St Michael's Mount

 Penzance. How happy I am to be back on the Cornish Riviera where holidaymakers come to enjoy the mild climate of England's south-westerly coast.

We have only one day in Penzance on this whirlwind tour so, to get the most out of the day, I have booked bicycles which will allow us to cycle along the waterfront of Mount's Bay to St Michael's Mount and in the other direction to the fishing port of Newlyn.

After a fabulous breakfast at the Summer House, we walk around the corner to what I imagine will be a bike shop to collect our bikes. Nothing is ever what you imagine, of course, so there is no bike shop. I pop into a B&B near where the 'bike shop' should be and discover that it is actually a little sideline run by another B&B owner. We go back down the street a few doors and find the right place. Steve is very helpful and goes to no end of trouble to get the bike seats to the correct height. We test them out in his back lane and finally get them set up, helmets on and we're away for the day.

Those of you who have read my book may remember my jaunt to St Michael's Mount, but for others a few details will be required, so I'll borrow a bit of that text to save me writing the same thing over again. 

Penzance shelters within the arc of land bordering Mount’s Bay and just two miles around the bay to the east is the village of Marazion. Off the coast of Marazion is a castle on a tiny, fascinating island—a volcano-shaped granite rock known as St Michael’s Mount—which lies just a stone’s throw out to sea from the village. When the tide is low visitors can walk in the steps of the pilgrims of old across a causeway to the island but the rising tide completely covers the rocky roadway making the island accessible only by boat.

St Michael's Mount, Cornwall

When last I visited you just went to the castle and bought a ticket. Nothing that simple today. We chain up our bikes then spend an inordinate amount of time trying to buy tickets on line with our travel credit cards which are loaded with an eye-watering amount of cash, but the ticketing system doesn't like them, so we pay with our home credit cards. We have to pay for the boat as well which now costs over three times more than it did in 2010.

The castle itself is just as I remember it and we climb the rocky pilgrim path and step back into nearly one thousand years of history.

The Pilgrim Steps

St Michael’s Mount has a twin, Mont Saint-Michel, across the Channel off the coast of Brittany, which is altogether more grand, architecturally, than the English version, I believe. The Mount’s history lies deep in the past, but its journey towards the castle we see today began after the Norman invasion of England when the island was granted to the monks of the Benedictine Abbey which was well established over at Mont Saint-Michel. The monks established a small community and built a priory on this rocky little mound in the sea. It remained a possession of Mont Saint-Michel until, in the fifteenth century, it returned to English hands during the Hundred Years War with France. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the Mount became a possession of the Crown and served as a defensive garrison eventually holding off Cromwell’s troops during the English Civil War in the seventeenth century. Colonel John St Aubyn was appointed Governor of the Mount after it fell to the Parliamentarians in 1647 and later purchased it, subsequently converting it to a family home where his descendants live to this day.

We step through the medieval doorway and into the castle. 

The Castle Entrance

The family coat of arms is on display and portraits of family members grace the walls. Ancient weapons hint at the castle’s long-past defensive duties. In Sir John’s study there is a tidal clock, an eighteenth-century timepiece charting the movement of the tide in Mount’s Bay—essential information for dwellers on this water-bound rock. What was once the monk’s refectory became a dining room in the sixteenth century: a dramatically-decorated room, with arched timber ceiling beams and heraldic shields, known as Chevy Chase—a reference to the medieval ‘Ballad of Chevy Chase’: a long-winded account of an unauthorised deer-hunt and the subsequent repercussions—where a striking plaster frieze immortalises the ‘chase’, and a seventeenth century oak dining table is still put to use by the family on special occasions.

Chevy Chase Dining Room

My favourite room is the Blue Drawing Room, definitely a ladies room with its delicate furniture, its Wedgwood-blue walls and family portraits.

The Blue Drawing Room

At the very top of the mount sits the old Priory Church dating from the fourteenth century, a place of Christian worship for more than 600 years, where services are held every Sunday during the warmer months and at Christmas and Easter. 

The 14th century Priory Church

We make our way back down the rocky steps to the island harbour to take the boat back to the mainland. 

The Harbour at St Michael's Mount

The little boat delivers us safely back to the mainland and we ride back to Penzance and on to Newlyn where men still go to sea in boats to earn their daily bread.

Newlyn Harbour