Cornwall Part 2: The Mouse Hole and a rare Webcam cache

Now halfway through our Cornish Geocaching adventures, it was finally time to visit some tourist hotspots! 

Whilst we had both enjoyed getting away from all the touristy chaos of Cornwall on our earlier adventures, we decided to spend some time seeing one of our favourite Cornish locations, St Michael’s Mount. 

Located in the beautiful Mounts Bay, the castle, set high up on a rocky island, and only reachable by crossing the causeway at low tide, or by taking a boat, really is a must see for anyone visiting Cornwall. And the nearby pubs in Marizon are amongst our favourites in Cornwall. 

The other half was keen to walk around the castle again and I’d spotted some new caches to do on the island so we set off for Marizon.

The tide was just going out as we arrived, so we didn’t have long to wait until we could cross the long cobbled causeway. 

Interestingly, the pandemic has brought a change here, in who can now access the island. Gone are the days of just being able to cross the causeway and wander around the island for free, you now need to purchase a ticket for the castle or gardens to be able to step onto the small island. There are even National Trust staff guarding the entrance to the island. 

It’s a bit of a shame really. I’m sure there are many pensioners and families who would like to just walk across the causeway without needing to pay the fairly steep ticket prices to look around the handful of rooms in the castle, that are actually open to the public. The vast majority of it, is still private and kept out of the public gaze, behind securely locked doors. But sadly, you can’t just go for a free island visit anymore. Luckily, we had planned to see the castle this time, so it wasn’t an issue for us. 

The walk across the causeway was fun. We managed to keep our feet dry, but did have to stop a couple of times to wait for the water to fully recede. 

Whilst on the island we collected the answers to the ‘St Michael’s Mt Church Micro’ mystery cache and also the multi ‘St Michael’s Mt Meander’. Some answers were harder to spot than others, but we got there in the end. 

Whilst we failed to find the final multi cache back on dry land, we quickly found the final for the mystery also located in Marizon. It was quite a relief, given all the effort we went to, to find the relevant info whilst on the island. 

Our next stop was at Mousehole, just around the corner from Marizon. I’d spotted a fairly old Virtual there, created in June 2002, called ‘Cats mouses and birds’, so I was keen to tick it off my Jasmer grid list.  

The car parks in Mousehole were pretty quiet, so we were soon parked, and set off up a steep road to collect the info needed. 

As we went, we also picked up some nice traditionals including ‘Tribute to Solomon Browne’, ‘Harbour cache’, and ‘A view of the mount’, which was a lovely custom made snail cache. And the views of the mount were great all along this coast path/road! 

The following day we decided to stay closer to the holiday home on the north coast and decided on a cliff top walk at Mawgan Porth. It was a steep climb to the top from the bay below, but we’ll worth it for the views. 

We found just 3 traditionals in the end, some well deserving of their terrain ratings, as they required me to leave the safety of the coast path to head off down the cliff to grab them. 

It was nice to find two more in Joe Smilies Atlantic view series - number one & 14 - and we also collected the ‘Nice place for a pic-nic’ cache. 

I bottled out of a couple of others that just seemed to be located way too close to the edge of the crumbling cliffs, and we also clocked a dnf, but it was a lovely walk anyway. 

St Austell was our next destination. Here we did a brilliant Wherigo called ‘Trompe L’oeil’, which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Afterwards, we went on a long walk along the Polkerris headland near Par Beach to grab the nice virtual, ‘The Gribbin Tower’. 

One of the newer virtuals, it took us to the foot of the amazing 26m high, red and white striped beacon tower, which can be seen for miles around. 

We also visited Par Beach to collect the four caches in the Pirate Duck series, which was a lovely walk along the top of the low cliffs. We also attempted the ‘Par Peregrination adventure labs’, but sadly we only found 2 before coming unstuck on the one at Par Beach - the sign needed for the answer had sadly been removed. 

We finished our brilliant week away with a few short diversions on our way home. 

Again, eager to fill more empty spaces on my terrain grid, we diverted off the A30 just before the M5 junction to grab a couple of high terrain challenge caches including ‘Antnich’s 21 years of Geocaching’. I had already qualified for one, but it was a few weeks later before I managed to get enough caches with the ‘kids’ attribute, to qualify for the other. 

Both were set along a very hilly narrow road, which was barely wide enough for a car and had grass growing up the middle in places. It was a bit of a slow, rough ride, but once we arrived at the respective GZs I found both without to many problems and they were both nice custom caches too. 

Our second diversion was to Exeter. There was a rare Webcam cache on the sea front…rare in the UK at least as there are now only 4 left, one of which I found last year on a trip to the Lake District. Although it was raining, we had fun trying to capture our image on ‘The Hotspot (Devon)’ webcam. Just before we arrived, I’d texted my sister, who was back home, to ask her if she could pop on the website to capture our image, and she happily obliged. 

We also collected the nice ‘Exmouth Seafront - Clock Tower’ cache, before heading off up the M5 for home. 

The final cache of our trip was much nearer to home, at the Corley services South bound. We had stopped for a quick snack and it was nice to stretch my legs and pick up another in the great Motorway Mayhem series.

So that’s it for our Cornish 2022 Geocaching  tales. We had a lovely holiday, with lots of great adventures thanks to the Jasmer and Terrain grid fillers we picked up across Cornwall. A very big thank you to all the COs for setting and maintaining these incredible caches. 

Next week we’re back in the East of England grabbing more great caches including a new Virtual at Abbey Gardens in Bury St Edmunds, some very inventive caches near Cambridge and a long solved mystery cache in the much loved FF series. Until then happy caching!