The SW Coast Path has been on my radar for several years.  It is England’s longest long-distance footpath and a National Trail. It stretches for 630 miles along the coastline of SW England, running from Minehead in Somerset (Atlantic side), along the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, to Poole Harbour in Dorset (English Channel side). Because the terrain along the coast is affected by rivers, the sea, and storms, it is also one of the more challenging trails, with lots of ups and downs. In other words, it is anything but a flat, easy walk along the coast.

The path originated as a route for the Coast Guard and Customs Officers to walk along while patrolling the coast for smuggling in the 1700’s and early 1800’s. They needed to be able to look down into every bay and cove and as a result, the path closely hugs the coast providing excellent views but also is rarely the most direct path between two points.

The rugged nature of the SW Coast made it ideal for smugglers to bring in goods -sort of a black market.  There were high taxes on many items, so there were profits to be made by landing high end goods in small coves (with caves) or beaches under the cover of darkness -especially when there was a new moon. Items smuggled were things like tea, spirits, silks, tobacco and other luxury products.  Many towns and villages along this coastline participated in smuggling.  The most notorious Cornish smuggler was John Carter from Prussia Cove. He was nicknamed the King of Prussia.

This is our destination for the next week.  Mike has no interest in walking the entire route, so we decided to do a sample week to get an idea of what it is like.  Since we decided on this d’aventure sort of last minute, I consulted with a company that specializes in organizing vacations on this path to help me plan the walk .  As part of the service, our luggage will be transferred to our next stop every day.  While walking, we’ll use our day packs, only carrying what we need for the day.

As many of you know, we made up the word “daventure” to describe a trip that is both disaster and adventure. Well, it didn’t take long for this trip to earn the title !!  My sister usually takes us to the airport when we travel, but she happened to be flying out the same day so she couldn’t help us out this time.  We booked transportation with a local airport taxi service.  They were to pick us up at 3:15…which came and went.  After about ten minutes, I called the company to find out what was going on. The person who answered said I had called the wrong number, to which I replied…I don’t think so!  Then he looked at his booking notes and confessed he’d made a mistake…and was now “on his way”.  I politely said never mind… it was too late!  We ended up driving ourselves….and that meant we’d be paying for 2+ weeks of parking.  

Once we were behind airport security, everything else seemed to go smoothly. We landed at Heathrow Airport, and then took the Heathrow Express to the Paddington Station area of London.  We spent the night across the street from the train station.  The next morning, we boarded a train for a 5 hour trip to Penzance.  

My only knowledge of Penzance is the opera, “The Pirates of Penzance”, which I (unfortunately) attended a performance of in the 1980’s. The opera was written in 1879 as a comic opera, at a time when the  idea of pirates in Penzance was considered comical. (They were long gone by the time the opera was written).

Once there, we took a taxi to the next town over called Marazion.  Marazion is the oldest chartered town in Cornwall – first in 1257 by King Henry III and again in 1595 by queen Elizabeth I.  Now a tourist town, it is the jumping off place to visit St. Michael’s Mount out in the bay.  

Mount St. Michael is a small island just offshore of Marazion and is dedicated to St. Michael who, legend has it, appeared to local fishermen in the year 495.  It became a religious site and, later, a place for pilgrimages between the 1100-1300s. In fact, in1193 an invader disguised his soldiers as pilgrims to seize the castle.

Mount St. Michael shares a symbolic and historic relationship with Mont Saint-Michel in France.  Both are dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel and have functioned as religious sites.  I visited Mont Saint-Michel several years ago and now I get to visit the English counterpart.

Our first hotel was the Godolphin and it was super charming with an incredible view of St. Michael’s Mount -since it was conveniently located on the shore almost directly opposite the island. 

Our room was so cute -I believe I used the word “charming” when we first saw it, and it didn’t hurt that we also had a view of the Mount out of our window.

The Mount has been home to the the St. Aubyn family -since about 1650.  During low tide, visitors can walk out to it on a causeway. The tide was out when we arrived, so we took the opportunity to walk the causeway to the island and back. The island is closed on Saturdays, so the only thing we could do was enjoy the novelty of walking across the “paved” seabed to the island. We had tickets to tour the castle the next morning.

During high tide, visitors can only get out there by boat. The sea varies up to 16 feet between high and low tide.

*More d’aventure gets injected into this trip* –

After our walk, we stopped by reception to ask for the travel packet that had been sent there for us by FootPath Holidays.  They didn’t have it.  UH OH.   Footpath had sent me a basic outline before we left the USA, which I’d printed and brought with me, but this packet was to have more detailed information about the walking and our hotels, plus a guide book.  I contacted FootPath and they said it had been delivered, which didn’t help the situation because the hotel didn’t seem to have it.  They Emailed a basic outline for the next day’s walk to the hotel and asked them to print it for us…and, I’m sure, they were making a Plan B to get the packet to us another way.  We said we’d just do our best with the info we already had…and went to dinner.

At dinner we were seated with a lovely view of the Mount.

Later, in our room, we watched the tide come in and cover the shore all the way to the seawall below the hotel.

There is evidence of people living in this area between 4000 and 2500 BC.  It is thought that the Mount may have been the site of a monastery from sometime in the 700s until sometime in the 1,000s.  The earliest buildings, including the castle, date back to the 1100s. The Mount has a long history of passing through various hands.  At first, kings gave control of it to various abbeys.  Later, it was either captured in various rebellions or given to “loyal followers” by the queen or king.

In 1659, the Mount was sold to a man named Colonel John St. Aubyn.  Since then it has been occupied by his descendants – for over 350 years!  It originally operated as an independent village (apart from the mainland).  In the early 1700s, it became a busy seaport.  In the early 1800s, it had 53 houses on 4 streets.  In the mid-1800s, harbor improvements in Marazion, and the arrival of the railroad in Penzance caused the village to go into decline.  Only the St. Aubyn family lives there now.

In the 1950s, the Aubyn family gave most of the Mount to the National Trust in England.  They kept a 999 year lease to remain living in the castle, plus the rights to manage public viewing in conjunction with the National Trust.

On Sunday morning, the tide was in, so we made our way to a nearby jetty and were transported out there in a small boat -all of a 5 minute ride.  

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the Mount in 1846 and there are brass inlays of their footprints near where the boats drop off and pick up visitors.  The Mount has also been visited by King Edward VII, Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother.

Mike thought the preserved foot prints looked entirely unimpressive.

We mainly wanted to walk through the castle, so after finding Queen Victoria’s footprint, we headed uphill to the castle.  It was a challenging walk up.  It started with these steps, but in many places it was just uneven rocks or roughly cut paver stones.

Along the way, I told Mike that the St. Aubyn family must have a secret elevator to get up to the top, because so much of the way up was uneven and steep! I wouldn’t want to do that climb every day.

This was the door that visitors entered the castle through.

This is Mike standing in the doorway.  Ha Ha

When we entered the castle, there were volunteers in each area to answer questions and ensure proper behavior.  As the family still lives there, they expect people to show up appropriately attired -no bathing suits or otherwise revealing clothing allowed.  

The gentleman at the entrance told us that there had been 30 people staying overnight the night before for a christening.  The Lord & Lady’s youngest grandson was getting christened.  The guide continued his “news” by saying that the Lord & Lady were going to go into retirement at the end of the year and move off the island.  The youngest son (father of the baby being christened) was going to move to the island and take over the tradition of the family living there continuously since the 1600’s.  When I commented that the owners must have a secret elevator, the guide said they didn’t…wow!  He also said that the lady actually makes several trips up and down between the castle and shore during the day because she likes to make sure that everything is under control.

We walked through the various rooms of the tour:

And then outside on what I would call a terrace or battlements

Below is the view of the flooded causeway. The rock closer to shore in the picture is called Chapel Rock.  It has a shrine to the Virgin Mary and it is where pilgrims paused to worship before they continued to the Mount.  Our hotel room was named Chapel Rock.

The tour routed us back inside where we were able to view the chapel.

I’m fond of window photos:

These cannons were just outside of the tour exit door.  There were several areas with cannons pointing in different directions.

On the way down:

The gardens are closed on Sunday, so we weren’t able to see them.  Since the tide was still in, we stopped at a gift store and bought our boat tickets for the ride back to shore.  By then, the tide had started to go out and the closest the boats could get to shore was Chapel Rock.  We disembarked there and were able to walk the rest of the way on the causeway.

We had a scheduled van pick-up at the Godolphin Hotel for not long after we got back from the Mount.  The van was going to take us a few miles up the road to officially begin our walk.  The receptionist saw us outside and was able to let us know that they had, after all, located our packet!

The plan was to drop us off at a place called Prussia Cove where a nondescript countryside parking lot became  the official starting point of our time on the SW Coast Path.

Categories: England -SW Coast Path 2025, Getting There & St. Michael's Mount