A Tidal Island in Mount's Bay Cornwall
St Michael's Mount is just one of the 43 tidal islands that can be reached by foot from mainland Britain. Of course, it's only possible when the tide is low! There is evidence that people were living in the area during prehistoric times, since around 4000 BC. Presumably It wasn't flooded at the time!
However, as our European ancestors are famous for, the island was naturally captured in 1193 in the name of Prince John during the reign of King Richard the 1st.
After that, they built various monastic buildings around the island. There is something ironic about a hostile takeover of land which is then used to house monks. I guess you can say Christianity doesn't exactly have a squeaky clean past!
Of course a lot has happened since then. There is still a medieval church and a castle, but now the island is home to a living community. You can walk across during low tide, explore the island and get a boat right back to the mainland later in the evening. That's exactly what we did!
The island is actually quite beautiful. There are gardens and paths around the castle to explore. It was a few years back when we made this visit and I remember the lords of the castle were out of town. However, they do actually still live here. I was a bit surprised that anyone would live in such a building because it didn't look very comfortable.
To be fair though, during our tour of the castle the living areas of the nobility are blocked off to tourists. I suppose they have all the normal conveniences and more. The one thing I wondered about was Internet.
I was chatting with someone who worked there are the time, and they were saying that the younger generation were not really wanting to stay on the island because of... well, technology. I don't think that putting a cell phone tower on this island would go down well.
I remember when we went I couldn't get a signal at all. But it has been a few years, so things might have changed quite a lot since then.
The views are quite stunning from the island. Whenever I am in a place like this, I try to imagine myself living hundreds of years ago in much simpler; although deadlier times.
That's what always brings me back to the present - the idea of dying from a simple scrape to the knee. I imagine people got taken out by infections a lot more often, but I bet their immune systems were generally stronger than ours today.
We had a really nice walk around the island and toured the castle. We also stopped for a bite to eat! Honestly I was a bit sad to leave when the evening came around. It seemed a bit too quick.
But we knew it was just a day trip, so we had to get back to the mainland to get to our next destination.
I have a lot of fun traveling around with family, but we are always on such a tight schedule.
Sometimes I enjoy being a bit more spontaneous! But it is great looking back on all of these trips, especially now during the lock-down.