Our Cornwall staycation itinerary

From reading the previous post you’ll see that we recently spent a week down in beautiful Cornwall. It’s a place we like to think of as our second home; we lived in Truro for a couple of years around the time Sophie was born and my parents lived in Newquay for much longer meaning we were regular visitors. It was so lovely to have the chance to visit some of our favourite spots and discover some new ones.

Without further ado, this is what we got up to…

Lost Gardens of Heligan
My only memories of visiting the gardens as a teenager were being unwillingly dragged around for the whole afternoon with absolutely no interest in flowers! Obviously as an adult my interests have changed somewhat and after visiting many of the other gardens in Cornwall already, we really needed to check this one out. Here, like most attractions in Cornwall at the moment need to be pre-booked. Looking at the weather forecast, it looked as though the first day after we arrived was going to be an overcast one, so rather than sacrifice a sunny beach day, it seemed like a good option for visiting the gardens. I booked online a couple of days before and there were lots of time slots still available. 

Burmese rope bridge

I’m sure attractions are much more child-centred than when I was young! There is a Giant’s woodland trail, adventure playground and my favourite; a replica Burmese rope bridge! 

We took a packed lunch (though there were several options available to buy food and eat at picnic tables and also ice cream stalls!). We spent most of the day exploring the jungle and various garden sections. A fabulous day out!

Perranporth beach
The following day was the first in a string of beautiful clear sky days! The temperature can be deceiving though – it was windy and we needed hoodies on the beach all day! It was about a mile walk from Perran Sands, where we stayed, to the main beach at Perranporth across the sand dunes.

We set up camp quite close to the Watering Hole restaurant as this is where we’d planned to have lunch. It’s always busy here, so we headed over early to get a table. Not sure if it is recent due to keeping customers outside or not, but there are now several bar/food huts outside the main restaurant. We shared a lovely pizza and had brownies for dessert!

Sophie enlisted the help of some other children nearby to build a sand boat ready for when the tide came in. We weren’t sure whether to keep her apart from other children on the beach or not, but I figured it was probably safe enough as they were outdoors and weren’t touching each other to let them get on with it. It seemed as though the other families we met felt the same which was so nice for Sophie as she has really missed out on child company the last few months! Later in the afternoon I showed her how to bodyboard using Andy’s old one from when he was young – she loved it!

We didn’t visit the town itself this time, but there are many restaurants, cafes, souvenir shops and surf shops along the main street if you fancy it. There’s plenty of parking either on the seafront, up on the hill next to the beach or at a couple of other places on the way into town. It’s a huge beach but still gets pretty busy. 

Porthcurno beach
Porthcurno and neighbouring beach Pedn Vounder are probably a couple of the most tropical looking beaches in Cornwall. I knew this one would definitely be on my list to visit when we decided to holiday here. It’s almost an hour’s drive from Perranporth so we knew we’d have to set off early as parking is limited. It’s not a huge beach like some of those on the North coast, but we figured it would be a good place to come to get out of the cool wind we experienced the day before! It’s fairly remote here, but apart from the beach there is the Minack Theatre, the Telegraph Museum and a couple of cafes in the village.

Looking towards Pedn Vounder

The beach shelves quite steeply into the sea for little ones – too much for Sophie who was put off going into the water by the big waves. Once you get past the shore though, it’s flat and great for paddle boarding and kayaking! You can also walk to the next couple of bays at low tide but make sure you don’t get cut off like I almost did! There’s a little stream running onto the beach and Sophie literally spent all day damming it with the family of children sat next to us.

Crantock beach
Crantock used to be my parents’ closest beach so we know it well. It used to be a locals’ secret until a few years ago when it was featured in some popular online magazine and now it’s as busy as anywhere else!

The Gannel Estuary on Crantock beach

It’s a huge beach backed by dunes, but the best bit is the gannel estuary which runs to the sea along one side of the beach. It’s not fast flowing or super deep and is pretty safe for children to play in. At low tide there’s little river left, except lots of little pools perfect for toddlers.

I’d wanted to do this for a long time, but on this visit we finally rented a SUP (£55 for 4hrs) and had so much fun paddling all afternoon. The surprising thing about visit was that the sea water wasn’t cold at all – most of the time it was like a luke warm bath!

There is a National Trust car park closest to the beach and another private one slightly further up the hill. Both fill up very quickly on hot days. There’s a cafe up by the latter car park and another coffee truck also selling sandwiches, cakes and ice creams on the sand itself.

Hayle beach
For our final sunny beach day, which was also my birthday, we headed down to Hayle for the day. Such a beautiful beach stretching 3 miles from Hayle Towans in the West up to Gwithian Sands and finally Godrevy lighthouse further East.

Hayle has an estuary too leading to the sea

We camped out by the Towans where there are several parking options for around £3 per day and as the tide was right out when we arrived, there was a shallow lake perfect for paddling in!

We ate lunch at the Bluff Inn overlooking the beach. The inn is operated as part of the Haven Riviere Sands holiday park just up the road, but is open to non-guests. The menu has something for everyone and there’s a climbing frame by the picnic tables outside which kept Sophie busy for a couple of hours! 

Charlestown
Our last day was the worst, weather wise, with drizzle forecast all day. We woke up to that familiar Cornish sea mist and headed South to the port of Charlestown. I hadn’t really heard of Charlestown before Poldark came about, but have always been a little intrigued to see what the actual film set looks like on a normal day!

Charlestown harbour

Here’s a tip I found out before we arrived – it’s free to park on the road on the way into the town!

After a coffee and cake stop as soon as we arrived (undercover at one of the cafes by the harbour) we decided to get out of the rain and visit the Shipwreck museum. It’s pretty small, but not expensive to go in. Sophie enjoyed looking at all the Titanic era artefacts as well as the cannon balls of various shapes and sizes!

Back outside again we had a walk around the harbour to look at the ships and down to the little pebble beach before having lunch at HabourQ – a pop-up BBQ cafe at the water’s edge. Honestly worth the trip for the food alone! 


That concludes our week! There were a few other places on my short list that we didn’t get to see this time (Kynance Cove, Marazion, Fistral beach) but there’s always next time, right?

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