MOUNTS BAY - SHOULD TOURISTS BE BANNED?

Mounts Bay has been a magnet for tourists right back to distant Phoenician times, when it featured as the most popular destination on Amilcar's slave-driven Bireme Tours in 700 BC (see picture).

Tired of the relentlessly hot and sunny Mediterranean climate, paying guests were only too thrilled to be able to enter the magic world of West Penwith washed, as it all too often is, by sparkling pelting raindrops and super-cooled by many a blasting breeze.

A round trip from Sidon to Marazion could be had for as little as 50 shekels (on a rather slow 4-slave vessel) or as much as 750 shekels for a private outside cabin aboard a fast 150-slave vessel.

Tin and copper trinkets were very popular with the Phoenician tourists and remain so to this day with the likes of Bob and Betty from Berbigum.

For centuries Mounts Bay has been a dear home to local folk.  Fishermen have used it to sail out to fish and, for a long while, farmers have collected its seaweed to enhance the already naturally impressive fertility of the soil (see picture).

In latter years, lovers of natural beauty have flocked to its shores to feast their eyes on its shimmering presence and have vied with one another with varying degrees of success to capture its illusive essence in words and pictures.

Now there is a growingly loud crowd (the accepted definition of which, in some quarters, is three) calling for a total ban on tourism in the Mounts Bay area and in West Penwith as a whole, if not the whole of Cornwall.

We spoke to the people involved.

Mr Jasper Jago (24) is a psychiatric nurse from the teeming hamlet of Bojewyan.  He claims that tourists make him so depresed that lithium "dudden do it fer me no more!"

He is the first depressive to take granite pills, procured from the hardest of hard core sources at Lamorna Cove, where, in Mr Jago's words, "the stuff is jes' lyin' roun' waiting fer tuh be picked up!"

Since he started taking his specially carved 1 oz daily granite pills some fifteen months or so, Mr Jago has put on 2 stones in weight.

Jasper claims that he now feels more upbeat about life, but that the tourists must still go, "Emmets 'ere, emmets there, emmets bleddy evreewhere.  They duh drive me spare, they do - an' me a nurse, I aren't no patient!"

Madron Tregenza is a 36-year-old entrepreneur who has made a modest fortune from his business of selling lightly washed pre-owned underwear door to door.  This local businessman believes that Cornwall's future depends upon the development of new export industries. 

He believes that tourists and "they bleddy secundomers" should be stopped at the border or charged a punitive levy of £55,000 per breath taken of Cornish air.

The type of export industry he favours is "one o' they smuckin' fart ones like a Iphone, wot duh do yer benefits claims automatic.  Nuther one could be a lighter plastic AK 47, wot can shoot deown another planet!"  Mr Tregenza is working on the development of such products at weekends.

The third person in the crowd is herself an American tourist, staying in a luxury caravan with two doors at Sennen Cove - a Ms Sarah Plain.

Ms Plain claims to have been a candidate for the Vice Presidency of the Gotham City Creationists' Tennis Club and insists that she comes from the same land as Superman.  She admits that Catwoman would also lay claim to a similar provenance, but dismisses the latter as a 'bitch'.  She adds "I'm a reeeal intelligent person and I can see Russia from my window, even in my caravan!"

Annoyed by the presence of so many tourists, she believes that, if all the others are got rid of, she will have more space for herself on the beach.  She therefore lends her full support to Jasper and Madron's campaign.

The Roundup would like to know what you think of the proposal that Mounts Bay, and indeed the whole of Cornwall, should be closed off to all tourists and 'sekundomers'.

Let us know and the most impressive answer (to be submitted in not less than 40,000 words of Unified Cornish) will win the author their very own brand new LELANT Lean-To (worth £13,350, shown here with the door left open for ventilation after use).

Help will also be given with the digging of the pit.