St. Michael's mount is a gorgeous rocky island off the tip of Penzance, reachable by boat in high tide and by foot along a cobblestone causeway during low tide. We walked on the pathway, just wide enough for a car to drive on, as the water was still receding from the bay. I took off my shoes and waded in the inch or so deep water at one point. The island is a beautiful silhouette against the sky. I love it— it has been painted and drawn many many times by hundreds of artists for this very reason. It was very foggy the day we were at St. Micheal’s mount. As we crossed over to the island, the sun had started to peak out and heat us up, but, after hiking up to the castle and walking inside for a bit, we emerged and the whole bay was covered in thick, white fog.
The island is it's own little fortress city. There are about 8 houses where people actually live, a tiny little dock and a little restaurant and a gift shop for tourists. And then there is the castle, which is the heart of the island. Touring inside the castle was nice— very interesting. St. Micheal’s Mount has a long history of being captured and sieged and such. It is su
ch an enchanting place and has many stories and legends. One legend says that St. Michael, the archangel, came to the island and appeared to the sailors who lived there. And that's it. Funny little story. I kept thinking, and then what? Why did this angel appear to the sailors? Sounds a little fishy to me. :D
The pathway up to the castle at St. Michael's mount. The island has hundreds of tropical plants growing there that have been imported from as far away as Madagascar. Even in the middle of October, the flowers were still blooming.
After touring the castle, most of my time there was spent writing in my journal and sketching and trying to think up ideas for a short story I have to write for my Creative Writing class. I wasn't very successful at any of these. But, after about two hours, my friends and I decided to head back to the coach. This time, as we went back to the base of the island, we saw that the tide had receded so much that we could walk down into the dock area and through what looked like a boat graveyard, all the boats sitting in the sand, beached like small whales in the low tide, or lack of a tide I guess you could say, and then make our way across the beach that was now exposed to the air, all the way to our coach.
A sweet car in the car park by the beach at St. Michael's Mount.
This was awesome, because, as we walked, our bare feet squelching in the soft, wet sand, we found dozens of sea-shells. I soon began gathering all that I could find and the trip back to the coach ended up taking about twenty minutes for every other step I was bent over, pawing at another sea shell I spotted in the sand. It was great fun, and as I collected I knew that I wanted to use these shells in a sculpture or a project for art, so that was my reasoning behind being such a shell-glutton.
The giant's heart stone on the pathway up to the Castle at St. Michael's mount.
We were supposed to go to Stourhead Gardens this day as well, but the timing of everything didn't work out properly, so, after returning to the coach, we just drove to Salisbury, dropped our stuff at the youth hostel, and took a walk to the Salisbury Cathedral to see it lit up in the dark of the night.
It was quite beautiful, and some of our group were sad that we weren't going to be able to do a tour of it the next morning like we had scheduled to do (instead, we were going to the gardens in the morning because of the time mix-up, so the cathedral tour got booted) but just seeing the outside was enough for me.
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