Where the Land Ends – 5 August 2011

Taking off from Penzance drove out to the southern and most western point of Cornwall and of the United Kingdom. This is Land's End. The most terrific thing about Land's End is the view. Dramatic cliffs and phenomenal rock formations border the crashing Atlantic Ocean which you can see for miles and miles and miles. We parked about a mile away from Land's End itself and the trail we hiked followed the coastline so I was lucky enough to have plenty of time to stare out at the scenery.

From there we hiked back to the car and drove to Saint Michael's Mount. This is another small tourist town situated right on the beach. However, the real attraction is the castle situated on an island that is only accessible when the tide is out. There is a cobbled walkway that runs between the mainland and the island and as the tide moves out more and more of the pathway shows up. It takes awhile and most people end up rolling up their pants, taking of their shows and wading through the water. This is what Neoma, Tom and I did. I felt like a pilgrim, following a path that was a foot underwater and surrounded by people with the same destination. It was fantastic! 

The castle was beautiful as  well. My favorite room was one of old maps. Map making used to be such an art form! I guess modern map makers would argue the same for their craft, but their maps don't typically include illustrations of creatures and places do they now? I also liked the view of the pathway to the castle. As more of the pathway emerged more people began to follow in lines of weary pilgrims. They moved slowly, in step with the tide. It would back up a foot, they would come forward a foot. I was very amused.

We left Saint Michael's Mount then and headed to Plymouth. I was not expecting what we found. Plymouth is a big city! We walked the harbor a bit and stopped at the Mayflower Monument. It was a pretty, clean looking arch in a very dirty pier. Perhaps that is symbolic of how the Pilgrims felt? Like they were the clean, wholesome people leaving the filth of secular England? Maybe. We also took some time to walk down the Hoe and the Barbican which are Plymouth's most “trendy” hang out spaces. The architecture of Plymouth is pretty modern because, as an important port, it got completely bombed out in World War II. Therefore, I didn't think it was a particularly pretty place and I just kept wondering the entire time why anyone would call a neighborhood “the Hoe”. Tom was in la-la land a bit as we wandered because things we saw kept popping up and bringing experiences to the front of his memory from his mission in the 1970s. He dragged us from place to place saying “I remember this” or “This has definitely changed in the last 30 years”. So while Plymouth was probably not my favorite place in England it was worth a trip there for Tom to reminisce so much and so happily.

The rest of us were beat by that time and ready to head for home. But Tom is a robot. So we made one last very late stop at Glastonbury Tor. This is a giant man-made hill with the ruins of an abbey at the top. We climbed to the top in almost darkness, sat looking over the blinking lights of the town and then headed back down in complete darkness. It was slow going. I couldn't take any pictures because it was so dark. The hill was impressive but probably would have been more so if there had been light, and if there hadn't been a couple of drunks wandering around the top either. I did learn something interesting about Neo-Paganism though. Apparently, the earth is divided by lines of power called ley lines and where they intersect are special and powerful parts of the world. (For those Dr. Who fans out there think of The Rift.) At Glastonbury Tor a couple ley lines intersect, and about a million cross at Stonehenge. I'm just curious about whether the ley lines or the pagans came first. Hmmm...