Around the cottage
Everything within reach of the door, in the order you would reach it: three places you can walk to, and five more inside half an hour. Five of them have a picture, which means nothing except that we know those best.
The South West Coast Path
Adjacent
It runs past the top of the garden. Sheep on one side, a long way down on the other, and choughs — red bill, red legs, back on these cliffs after fifty years away.
Porthpean beach
5 min walk
The beach at the bottom of the hill. Grey seals haul out on the rocks at the far end and do, essentially, nothing — which is the correct way to spend an afternoon here.
Up the lane
5 min walk
An 18-hole course a few minutes up the lane, with the bay in view from most of it. Visitors are welcome and it is the rare course you can reach on foot from your bed.
Charlestown harbour
10 min drive
A Georgian working harbour that still has tall ships tied up in it, which is why every period drama you have ever seen appears to be filmed here. It usually is. There is a shipwreck museum, two pubs, and Charlie's tea shop with its homemade cakes.
Eden Project
15 min drive
Two enormous bubbles in an old china-clay pit, one of them a rainforest. Worth it for the moment you step through the door and the air changes.
Heligan
20 min drive
Gardens that were left to the brambles for seventy years and then dug back out. The jungle end feels a long way from Cornwall until a robin turns up.
Down the coast
25 min drive
A working fishing village with a double harbour, lanes too narrow for the cars in them, and fish and chips eaten sitting on the harbour wall. Boats still go out from here for a living, which is rarer than it looks.
Across the bay
30 min drive
The estuary town across the bay: bookshops, sailing, good restaurants, and the little ferry across to Polruan. Daphne du Maurier lived here and the place has never quite stopped mentioning it.
All of these are a short drive, and the coast path starts at the top of the lane. Exact times depend on the season and the tractor in front of you.
Walk south along the cliffs to Black Head, or north toward Charlestown.
Through the field, down to a safe sandy beach with a sailing club next door.
Porthpean Golf Club's 18-hole course is a few minutes' walk along the lane.
A Georgian harbour village — tall ships, the shipwreck museum, pubs, and Charlie's tea shop.
The biomes are a short drive — an easy half-day or a full day out.
The Lost Gardens of Heligan — one of the great gardens of Cornwall.
A working fishing village with a double harbour, and fish & chips on the wall.
The estuary town across the bay — bookshops, sailing, restaurants, and the ferry to Polruan.
For the map, the address and directions to the door, see where we are.
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