Hi all,
We’ll be driving from Bournemouth to Penzance in early June 2024. We’d love to know of any recommendations of stops along the way and perhaps a 1 night stay somewhere to break up the 4 hour drive. We’ll stay in Penzance for several nights before heading up to our THS sit near Bude!
St.ives is beautiful & worth a stop but pretty close to Penzance in the scheme of it. Maybe a night in Exeter would be half way ish, we used to stay there to do Christmas shopping when we lived in Helston. Kynance cove & Sennen Cove have great costal walks. Enjoy!
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Exeter is about halfway so stay over somewhere near there.
From there I take the slower route across Dartmoor on the B3212 as I have a couple of favourite stopping-off points:
- Grimspound (a Bronze Age village, also featured in The Hound of the Baskervilles)
- Postbridge (a clapper bridge)
- Merrivale Rows (another Bronze Age monument).
There’s lots more to Dartmoor so you could push on a bit further than Exeter and stay over there and have a bit more time for exploring.
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Don’t miss Dartmoor National Park; we visited for the first time this winter and fell in love with it; it’s a really unique place. We stayed in Ashburton for two nights after our house sit and quite enjoyed it. We had wonderful pie (with veggies and mash) at the Old Exeter Inn, a 900 year old pub. Poor old Walter Raleigh was arrested here; apparently he and Sir Francis Drake used to sit around the fire discussing the wonders of potatoes and tobacco. 
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Plan your route with Google Maps and then take a look and see what looks interesting along the route.
Thats my advice, everyone has different tastes.
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When I went to Penzance, I stopped one night at an airbnb not far from the Eden project. We had a fabulous day there and left around 2pm to get down our destination in good time
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Thank you, JayneH! St. Ives is on our list of places to visit as is some of the sites in Exeter!
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Thanks so much! The Minack theatre looks amazing! I’ve just added it to our list of places to visit.
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Thank you! We’re avid walkers and hikers who would probably love Dartmoor.
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Thank you, Rhonda. Dartmoor is on our list of places to visit! I’ll check out the Old Exerter Inn in Ashburton, or at least stop in for a pie!
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If you’ve not yet discovered Ordnance Survey maps & books yet, the Explorer map for Dartmoor (OL 28) & the circular walks book are worth considering.
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I would make time to get off the main roads and head down to the south coast towns. A couple of the most popular are Polperro and Looe but I suggest a stay in Fowey and you can do the beautiful Hall Walk (Fowey Hall Walk | Cornwall | National Trust) also a visit to Charlestown to see the old sail boats and setting for many period dramas(https://charlestownharbour.com/).
Further west the Lizard peninsula is worth a visit with some lovely villages and beautiful beaches (Kynance Cove) and do-able from Penzance depending on pet committments.
The roads in Cornwall are narrow and the hedges are unforgiving with some hiding old stone walls so take care.
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We spent a wonderful week in Cornwall in September 2022. We did
six back to back sits over nine throughout England. It was all great, but Cornwall was just for fun. Driving is borderline insane.
Cornwall is known for its quaint seaside villages (with beaches) and magnificent cliffs (with beaches). Once you have seen a seaside village you have pretty much seen them all, especially these days when the tourist shops have taken over. That leaves the cliffs and beaches. Unfortunately, access to the beaches from the cliff tops is getting limited as steep trails and steps collapse, making it impossible to get down without risking death. No money to replace them. Quite substantial tides too, so visits need to work around low tide.
Our first stop was St. Agnes Head. Accessible, nice cave, and views from above. All these beaches are pure sand, not a stone to be found.
Another day was Lizard Point. It is the southernmost point in the UK. The village of Lizard sits about a mile inland. A few shops and where the tour buses must stop due to the single lane road that continues to the point (narrow lanes do have some good points!). Not much of a beach and the still working lighthouse wa closed to the public due to Covid. But the views from the top of the cliffs were nice.
Another day took us to a group of “finger” coves. Cross a low tide beach at Treyarnon Bay, then up the trail to the top of the cliff. Wine, Pepper, Warren and Fox Coves. The beaches are inaccessible. But the cliffs and coves were beautiful. The tide beach had some cool “water holes” up among the rocks that fill on high tide, if you are into looking for living creatures.
Up the coast a couple miles from Lizard is Kynance Cove beach. Wow. Wow.
Wow. Absolutely amazing. You need to be there at low tide, or you get trapped, scrambling for your life. Most of the geology in Cornwall is black slate and granite. At Kynance Cove, the cliffs are made up of dark green and red rock, types of Serpentinite, polished by thousands of years of crashing waves and sand to look like shiny snakeskin. Very smooth snakeskin. How can something so immense be so smooth?. Amazing to see and touch. Apparently, these cliffs have intrigued geologists since the field of geology began. We went back again on our last day. Lots of people swimming in the shallows on the weekend.
Have fun.
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I love Exmouth although there’s not much there. I’d leave out Torquay and Paignton, and as suggested go over Dartmoor. Visit Jamaica Inn (setting for Daphne du Maurice’s novel) just before The Eden Project which is worth a days visit. Then there’s Truro and the villages around….my ideas are endless so you’ll have to visit longer. And what about St Michael’s Mount…?
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