Land's End and St Michael's Mount

Snapshot
Where - Cornwall (SW England)
Weather - Started with rain but fine afternoon
Steps - 15600 or 10km and 48 floors

Our second day in the Cornwall area and we headed to Land's End, the bottom tip of England. As we approached Penzance the traffic slowed to almost a halt. We reckon it is because the weekend saw Penzance trying to break the record for the most pirates to gather in one place (Pirates of Penzance - get it!). Apparently the record is 17,000 pirates and they fell short of this by about 23 pirates. Can you imagine almost 17,000 people dressed as Capt. Hook or Capt. Jack Sparrow etc. with hook hands, peg-legs, eye patches and parrots wandering the streets and saying Ahrrrr! So the traffic was probably the pirates leaving and the locals returning to their homes. This may not be the reason but it seems plausible to me.

So we arrived at Land's End- nice area and we took the usual photos. If you wanted to wait in a queue and pay £ you could get your photo taken under the signpost with your hometown and distance displayed. We didn't bother! After Land's End we headed to St Michael's Mount near Penzance. There is an almost identical Mont St Michel in France which we intend to visit later. St Michael's Mount is a castle (that is still occupied) located on a rocky sea mountain that is accessed by a causeway at low tide or by boat when the sea covers the route. When we crossed we had to remove shoes and socks as the middle section was still covered by about 6 inches of water.

It was quite a hike to visit the castle, up steep rocky steps but the views were worth it. There was not a great deal of information in the castle about what we were looking at, but I suppose if you have seen one castle, you've seen them all. Overall it was a good day. We really enjoyed our time in Cornwall but now we had back towards Dover.Read more