In article ,
says...
On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 05:46:14 -0800 (PST), Dave Hill
wrote:

Dave, I hope this works since I'm not used to cutting posts about

Far be it for me to defend Mike, but this time the subject was gardens
in Madeira,
and it has given rise to Charlie's answer listing other gardens and
their location.
Yes, Charlie did respond with an interesting answer about other
gardens and I was looking forward to some more of the same.

Had he been extolling the virtues of cruses then it would have been
right off topic.
But that's exactly what he did in his second post, ignoring the
gardens completely and going off on his usual self-gratification.

I consider the way that most cruses are structured the participants
are just a glorified bunch of day trippers.
I can't comment on that, have never been interested in cruises.

As always with 'Mike' the mention of gardening was just a pretext to
go off on his usual ego-trips.

As with anywhere the trick with the gardens on Madeira is to know how
long is going to be long enough, and to be able to work out what else may
be usefully done while in that direction, which is why we prefer to do
our own thing and not have our schedule dictated, everyones tastes differ
and Mike is not alone in enjoying cruising I however would not go on one
if they paid me (and they used to do just that!!) not enough plants and
too much sea, thats why we live in a cold bit of cornwall, its as far
from the sea as I could get!
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea