two years there has been a net increase of this age group, after twenty years of the reverse. I was very surprised that the EU granted funding to individual counties, not whole countries. Apparently there has not been universal rejoicing from the English government, but as the funding was granted solely for this purpose there was nothing they could do, and so had to accept. The university is now in its second stage of building, having already opened a large block of teaching and resources as well as the student residences.

Tremough is the original name of the estate, and the 17th century house has been adapted into offices for some of the universities faculties. The main building is fairly odd looking, once the comparision with a giant nougat has been made there is no going back. It incorporates stone from the original stables on the site, which were too structurally unsound to keep. The top of the building is covered with plants and grasses, so an from an aerial view the impact of the buildings on the landscape is minimized (http://www.uec.ac.uk/virtualtour/broadband/3.htm). A lot of recycled or renewable material has been used in the buildings, as well as materials and design that seems to be trying to maintain a sympathy with traditional cornish architecture (motto: We Love Slate! Almost as much as We Love Granite!).