Today we would leave Probus and head for Penzance on our last full day of walking.
We left Probus early and headed towards Truro on our way to Penzance. Probus has the tallest church tower in Cornwall at 129 feet (39 m) high and is richly decorated with carvings.The town’s name originates from the church’s dedication to Saint Probus.
A lot of mist in the fields as we set out, but with the sun rising it quickly burnt off the mist.
We walked through Truro taking the opportunity for a coffee and a last photo outside a HSBC branch. Truro is Cornwall’s county town and it’s only city. Truro grew as a centre of trade from its port and then as a stannary town for the tin-mining industry. It became entitled to be called a city in 1876, with the founding of the Diocese of Truro, and thereby became mainland Britain’s southernmost city.
In a welcome deviation from the road we joined the Mines Trail and walked through the Wheal Maid Valley – this was a copper ore mine and produced over one million tonnes during the 18th and 18th centuries from mines that went over 350m deep.
We then took the Great Flat Lode Trail, around Carn Brea, which was covered with old engine houses and ventilation towers. This was so named because the tin-bearing rock was at an unusually shallow gradient of about 10 degrees to the horizontal – in other parts of Cornwall mineral bearing lodes lie at between 60 and 90 degrees to the horizontal – its small gradient allowed for optimal location of the mines.
After a long walk down a tree lined B-road with limited views, we got our first sight of St Michael’s Mount in Penzance Bay. Historically, St Michael’s Mount was a Cornish counterpart of Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy (with which it shares the same tidal island characteristics and the same conical shape, though it is much smaller, at 57 acres, than Mont St Michel which covers 247 acres), when it was given to the Benedictine religious order of Mont Saint-Michel by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century.
Blessed by good weather, today felt a very long day – maybe being the last full walking day added to that feeling.
Tomorrow looks like heavy rain all morning for our walk to Land’s End and the closure of this (very) long and enjoyable adventure.
