Um, says Samuel, maybe we can walk its perimeter. 5 minutes of sticky, deep, freshly ploughed mud later though, we’ve had enough. The buildings we were heading for were diagonally across the field, so that’s exactly how we’re going to do it.
It’s funny how difficult a basic thing like putting one foot in front of the other can be when walking in the deep furrows of clay-like, surprisingly heavy mud, whilst being buffeted by wind. I made it to the end without falling over, but had managed to get mud all the way up the inner sides of my trousers, to Sam’s horrified amusement. Now came the easy part. Walking through 3 more fields, all of which had footpaths along the sides of them. Field one, check. Field two, check. Field three…and we lost the path. After walking down the length of it looking for signs of a stile, we came back up and decided to clamber into the wood – and stumbled back onto the path.
Aside from the relentless rain, numb blue hands, and the water theme parks (complete with slides and lifeguards) that had opened in all four of our shoes, the rest of the walk to Marazion was pretty uneventful. We came across a gaggle of geese in one of the farms we wandered through; they were looking with optimism up at a door which, we assumed, usually opened to let them in out of the rain. Rounding a corner we were accosted by a lone goose, earnestly enquiring after her friends. We pointed her in the right direction and moved on, though she followed us for a bit, squawking her excitement. As we headed up the last hill, mist began to settle again. There was no chance of the spectacular sunset scene Sam was hoping we’d walk into as we came down into Marazion, but at that point just the idea of being warm and dry in less than half an hour was sending us both into raptures, so complaints were minimal. Heading downhill into the town we stopped by a gate to let a car go by, and were joined by an old lady with her dog who asked us where we’d come from. ‘St Ives’, we said. ‘Utter nutcases’, she declared.
The room was warm, and dry, and huge besides. St Michael’s Mount, or what we could see of it through the mist, was clearly visible out of all of the four windows. I, however, was dripping wet and covered in mud (somehow Sam had managed to avoid the latter), and not allowed on the carpet till I’d showered. Which, I suppose, was fair enough. Dinner at the pub next door was excellent, and we headed back to the room full, exhausted, warm, dry, and very, very happy.
The next morning we awoke to still misty skies, though not as ominously threatening as the day before. A full English cooked breakfast was included, so it was with less reluctance than usual that I rolled out of bed. An egg, a sausage, and some very yummy bacon later we set off to see if we could conquer the causeway to St Michael’s Mount.
…to be continued.
