Cornwall is full this summer!

[Pauline]

For the last several days I have been searching for a nice holiday cottage in Cornwall for a week in August. It is hot and muggy here and I want to be at the seaside. Of course, by the time our holiday comes, the weather may have changed. We could go right now - but the cattery is fully booked until the second week of August!! This is summer travel in the UK.

All that is left is either the dregs, or new properties that were not listed when everyone else booked six months ago.

I think I have found something though (a new property that no one had booked). So a week in Cornwall may be in my future. We don't know Cornwall well. Last year we spent a week on the Lizard and a week in Carbis Bay near St Ives (both places in West Cornwall). This time I am looking in central Cornwall, either the north or south coast. We want to do some coastal walking and explore more areas of Cornwall.

 

[Lisa in Ottawa]

For the last several days I have been searching for a nice holiday cottage in Cornwall for a week in August. It is hot and muggy here and I want to be at the seaside. Of course, by the time our holiday comes, the weather may have changed. We could go right now - but the cattery is fully booked until the second week of August!! This is summer travel in the UK.

All that is left is either the dregs, or new properties that were not listed when everyone else booked six months ago.

I think I have found something though (a new property that no one had booked). So a week in Cornwall may be in my future. We don't know Cornwall well. Last year we spent a week on the Lizard and a week in Carbis Bay near St Ives (both places in West Cornwall). This time I am looking in central Cornwall, either the north or south coast. We want to do some coastal walking and explore more areas of Cornwall.

Did you find a place in Cornwall?

 

[Pauline]

Yes I did! We booked a modern townhouse from Cornish Gems, on the coast outside of Newquay. This is a surfing destination on the north coast of central Cornwall, and a bit of a party town from what I read, so not a great location, but the vacation rental is nice and is on a river very near the ocean. Cornish Gems - Lowen. They gave me a good last minute discount (20%).

It is on the River Gannel and at low tide you can walk across the river on a bridge to a beach area. At high tide they take people across in a boat.

My Pathfinder Walking Guide for Cornwall has a nice walk on the headland and coast on that other side of the river.

We will walk as much of the South West Coast Path as we can. We walked some of it last year. It starts in Minehead in Somerset and goes along the coast of north Devon, all of Cornwall, back through south Devon and ends at Poole in Dorset. It is not an easy trail because it goes up and down all the river valleys as they meet the coast.

And we will explore this part of Cornwall. I would have liked to stay on the south coast in central Cornwall, but everything was booked.

Our heatwave has ended and we had rain the past few days. Hoping for sun in Cornwall, but not too hot.

 

[JeriF.]

You probably know this but not too far from you is Port Isaac, there they filmed Doc Martin. Other highlights of our stay were Mousehole, Land's End (in a rainstorm--very evocative), and Fowey and Polperro on the south coast (du Maurier fans). You surely know the Lizard better than we do, but we found Lizard Point and Kynance Cove just spectacular. If you get a rainy day and don't fancy a hike, you could visit Trerice, near Newquay, a beautiful Elizabethan manor house.

What a beautiful place Cornwall is.

 

[Lindy]

Pauline, your townhouse choice looks rather nice!

Lindy

 

[Pauline]

Thanks for the suggestions Jeri! We were in Cornwall for two weeks last summer, part of the time with Wendy and Richard (friends from SlowTrav) who know Cornwall well. We visited Mousehole and Land's End then. We spent a week on the Lizard and a week near St Ives (Carbis Bay). But we did not go anywhere east of that western tip.

I loved Kynance Cove too - we walked there from the Lizard point. There were beautiful beaches along that coast that Wendy and Richard took us too, and lovely villages.

I will put Fowey and Polperro on my "to see" list - they are straight across from Newquey. I should re-read Daphne DeMaurier - I forgot about that. I even made a Google Map on ST for her book "The House on the Strand". Thanks for the reminder!!

I was also planning on a visit to the Roseland coast, just south of there. Did you go there?

Another friend also mentioned Port Isaac, which is north - we will go there, and probably to Tintagel. Linda (from the Beehive in Rome) is in Cornwall now and posted on Facebook about Boscastle in that area.

Thanks for the suggestion of Trerice - that's National Trust so we get in free (we have yearly memberships)! That looks very interesting.

 

[JeriF.]

We didn't visit the Roseland coast, which perhaps was a bit far from where we were staying in Truro. I wish we had had more time in Cornwall; we were there for only a week and missed a lot, I know.

My daughter, Karen, is addicted to Du Maurier, and we did manage to locate her estate, Menabilly, on a side road. It's private, but we took Karen's picture at the entrance, so she was happy.

Be warned that Fowey and Polperro are quite touristy, but we really enjoyed them nonetheless. The trick, especially in Polperro, is to walk way out from the commercial area near the entrance; it gets noticeably less crowded.

We did spend some time in the small village of Coverack, on the Lizard, which we loved. Did you get there?

Here's a photo of Trerice:

 

[Pauline]

Cornwall is a large county and those narrow lanes make the driving slow. St Ives was very crowded with tourists when we were there last year, but we had fun walking around the town. We did visit Coverack! Very pretty. We were in St Martin, close to Helford.

 

[Lindy]

Looks like we will be following in your footsteps later in Sept. We decided on a cottage at Lydford. Only hope that we will be able to fit everything in, as we keep reading about how slow driving can be. This is when we'd wished we had booked for two weeks! Our list is very comparable to yours.

Has anyone been to the Minack outdoor theatre nr. Penzance - it looks enchanting. Unfortunately, there is only evening performances - Dracula: The Kisses, presented by Scary Little Girls an all female cast - should be an interesting take on this story. What's the temp at night likely to be?

Out of the area, but on our way to the Cotswolds, we managed to get tickets to a choral concert at Wells Cathedral. Karl Jenkins is conducting the piece The Armed Man - A Mass for Peace. Can only begin to imagine how stirring that will be.
L

 

[Pauline]

National Trust in Cornwall has a great list of interesting coast destinations.

National Trust is not all historic houses, they own/manage coastal areas and woodlands too. They operate many parking lots along the coast in Devon and Cornwall (and we have a National Trust membership so we park free).

I made a list of their coastal places on the north and south coasts of Cornwall, near where we are staying, so we can make sure to visit those spots. They also have PDFs of local walks.

 

[Pauline]

... Only hope that we will be able to fit everything in, as we keep reading about how slow driving can be. ...
Has anyone been to the Minack outdoor theatre nr. Penzance - it looks enchanting. ... What's the temp at night likely to be?

The lanes are narrow and slow going, but there are many "A" roads through Cornwall and those are good roads.

Remember with the lanes that there are always passing places. When you see someone coming towards you, if they flash their lights, then they will pull over and you can pass them. If a passing place is closer to you, you pull over. If the passing place is on your right, on the other side of the road from where you drive, stop beside it, then the oncoming person drives into the passing place. In Cornwall and Devon the lanes are very narrow and, for extra fun, are lined with tall hedgerows. Some of these conceal stone walls, so be careful when pulling over.

But, it all works well driving on lanes - everyone is used to them. We have lots of narrow lanes like this in the Cotswolds - I live on one.

We saw the Minack Theatre during the daytime - fantastic setting. Linda from the Beehive posted recently on Facebook that she went to a production there and loved it. I think for September, bring a fleece and a rain jacket.

From your base in Lydford you can explore Dartmoor and parts of Devon too.

Wells Cathedral is beautiful - that will be a wonderful concert! You are close to Glastonbury there - all crystal shops and New Age book stores - and the famous Glastonbury Tor.

 

[Lindy]

Thanks for your tips, Pauline. DH is a Brit, although he's been on this side of the pond for many years. We are currently driving a Fiat 500, and will get the same size when in the UK - small is beautiful, as well as functional on narrow roads! So really, there may not be the problem I'm sensing. Besides we have driven many a narrow & winding road in Italy,(one which had a virtual 90 degree turn - now that was a slow recovery!) France & England before. Silly me.

Lot Cottage (Helpful Holidays, which you told us about, #A107) we think will be central enough to get a least a reasonable sampling of both Devon & Cornwall. I'll check into National Trust as well. Port Issac for Doc Martin and also the site (which escapes memory at the moment) for Broadchurch are on what seems to be becoming a very very long list.

Booked the Minack tickets this morning. Oh, so little time, so much to enjoy........

cheers, L

 

[Pauline]

The site for Broadchurch may be a bit far to go. It is in Dorset, near the Devon border. At least that is where they filmed the beach scenes - at West Bay, near Bridport. This is an area we love and have been to a few times. But I don't know what town they used ..

 

[Pauline]

Photo of West Bay, near Bridport in Dorset, where parts of the UK TV series Broadchurch was filmed. This area is part of the Jurassic Coast, a protected coastal area that runs from Dorset into east Devon.

 

[Chris]

I recognize that spot from Broadchurch!

 

[Pauline]

It is very nice swimming there (where the body was left in Broadchurch). A pebble beach which is a little hard on the feet, but the water gets deep fast, which I like. The town of West Bay is pretty tacky though. Bridport is a mile inland and is a cute town.

Sidmouth, where we went for an overnight recently, is an interesting town (a very old world feeling beach town - as if you were still in the 1950s) with a nice long beach, but the beach is stones instead of pebbles and very hard on the feet.

 

[Pauline]

We did our trip to Cornwall and did not do as much as I hoped because I managed to pick up a cold or something the week before we left and coughed my way through Cornwall.

The drive from the Cotswolds to Newquay in Cornwall on a Saturday in August was as miserable as everyone told me it would be. It took 5 hours to do a 3.5 hour drive, with traffic on the M5 stop and go from north of the M4 to the Tiverton exit in Devon. After that it was smooth sailing.

Our vacation rental was lovely. We had a nice outside area overlooking the River Gannel where it meets the sea. The river changed with the tides, going from a small stream that you could walk over on little wooden bridges, to a large, wide and fast moving river.

Photo of the River Gannel when the tide is out.

Photo of the River Gannel when the tide is in (view from our rental).

On the Sunday the remains of Hurricane Bertha hit the UK, but we did not get much in Cornwall except for strong winds when you were standing on the coast. The forecast showed rain every day, but we had very good weather. It was not hot (the heatwave that caused me to book this last minute trip ended the week before) - temps in the 60s - but it was sunny. A couple of rain showers during the whole week.

We did not make it to Port Issac or Trerice (next time), but we had a nice afternoon and a cream tea in Fowey (a delightful town). And we visited Lanhydrock House, a huge National Trust Estate that Wendy recommended to us. We loved it. We walked in the woodlands, had lunch in the cafe and toured the house. This was a good example of "upstairs and downstairs" - with amazing kitchens.

We were warned about how tacky Newquay is, but in the end we liked it. It was very lively, not the least bit "posh" and in a beautiful spot - set on cliffs with several beaches. The town is full of surfers and felt a bit like any surf town in California or Hawaii. Lots of young people in wet suits, bare feet and beads in their hair. People were swimming, but most in wet suits. I wanted to go swimming but didn't because of my stupid cough. And it really wasn't warm enough.

We went to Padstow, which is prettier than Newquay by a long shot, but was crowded. This was peak time in Cornwall. Still, we liked the town. We wanted the famous Rick Stein fish and chips (only chips for me) but the lineup was an hour long at least, so we gave up.

We drove down the coast to Saint Agnes, a pretty coastal town.

One day we went up to Bodmin Moor to see some stones. We loved the Trethevy Quoit, a dolmen. But the skies opened as we walked to the Hurlers Stone Circles, so we just got a quick look at them. It poured rain on the moor, but it was not raining on the coast.

Photo of me at the Trethevy Quoit, before the rain.

We spent a lot of time puttering around our area - Pentire, outside of Newquay - going for walks, walking along the river bed when the tide was out, and sitting outside our place enjoying the sea air.

We drove back on the Friday, thinking we would miss the worst of the traffic on Saturday, and it was 6 hours this time to do a 3.5 hour drive!! Last year when we went in July there were no traffic problems.

Next year I will book ahead and go for a week in early July - before the kids get out of school - and hope for a heat wave like we had there last year. Cornwall is a magical place.