Cornwall: St Michael's Mount & Marazion

We were in Cornwall a few days last week, near Penzance and opposite St Michael's Mount.

You may be thinking: Cornwall in early March, with arctic temperatures and 60 mph gales - are they mad? Less of the schadenfreude, mes braves! There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. Also, those weather people always exaggerate. And though the roads are no wider than hat-pins, at least there are few cars coming the other way.

So the promised hurricane on Wednesday was just blustery wind, the promised walls of water and mountains of spray failing to make an appearance. As it was too windy to do the NT gardens we'd pencilled in, we hopped from pub to pub instead - a succession of roaring fires.

Tuesday, in the drizzle and fog, we ventured across the causeway to St Michael's Mount. The castle on top and the roads leading up were closed, leaving merely a trivial perambulation around the picturesque stone cottages at the end of the causeway.

Click on the pictures below to make them larger.

Clare at our hotel room window

St Michael's Mount from the Mount Haven Hotel

The causeway at low tide

According to studies, "the Welsh, followed by the Cornish, remain among the most genetically distinct of all the groups on mainland Britain. They carry more DNA that could date back to the tribes that colonised Britain after the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago."

Our area, Marazion, had a smattering of Cornish language signs and you could make a case that the locals were smaller and visually-distinguishable from the few anglo-saxon tourists; no wonder we're dismissively tagged as 'emmets'.

Ethnic pride's a good thing - so where's Mebyon Kernow then? Bring it on, kothmans.