St Michael's Mount,-(an English counterpart of Mont-Saint-Michel off the coast of Normandy, France.)-in english, not Cornish, translates as "hoar rock in woodland", it is a tidal island in Mount's Bay, Marazion, Cornwall. Being a tidal island it is not always accessible by foot, you have to get there as I did, as well as coach loads of tourists,-(many Dutch and German voices were heard)-to coincide with the tide.
The castle and chapel though managed by the National Trust, have been the home of the St Aubyn family since around the middle of the 17th century
So across the causeway, booked online, £12 for the garden and an extra £16 for the castle ( the castle bit was pretty crap, you don't get to see much and what you do is rammed with instasnapgramers) I would not do the castle had I known it was going to be thus.
The island has its own private graveyard, in Victorian times there were about 300 residents on the island, which had a busy harbour, a welcome port for fishermen and seafarers. Now the numbers have dwindled to around 30 or so. I could live here on this idyllic island.
12 quids worth of plants
A big thanks to the RHS website in identifying these stunning plants, I would probably have referred to them as , the blue one, the red one and wow that looks gorgeous one.
Now me being dim expected the island to have formal gardens to wander around, oh silly me, it was all up hill and down dale compact terraced rock gardens. Bloody lovely.
It was created as far back as 1878 and has survived remarkably well considering it is directly on the sea, faced with gales and whipping winds, it has the advantage of being protected from the frost and the rock itself acts like a storage radiator, absorbing heat by day and releasing through the night. It is a wonderful micro climate of Mother Nature's ingenuity.
The delicate gardens need to be protected though from us visitors, 150,000 made the journey in 2024. This year they are only open to the public Monday-Friday, 10:00 - 15:45. between 20th April - 29th August.
Spare a thought for the four gardeners who work these gardens, often vertical in places and difficult to work in a conventional manner.
The nooks and crannies of the granite rock face need to be kept free of invasive weeds. Three times a year the gardeners rope up and abseil down from the castle walls, at a height of some 180 ft it is not for then feint hearted.
From above you realise how sheer everything is, and how clever the architecturallayout of the paths up through the terraces.
Stephens' Inks have a place in history they filled the pens used in events like Scott's expedition to the South Pole and the signing of the ridiculously punitive Treaty of Versailles. i also used it in my fountain pen in grammar school.
The thermometer was used as an advertising medium for the ink; this one dates back to the early 20th century, and speaks in numbers I understand, none of the centigrade malarkey.
A big ship and a little boat, vessels that travel the English Channel
So early afternoon 4 hours on the island its back across the causeway before the tide comes in, and one has to queue for a little motor boat to be ferried back to the mainland.
The tide is high
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