Cornwall: England's vacation land

Cornwall’s magic is in its coastline. Dramatic cliffs combine with sandy beaches and the occasional ruin for some monumental views that are fairly unique in Britain. You also stand a better chance of getting sun here!

Most of the best things to see are related to the sea. Two of the country’s most dramatic seaside castles are here: the romantic ruin of Tintagel (complete with King Arthur myth) and the noble St. Michael’s Mount (once monastery, now aristocratic home). Charming villages like Fowey, Polperro and Mousehole demand to be lingered within. There’s a real "beach bum" feeling here, with lots of nautically-themed pubs, fishermen selling their wares from the quayside and kids pottering in the in-harbour beaches revealed at low tide.

For more sophisticated beach towns, check out St. Ives. This has been a mecca for artists for more than a century; obvious in its galleries and the slightly more fashionable feel about town. You’ll also find the southern extentsion of the Tate Gallery here, in a dramatic modern building overlooking the sea.

Though they’re inland (seaside living is a fairly modern trend), two major historic houses are worth a detour: Lanhydrock and Cotehele.

Quick Tips:

Read Daphne Du Maurier before you go. She is THE author of Cornwall, and reading her atmospheric accounts of the county will enhance your visit. Everyone knows "Rebecca" and "Jamaica Inn" … you can even visit the latter. I’d also recommend "The King’s General", which does a great job of telling the story of Cornwall’s unique role in the English Civil War.

Avoid Land’s End. It’s a tacky amusement park and tourist attraction. Unless you have a burning need to stand precisely on Britain’s most southwesterly point, you’ll find more interesting and pristine coastline elsewhere.

A couple of the things I plan to do next trip:

1) Go to Rick Stein’s restaurant in Padstow. Stein is one of the UK’s biggest TV chefs and his restaurant is supposed to be great. I haven’t made it there yet so can’t give a personal recommendation. Obviously, book way in advance.

2) The Eden Project (tropical gardens beneath domes in a re-claimed clay pit) has become one of Britain’s most famous attractions since it opened two years ago. I’ve heard that you should also book in advance, avoid heavy tourist seasons and go early in the morning.

Best Way To Get Around:

I’ve always had a car. While it takes a long time to get down there from London, once you’re over the Cornish border the county seems quite manageable. The major highways are good but be aware that many of the tourist attractions are down single-track country lanes. If you’re an American driver you’re going to have to get used to the drill of noting where the "pull over" spots are, then figuring out who’s going to move into one to let the other driver by.

This sounds frightening, but there is a payoff. These little lanes are beautiful, especially early in the season when the stone walls, covered with turf, explode with little spring flowers.

It is possible to get to the major sights by public transportation, though it may take longer. There’s a train from London to Penzance. A lot of people come down just to hike the South West Coast Path, which allows you to ring the entire peninsula on foot.

I stumbled across Trewerry Mill on my first visit to Cornwall. We were staying somewhere else (now turned back into a private home), but the place was so charming we were compelled to stop for afternoon tea. It was served on a sunny patio in a beautiful garden where the gurgle of the mill stream and the occasional bray of a donkey in the field in the hill above were the only sounds to break the peace. The scones were home baked, the clotted cream almost too thick to spread, the atmosphere idyllic. I knew I had to come back!

Several years later I returned with a friend and extended that tea stop into a proper visit. It was a great choice.

The Mill is in an excellent location. It’s far enough from the main road to feel like you’re deep in the countryside, but close enough to enable you to be out and off to major sights without too much trouble. You’ll find restaurants and big city lights in nearby Padstow and Newquay, and some good local pubs much closer. There’s even a National Trust house, Trerice, just up the road. Trewerry was the mill serving the estate.

The rooms here are simple but comfortable. We had a long, narrow room above the mill wheel. The odd shape and lack of windows would have been bothersome in a newer building, but we found it interesting to be staying in a room adapted from such a historic space. The sitting room downstairs also has quirky corners and architectural features that make the original purpose of the building clear.

The owners are cheerful, helpful and cook a hearty breakfast. They knew the local area well and gave great advice on pubs, attractions and sights.

If you’re searching for a quiet, pastoral place that’s off the beaten track and a bit unusual, this is a great choice.

Thanks to owners Dave and Terri Clark for giving me permission to use their photos. For more information, check out their web site at: .

It’s amazing how few people walk the coast here. I’ve spent time in Cornwall twice, both in early summer, and both times have been able to have significant stretches of beach and coastline completely to myself. This is, indeed, splendid isolation.

The SWC path is an official trail maintained by the government that runs around the entire Cornish peninsula. There’s little development. The views, and the photo opportunities, are remarkable.

Walking the path is not for the faint of heart: the Cornish coast is laden with cliffs and small rivers cascading into the sea. You have to climb a LOT of steps. I suppose it’s the inaccessibility of some of these places that gave us such peace and quiet. (Note that if you are not fit enough to make the climb, there are plenty of remarkable views from roads and cliff tops.)

I would particularly recommend two walks.

Bedruthan Steps is a well-known spot about 6 miles north of Newquay. The drive to get up here is beautiful, and you’ll go over cliffs and down into valleys with little settlements several times before you get to the spot. There’s parking on the cliff top, and from there, a very long flight of well-maintained wooden steps down onto the beach. You descend the equivalent of about 7 stories to find yourself, if the tide permits, on a broad stretch of golden sand sheltered by the cliffs ringing it. The rock at your back is stripped in lovely colours, and you’ll find caves created by the pounding waves at the bottom of the cliffs. You can just imagine the smugglers bringing the French brandy ashore! The cliffs form a wonderful sun trap here, and if it’s a sunny day, you’ll find that it’s warm down here, even if you were chilly up top.

South of St. Ives, you’ll find an easy (as long as you can do steps) but very dramatic circle walk starting from the village of Zennor. (Take time to stop in the church, where you can see a carving of the mermaid who supposedly lured a village boy away to live happily ever after beneath the waves in the Middle Ages.)

The path cuts up and down across a series of cliffs south of Zennor, comes up again at a farmhouse, and crosses back across the farm fields to return you to the village. It’s about 3 miles. There’s less beach on this route, but lots of places to catch the sun. The path often cuts through areas of flat grasslands that jut out from the cliffs. We paused for lunch at a dramatic spot just off the main path - a patch of grass and nodding wildflowers of about 12 feet square with a jutting rock at our backs to catch the sun and the whole vista of the coast dropping south in front of us. We didn’t see another soul for at least half an hour. Remarkable!

There’s a stereotypical Cornish fishing village, and you can find plenty of them true to form. Their most characteristic feature is an enclosed harbour. This usually started as a sheltered cove, often at the point where a small river formed a valley as it ran off the land beyond and was then enclosed by man-made walls. You end up with a completely enclosed body of water with just a narrow opening out to the sea beyond.

Around that harbour sits charming small houses painted in pastel colours. Many have been turned into tourist shops (arts and crafts are big here), and there’s inevitably a creaky, half-timbered pub with a nautical theme. Most have a fish-and-chip shop, or three. There’s not a lot of fancy eating in Cornwall; these "chippies" are often your best bet. Listen for local accents and look for places where the fish is served straight from the fryer. Those will be the best.

Here are my favorites.

Mousehole’s harbour is tiny and its walls are high. You can imagine quite clearly what a safe refuge this must have been for sailors who beat the storm home. There was a particularly good artisan’s shop on the waterfront.

Mevagissy is a larger town with a variety of steep, picturesque streets running down to the harbour. The harbour is lined with fish restaurants. We found none beyond "average" on the food, but all had great views.

Polperro is perhaps the most picturesque of all the villages. You have to abandon your car and either walk into town of catch a ride on the horse-drawn cart. The harbour is tiny and we found it most notable for the seafood vendors selling straight off the boats. We sat on the sea wall and ate fresh caught-and-cooked crab with a side of chips from a quay-side fryer. One of the best meals I had in Cornwall!

St. Ives has really grown too big to be called a village, though it does have the requisite enclosed harbour and quaint streets. Artists made this their haven a century ago and the tradition still continues. There are lots of galleries here, and a branch of the Tate museum. That’s brought in big tourist numbers, so there’s a bit more tacky seaside stuff here than one would like. It’s enough to be fun without overwhelming.

I must withold my recommendation from Penzance. Gilbert and Sullivan led me to expect charm. Sadly it’s sprawling, urban, and filled with a lot of very tough looking guys with scary tattoos. The best thing here is the view across the bay to St. Michael’s Mount.

Lanhydrock is a massive country house that gives you a fantastic feel for Victorian life, both "upstairs" and "downstairs". I fell in love with this place when it starred in a movie … the film adaptation of Twelfth Night … and was burning to see it from that time. It didn’t disappoint.

It’s an extremely big house. More than 50 rooms are open to visitors and the gardens surrounding it are famous. You will need at least four hours to do it justice.

Lanhydrock is a great example of what I call Victorian "pastiche history". They loved re-creating and glorifying the past, sticking together old bits and pieces to create something new that looked convincingly ancient. This house follows the trend. It was built in the 17th century, slowly rotted into a ruin, burnt down in the late 1800s and was rebuilt … with all the modern conveniences … to look as old as the original. Check out the picturesque gatehouse. It looks like something straight out of the English Civil War, yet it’s barely 100 years old.

This means that the interiors are pleasingly fresh and new. Tapestries are bright, furniture gleams with wood polish and windows are big enough to let in lots of light. My strongest and fondest memories, however, are of the kitchen! This is one of the best-preserved "below stairs" set ups in the country. (It was only recently that curators discovered anyone was interested in this stuff; and by the time they did, most of the original serving quarters in country houses had been gutted.) Lanhydrock has room after room of kitchens, storage, speciality preparation rooms … the mind reels to imagine the kind of parties fuelled by this extravagance. I was fascinated to check out some of the "high tech" equipment, like a very early motor-driven spit. If you were roasting a whole cow, that HAD to be a relief.

The gardens are particularly lovely. In typical Victorian style there are very formal parts close to the house and "wilderness" areas further away from it. We went in late May, a particularly rich time horticulturally. The gardens were ablaze with rhododendrons the size of small houses, late summer bulbs mixed with early blooming plants in the perennial borders and a sea of bluebells swayed on the forest floor.

The Lanhydrock estate runs along the Fowey river valley and is big enough to keep any other development far out of sight. Miles of hiking trails wind through the woodland around the house. There’s a particularly good view from a hilltop that lays the house at your feet and gives you a pastoral view down the valley toward the sea. Not a car, house or telephone pole in sight.

You’d swear it was 1620. Of course … that’s exactly what those wily Victorians wanted.

If nearby Lanhydrock house was built to LOOK old, Cotehele simply IS old. This is one of the "must visit" houses in the UK if you want to see the spirit of the Middle Ages untouched by the modern world. (Others are Haddon Hall in Derbyshire and Athelhampton in Dorset.)

Cothele was never modernised. There are no added or altered wings; the building still wraps around its interior courtyards in a practical and defensible way. Its floorplan was never updated from the original medieval warren of small, cozy and easy-to-heat rooms. Windows are still small. The décor is simple, and nobody ever redecorated in Georgian or "neo-medieval" style. Unsurprisingly, Cotehele doesn’t even have electricity. This is pretty remarkable when you think of the generations that must have been tempted to redecorate over the past 500 years!

All of this authenticity does put some restrictions on tourism. The National Trust (curators of the property) limit inside visitors to 80 at any one time and 600 total on any day. Thus you may need to wait on crowded days. That would be unusual, however … Cotehele is deep in the countryside down winding, narrow lanes that deter all but the most intent tourists. If you have several days in Cornwall, try to save your visit here for a sunny day. Or bring a flashlight! Small windows and no electricity can conspire on cloudy days to make it very hard to see much inside the house.

And you will want to see the interiors. They contain a lovely combination of armour, original dark wooden furniture and tapestries.

The gardens beyond show the only "modern" influences on the estate. The design of the beds is clearly Victorian and there’s a charming Victorian summer house. There’s also an authentic medieval dovecote, so you won’t leave the past too far behind! This is one of the most charming and intimate gardens in the country. A formal layout of flower beds fills a formal lawn beside the house. Go through a door in the wall, however, and you’re in a wild and woody paradise filling a small, steep valley that slopes to the River Tamar. (The Tamar divides Cornwall and Devon. Buckland Abbey, described in my Cornwall journal, is just across and up the river from here.)

Though the house is only open during tourist season, the gardens welcome visitors year round and there’s always something to see. I swung by after a business meeting on a February afternoon and found the grounds ablaze with white snowdrops. There’s a tea shop in the barn between the car park and the house … particularly welcome on cold afternoons!

If you’ve had enough of the Middle Ages and gardening, you can stroll down to the river where you’ll find relics of the industrial revolution. There’s a working mill and a restored Tamar sailing barge, both from the 19th century.