St. Michael's Mount

 

Back in 2018, I visited St. Michael's Mount with one of my best friends, Kate. We grew up together here, in Cornwall, but she lives in the US now, so over the past 25 years we've gone from seeing each other every single weekday at primary school, to a couple of times a month when we went to different secondary schools, to once a year when she comes home for all too short visits. We like to make the most of it, which made it all the more annoying when she made it back for just one week this summer and I went and got covid for the second time.

Anyway, this is all to distract from the fact that it took me a full 4 years to finally edit these photos. In my defence, I took over 100 pictures this day and have managed to edit it down to just 20. Did that need to take 4 years? Who can say.

I have already uploaded these to Instagram and, to be honest, I have no idea if anyone even reads blogs anymore (is anyone there? Please say hello if you are!) but when I took these pictures I thought they were going to be a blog post, so it just feels like they should be.

This might be my favourite picture I've ever taken of Kate. She might not agree but I know for a fact that she doesn't read my blog so I can say what I like!

St. Michael's Mount can be accessed via a causeway at low tide, but it was high tide when we arrived so we got the little boat across to the mount. Thankfully, it did not set off my notoriously delicate seasickness, signalling the start of a truly excellent day!

The view through the window of the little cafe at the base of the mount, where we had very delicious sandwiches for lunch. Obviously, I can't remember what was in my sandwich now but I definitely remember that it was delicious, which is good enough for a sandwich I ate 4 years ago.

There are a lot of great windows in the house.

The view of the mainland from the roof of the house. By this point, we were having such a nice time that we had already started hatching plans so that we never had to leave. The problem is, a guide had already told us that everyone who lives on the island has to have two skills that can help the community, particularly because in bad weather, they can end up totally cut off from the mainland. Unfortunately, we're both rather low on skills, but Kate was already cooking up another idea. More on that later.

Kate enjoying our future home.

This tiny but beautiful sculpture of Michael fighting Satan is on the wall inside the chapel on the mount. As I was taking this picture, Kate was talking to one of the guides about whether or not the family who own St. Michael's Mount might happen to have two eligible sons of marrying age. The guide was very helpful but we ultimately decided marrying into the family probably wasn't a viable plan.

One last look. Obviously, we haven't figured out a plan to move to the island just yet but we'll return one day, and good luck getting rid of us again!

Seriously though, this was such a brilliant day and I highly recommend a visit to St. Michael's Mount if you've never been! We finished our day off with a swim in that gorgeous, turquoise water, St. Michael's Mount on the horizon, and it felt completely magical. I really did fall in love with this place and I can't wait to go again.