St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall (#10)

St Michael’s Mount is a tidal island in Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The island is a civil parish and is linked to the town of Marazion by a causeway of granite setts, passable between mid-tide and low water. It is managed by the National Trust, and the castle and chapel have been the home of the St Aubyn family since approximately 1650.

Historically, St Michael’s Mount was a Cornish counterpart of Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, with which it shares the same tidal island characteristics and a similar conical shape, though Mont-Saint-Michel is much taller.[3]

St Michael’s Mount is one of 43 unbridged tidal islands that one can walk to from mainland Britain. Part of the island was designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1995 for its geology.

This is a place that I have wanted to visit for quite a few years on my annual visits to Cornwall, sometimes however these visits just sadly do not turn out quite as well as hoped and are far less enjoyable, this visit was certainly in that category!

The main problem I had was that there just did not seem to be any sort of crowd control in place, it was a case of stack as many people as physically possible onto the boats and let them all in at the same time, which means most of the time when trying to wander around the castle, there was just no room to swing even a tiny cat.

It’s not just the fact this made taking photos (the primary reason for my visit) near impossible, it also made for a very frustrating day, especially considering a lot of people who were there seems to have left their manners firmly on the shore and were ignorant, often bumping into me and then looking at myself as if I was the lowest thing on the planet.

I expected the visit to take most of the day, however I was done and back down the steps within two hours.

On the plus side, the walk up and down the pilgrim steps was very enjoyable, as was the surrounding town.

This is certainly one to file under I have visited…I won’t be visiting again.