St Michael's Mount, Cornwall, on a wintry morning

The tide was out and the drizzle was creating a cloud around the castle.

This was probably the beach where Pytheas a Greek Geographer from Marseilles made landfall in Britain in the 4th Century BC. Unfortunately his account is lost but it is referred to by Diodorus writing in the 1st Century AD

Diodorus gives an account of the tin trade:
"The inhabitants of that part of Britain which is called Belerion [that is to say Land's End], are very fond of strangers and from their intercourse with foreign merchants are civilised in their manner of life. They prepare the tin, working very carefully the earth in which it is produced. The ground is rocky but it contains earthy veins, the produce of which is ground down, smelted and purified. They beat the metal into masses shaped like astralgi [knuckle-bones] and carry it off to a certain island off Britain called Ictis (identified as St Michael's Mount?).

During the ebb of the tide the intervening space is left dry and they carry over to the island the tin in abundance in their wagons......Here then the merchants buy the tin from the natives and carry it over to Gaul, and after travelling overland for about thirty days, they finally bring their loads on horses to the mouth of the Rhone."