A family pilgrimage

Before ever my mother became ill and died, we had booked a holiday cottage close to my parents for a week at Easter, intending to get the whole family together.  It now offered a very different opportunity - perhaps we could scatter Mum’s ashes all together.  However, Dad was not ready.  Given the great time pressures on Pascoe, Perran and Carenza this year, it seemed unlikely we would be able to assemble everybody again to do this.  Even as it was, Perran and Carenza were working from the holiday cottage, with only one day of leave left to give us.

Meanwhile, my friend Fiona had told me of a one-day pilgrimage along St Michael's Way, walking from Lelant on the north coast of Cornwall down to Marazion on the south coast, then across a tidal causeway to St Michael’s Mount. It was the old route which British pilgrims had taken as they set off to embark for the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. By coincidence, Carenza had also just given me Wayfarer by Phoebe Smith describing this very path.

Mum had loved Lelant, the village where the trail started. As I sorted her belongings, I found a couple of drawings she had made of Lelant. That clinched it.

 On our one day together as a family, we would make this pilgrimage in memory of Mum.

 From Mum’s desk, we picked up the pebbles she had once brought in her pocket from the beach and put them in our own pockets. We took the little water bottle from her painting kit and set off.

When we found a spring on the cliff at Carbis Bay, Nigel scrambled down and collected some water in the little bottle. 

There was a small pool in the Neolithic fortifications at the top of Trencrom Hill and we added more water there.

 The peninsula is not very wide at that point, but the pilgrimage sent us on a circuitous route, up hill and down dale, encountering prehistoric standing stones and medieval churches, like the one at Ludgvan with a carving of a pilgrim above its door. It amounted to a walk of thirteen miles.

Mum loved birds, and along the way, we were accompanied by larks overhead, and from the hedgerow, a chorus of finches, wrens and robins. We saluted five ravens on Trencrom Hill and in Marazion Marshes, there were egrets and even a Cetti's warbler.

When finally we approached St Michael's Mount, we had timed it for low tide, to allow us to traverse the paved causeway.  Once on the island, we climbed the cobbles to the giant's well, where Jack the Giant Killer once slew Giant Cormoran , and into the well, we poured our water. 

On the steep path up, we found ‘Giant Cormoran’s Heart’ – a heart-shaped cobble. 

At the summit near the ancient Benedictine chapel, we found a niche in the rock with a magnificent house leek growing just below. There we set the pebbles to rest.

 
These stones had been part of Mum’s surroundings at her calligrapher’s desk each day.  Relinquishing them brought it home to me at last that she was gone. It was odd to leave them behind, out in the open under the sky.  The only comfort was that they could be in no place more beautiful or holy.

 
And the day held one last small blessing.  Back in Marazion, waiting for a taxi to take us back to our car in Lelant, we saw the best bird of all – a single white dove came and perched on the wall above and waited with us.

Thanks to Pascoe for several of these photos