OK,so the first thing is that Mousehole isn’t pronounced like the thing mice live in. It’s closer to Mowzel, where it’s ‘ow’ in the I Just Dropped Something On My Foot way of saying it; Only found that out after the fact.
I hopped a little bus from Penzance to Mousehole.
At the time I assumed that it was a little bus because it’s a pretty regular trip, so they only need a shuttle. I think I was half-right.
The big thing in Mousehole, practically the only big thing, is the sea wall.
Probably there to protect boats from being smashed into tiny little splinters in storms, but it sure as hell looks like it’s there to keep the pirate menace at bay. Or maybe protect the pirate menace?
In any case, it’s a big damn wall, and the entrance is boarded up, presumably for winter, as I saw no sign of that thing being easy to move. Also, the ten-foot branch stuck through one of the gaps suggests that it’s been there a little while.
A very convoluted plaque.
It was somewhere around here that I saw, but did not photograph, the sign warning folks about waves overtopping the wall during storms. Bear in mind that, scaling off the photo, the wall in question is at least ten feet above the top of the seawall, and you can see the tidemark, so those are some big damn waves.
Then again, any storm probably came in off the Atlantic, so there’s a lot of reach out there for the rollers to build up.
Remember the little bus?
This is why.
The streets are so narrow in many places that you have to step into doorways to let vans past, so the bus is only just making it through; One corner in particular looked as though they’d taken a chisel to the edge of a building to buy a few more inches of clearance.
Also, there was an orange cat who wandered over to say ‘Hi’, then ambled off up the road.
This is St. Michael’s Mount, accessed by causeway in good weather and low tide, boat in ok weather and high tide, and not accessed at all when the storms roll in.
I walked up from Penzance to Marazion, and had breakfast in a place with the view seen below.
They have some sort of winter works program going on, so there were a number of vehicles going back and forth along the causeway.
The lump of rock with the skeg of causeway going to it is apparently where the boat docks in summer; you can see the channel they dug reaching out to sea, and maybe the little pier on the other side of the rock.
In winter they use an amphibious vehicle and just drive into the carpark of the pub.
Yet another thumping great seawall.
The thing at the top of the boat ramp is their ‘Amphicraft’, purpose built to be able to drive on mud from the look of it. It’s visible in some of the pictures of the harbour, as they took it out for a spin while I was there.
Looking back towards Marazion.
Like most places around here, it’s been a lot of different things over the years.
They do run tours of the castle and gardens, but I timed it badly and just missed the first tour, and didn’t feel like waiting hours for the second one of the day; One of the disadvantages of tourism in winter is that websites don’t always spell out the limited hours/access/services available.
This was the closest I could get to a shot of what the harbour has probably looked like for decades.
There are a number of people living on the island, not just the Lord & Lady in the castle, but also folk who work there and their families, and their access to the mainland is very much dictated by the tides and the weather; On ‘black flag’ days, nobody comes in or out.
Looking back from the walk back to Penzance.
And here’s ‘my’ room in the AirBnB – I found that this was the best setup for WiFi signal, and started watching ‘Stranger Things’.
