It is September 7th and we are still in Plymouth. We have been challenged on what might be our best option to do this day. We wanted to go way west down to the end of the land down there. We had heard this area down there was quite beautiful. I then remember a place where some friends had visited called St. Michaels Mount. It is a lot like St. Michel’s in France where a castle\house has been built on an island that you can walk to when the tide is out or boat to when the tide is in. So we decided to go there. It was about a 2+ hour journey to get there. I feel sorry for Pat as he is having to shoulder all the driving because you are not insured here if your name is not on the insurance policy. Crazy.
St. Michaels Mount did not disappoint. The tide was in. So the only option was to take a boat across the water to get on the island. Interestingly enough, a family still lives in part of this place. It is quite the hike up to the castle\home and we all said that we would hate to do this everyday after school. They have to have some trolley system or easy way to drive up it. But, gardeners have to rappel down the walls to keep weeds and grass from coming out of the stones that make up the castle. And the gardens are on steep parts of the island. Again, the home was quite nice with an ancient history. Like all National Trust sites, at some point those who own these places fall into some financial despair and then turn these places over to the National Trust losing all rights to any of the site. This one was a bit different in that the family still lived there and had a say into keeping it up and running. The island also had homes down at the bottom of it where the hired help lived. They featured some of the families that live there on boards that you could read and most were very positive about living on the island. It is a fairly short swim, but cold, back to the mainland if you wanted to do that. I suspect most take a boat or walk when they can. In the distance across the water, you could see the town of Penzance. Remember Pirates of Penzance? Yep…we drove through Penzance.
After St. Michaels Mount, we decided to hit some Poldark sites. West Cornwall had many sites where the BBC series Poldark was filmed. Great series if you have not watched it. Poldark owned a copper and eventually tin mine that was shown often in the series. Turns out there was a National Trust site that featured the area where a lot of Poldark was filmed, especially when they were at his mine. It was only 30 minutes away from St. Michaels Mount and well worth the time. We had to take a bit of a dirt road to get there. It was amazing to see where they had actually built mines, some that actually went out into the sea (under the sea bed) a mile or two. Just incredible. And yes, watching Poldark, which we started to do in our flat in Plymouth, you often see these mines shown. Just amazing and well worth the time to go down into this area. The coast is spectacular but very rugged. You can’t see it, but Ireland is the next stop if you set sail from here across the Irish Sea.
On the way back, we went into a town called Bodmin. This caught our eye earlier as this is also Poldark country. The home of Ross Poldark (Nampara) was filmed not too far from this town. I think they call it Bodmin Moor. Anyway, we were starving. So we pulled into a place that served Vietnamese food. It was really yummy. We arrived back to the Plymouth flat tired again, ready to rest, for another new day that was going to come. Last night in Plymouth it was….and we watched a few episodes of Poldark to celebrate!
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