In celebration of the equinox and to give offerings to my land-ancestors, a friend and I went on a hike across Penwith. We picked our places in advance and tried to stick to them with minimal wandering - it's rough terrain with plenty of mine shafts to disappear into.
In order we tried to get to - Madron Holy Well, Lanyon Quoit, Lanyon Tea Room (we needed refreshments!), Bosilack Barrow, the Men-an-Tol, Mên Scryfa and the Venton Bebibell holy well, before hiking over to Morvah to get the bus back home. I took a baked lavender loaf along to leave a bit in each place as an offering to ancestors and the land.
5:30am start for me - thankfully I slept well enough that I didn't crash immediately. Breakfast and out into a misty street which felt especially appropriate for the day. Our travel before we actually start the hike took two hours via bus, but it was nice to sit back and watch rolling Cornish fields go by!
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| Morning mist, on the way to the bus station. |
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| St. Michaels Mount, on the way to Penzance. |
Once we got off in Madron we started the walk - the footpaths are well worn into the ground and none of them were paved (aside from loose rocks...but that doesn't quite count). It was fairly easy between the bus stop and the Chapel, it was still a bit of a trek across fields and a very humid trail to the chapel. I threw the first off the loaf deep into the flora, letting the Piskies know it's all theirs as a gift. We found the chapel and sat with a snack and a drink, and enjoyed the incredible peace that we found there. There was a very funny bird call - sounding like a whistle for our attention. In retrospect it was likely a blackbird! What a wonderful thing to hear during a day of transition - from the last of summer into true Autumn, AND a day full of magical occurrences. We headed back along the trail but unfortunately we could only hear the well, we couldn't get to it because of an awful lot of mud and brambles (my legs look like they did as a child on adventures)! My friend and I tied up some cotton muslin (biodegradable - it'd be disrespectful to leave something polluting there) and made our wishes.
It was a rougher hike to it and we didn't realise how close we were until we were on it. It was a much more sombre and unsettled energy, a tomb forgotten and crying and lost in a landscape that became unfamiliar to the ancestors there. The barrow is a neolithic tomb with a Scillonian entrance - it aligns with the rising winter solstice sun. I sat with my back against the stones, letting the energy settle and it truly felt like someone resting their hand over mine. I left a large chunk of the bread and burning incense there, and have made a promise to myself and them to include space on my altar for the unsettled ancestors to seek peace.
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| Bosiliack Barrow |
There was a mild case of getting piskey-laden while trying to make our way to the Mên-an-Tol - every gate was like the wrong gate until pockets were turned inside out and a very firm "please stop!" was yelled into the land. It was still a struggle after that though for different reasons - the path was incredibly overgrown with brambles and thistles and all kinds of grasses and I came out very cut up and my friend had a panic with how close and bug-y everything was. It didn't last long - only five or ten minutes - and then we were on a much more established path that runs from Ding Dong mine through to the Mên-an-Tol. We went past more than a few caved in mine tunnels - the whole land beneath us like swiss cheese.
Once we got to the Mên-an-Tol we took it in turns to wriggle through the holey stone, now neither of us will get rickets, and admire the landscape around us. We also took a moment to have a few snacks and drink some water, coming up the last of our hike stops before we headed down to Morvah. The Mên-an- Tol still has ancestral energy but it's vastly different - Lanyon Quoit and Bosiliack Barrow were homes and tombs, but the Mên-an-Tol is a ritual site! A place of ceremony and celebration! It was relaxed and welcoming. Quite a few people had left gifts of their own there, so it's nice to know our own gifts are in good company.
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| The Mên-an-Tol |
After the
Mên-an-Tol we walked up the incredibly easy track to Mên Scryfa - a carved standing stone. I left bread on the very top of it as a gift to the ancestor it marks - Mên Scryfa translates to "Stone with Writing" and commemorates Rialobranus son of Cunovalus (Wikipedia and other sites go into much more detail about it). It was a very open energy - Madron Chapel & Bosiliack Barrow were both closed, intense energies while Lanyon Quoit, the
Mên-an-Tol & Mên Scryfa have open inviting and relaxed energies (along with the rest of the land's sprowl). It was wonderful to see it. Afterwards we tried to find the Venton Bebibell holy well but unfortunately while we heard and just saw the bottom, it was incredibly overgrown and unsafe for us to get too close too (not for lack of trying)!
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| The Mên Scryfa |
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| Mên Scryfa |
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| Morvah standing stones. |
After hiking down to Morvah, bothering the most beautiful cows and waiting for the bus back, google maps totalled our walk to 8.3 miles (I'm not sure if that includes going up hill & down dale though). Tiring, rewarding, a chance to reenergise with sprowl and imbue my wiggly ritual knife with the serpents energy. I've already started planning a trip back to the barrow on the winter solstice to pay respects and care for the ancestral soul there, next time I won't get my socks wet in the first few minutes though!
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| The most beautiful cow! |
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| Sunset over Penwith |
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