Penwith's exposed moorland heights are dotted with rocky outcrops and gaunt relics of old mines, while in the valleys, narrow lanes link isolated granite farms, hamlets and cottages. We climbed from one valley up towards a beacon, where a sudden bright view opened up: St Michael's Mount straight ahead in a shining sea that stretched away across the bay towards Newlyn and Mousehole. But at once the road dipped again, and we were back in the valley. We found a footpath, climbed a stone stile, and crossed a tussocky field to where we located Carn Euny, the wonderfully preserved remains of an iron age village. An elaborate pattern of exposed courses of stonework marks the ground plan of the village, which lies, like a neighbouring well and a hill fort nearby, close to an ancient track linking Land's End with Mount's Bay.
Excavations in the 1860s and again 100 years later led to the opinion that there had been a settlement here for at least 700 years, from about 500BC, the latest being the construction in Romano-British times of the "courtyard houses" whose outlines are now plain to see. Then the village seems to have been deserted for hundreds of years, some of its materials used for pigsties or huts.
Around 1840, miners prospecting for tin among the fern and furze discovered an underground cave or circular chamber of remarkably sophisticated construction, the carefully graded courses of granite slabs and boulders being cemented with moistened clay-like subsoil to form a perfect dome. We reached the chamber by means of a tunnel 15m long. A recess in one wall is so positioned as to be illuminated by sunlight shining down the entrance passage at midwinter, the birth of the new sun, and some conclude that it was once a shrine.