Chasing The Tide

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For a celebration, which I will not go into, we thought we would treat ourselves to a couple of days in Cornwall. We left work early and headed down the evening before, but we had completely underestimated how far away Cornwall is and it was well past midnight by the time we arrived at our hotel in St Ives. They had left a key in a key-safe for us.

It's surprising that Cornwall is a far away from London as Newcastle. We had stopped for a meal in Wiltshire and we also had to undertake a complicated diversion through all the Cornish backroads due to road-closure near Bodmin.

Despite that, I was up early to go to St Michael's Mount for sunrise, although I was hugely disappointed - it was raining, there was no sunrise and the tide was in, meaning that the beach and the iconic causeway (more on that later) were covered.

After a good old full-English breakfast (although I think it's actually a full-Cornish down here), my wife and I went back to St Michael's mount. The causeway to the mount is only passable at low-tide and, although the tide was a lot lower than it had been earlier and we could now get onto the beach, the causeway itself was still blocked.

It was very similar to Bar Island, which we had visited in Maine in the USA (see Time and Tide Wait For No Man).

We, and a lot of other people, basically ambled along the causeway, following the receding tide until the final part was passable. It seemed to be a race to get to the mount first, meaning some people were not prepared to wait until it was completely clear and were happy to get wet feet.

That said, some people were even more impatient and had been getting boats across whilst the causeway was still blocked.

We had a walk around the accessible part of the small island, which is dominated by the castle, although we chose not to go into the castle itself. There was plenty of time to look around, without worrying about the causeway disappearing again.

We then drove to Lands End. Having bean to John O'Groats, we couldn't help but draw comparisons (see Not The Most North, Not The Most East, Why John O'Groats?). The first difference is how much busier Lands End is. The second is just how phenomenally tacky it is, particularly the "Lands End Experience", featuring Aardman Presents, Arthur's Quest, 4D Presents, an exhibition and, of course, a huge gift shop.

I treated myself to some flavoured cider. We also had some massively over-priced, boxed cream tea.

There was also the famous sign, which, unlike John O'Groats, you needed to pay to have your picture taken beside. That said, it did have the option to add your own caption to the sign, which we used for the event we were celebrating.

The coastline and scenery around Lands End is a lot more spectacular than the rather desolate John O'Groats, so we went for a walk to enjoy it.

On the way back to St Ives, we made a slight diversion to see the old tin mines along the coast. This was another excuse for a walk and, whilst everywhere was closed-up, it was definitely worth seeing.

Back in St Ives, we walked to the harbour to go for somewhere to eat. That was easier said than done. There were loads of places, however everywhere seemed to be either full (with a long waiting time) or closed. Eventually we found a bar and grill that had a table available.

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Photos

St Michael's Mount
The rapidly appearing causeway to St Michael's Mount.

Lands End
Coastal scenery around Lands End.

Cornish Mining Coast
Disused tin mines.

St Michael's Mount
No chance of crossing at the moment (except by boat)!

Lands End Cider
Now what flavour to choose?