From the Castle tower there is so fine and comprehensive a view of Falmouth, the harbour and surroundings, that none should miss it. It is, indeed, only when seen from such a point of vantage as this that the true extent and beauty of this magnificent roadstead can be adequately realized. Away but a short distance under the hill of Trefusis lies the quaint little town of Flushing, with its stretch of quays and cottages clustered upon them, and its perfume of orange and lemon trees which flower and fruit in the open air. Opposite is St Mawes; and a little distance to the north-west lies Falmouth itself, with the picturesque jumble of grey and red roofs, and the docks and quays in which and alongside of which lie vessels from all parts rearing slender masts skyward, or perhaps with an added picturesqueness lent them by drying canvas flapping idly from the yards. Across the water up above St Mawes is charming Gerrans, where one may shove one’s nose and lie easy in any weather, conscious only of a snug haven and a charming village.
Picturesque St Anthony should be visited—it can be reached easily in the dinghy from St Mawes, and lies only a few hundred yards inland from the shore of the creek—on account of its fine church, which is generally agreed to be the best example of Early English architecture in Cornwall, and has a beautiful Norman arch to the south door.
HELFORD CREEK
But we might advise a score of other excursions up the many lovely creeks of this beautiful haven of Falmouth. Those who have passed through the tree environed “King Harry’s Passage” on the way up to Truro, or have explored St Just’s creek, or Restonget, or—well a score of others equally lovely, will not need to be reminded of the wealth of interest and beauty here spread out before them.
But there is yet the last haven between us and the wide Atlantic—Penzance. We must pass by unentered the many charming creeks of the Helford River, where the woods come down to the waterside, and the inlets provide a snug anchorage for small craft in almost any weather.
Right onward from the Manacles almost to Penzance itself the coast is rocky, dark, and uninviting. No trees soften the brows of the stark looking cliffs, which are here and there torn into great fissures, which look from a little distance out at sea like dark gashes cut with a knife. The coast is not one safe for near approach, and there is, indeed, nothing in the scenery to invite close inspection.
Rounding the Lizard, either in a fresh easterly or westerly wind, is generally a wet job for craft of small tonnage, as a heavy sea speedily gets up. But once round there is a straight run for Penzance Bay, the last haven of any size (and that not a very good one) on the south-west coast.
Penzance lies in the north-western curve of a fine bay, which is, however, too open to afford an ideal anchorage, or much protection in most prevailing winds. As one enters the bay the one striking object is not the town—that, at a distance, is not notably picturesque, and near by is disappointing—but the fine rock of St Michael, which, like its Norman prototype, stands “solitary amid the waste of waters, a townlet upon a rock.”
The origin of this outstanding mass, connected with the mainland only by a causeway covered save at low water, is “lost in antiquity,” as historians are wont to explain when nothing detailed or more satisfying is forthcoming. Some authorities, however, have thought that the Roman occupation or a period only a short time anterior to it saw the formation—by reason of seismic convulsion—of St Michael’s Mount, which was “cast up out of the bed of the sea.” Others assert that once the Mount was set inland amid forest glades and primeval woodlands, and was then known as the “hoar rock in the wood.” But whatever the origin may be, the fact remains that at the bottom of Mount’s Bay undoubtedly lies a forest, which was probably engulfed when the Scilly Isles were torn away from Land’s End, which gives some colour to this latter theory.