A week in Cornwall

[AD] Over the half term holidays we spent a week in Cornwall, and due to staying in three different locations, Helston, Plymouth, and Tiverton, we were able to see a variety of what Cornwall and the surrounding areas had to offer.

Aside from beaches, which Cornwall is best known for, there are many different things to see in Cornwall that makes travelling with kids a great experience, and a destination that everyone can enjoy.

If you’d like to spend some time in Cornwall and would like some ideas of different places to stay, and different areas to visit, then here’s what I got up to during a week in Cornwall, that I hope provides you with some inspiration when planning your own Cornwall holiday.

Driving to Cornwall

Cornwall is located on Great Britain’s southwestern tip, which means that for many of us it can take several hours to get there.

If you’d like to drive to Cornwall but don’t want to take your own car, a great solution is to hire a car, which means you can still visit this stunning location, without the worry of any wear and tear on your own car.

Hiring a car for your Cornwall holiday

DiscoverCars.com is a leader in online car rental bookings. They compare car rental deals from a huge number of suppliers to find you the right car, at the best price, quickly and easily.

Some of the many advantages of using DiscoverCars.com to hire a car for your Cornwall holiday include:

• No hidden fees, all fees are included in your quote
• 24/7 multilingual customer service
• Free cancellation up to 48 hours before your scheduled pickup time
• Winner of the World’s Best Car Rental Booking Website 2022
• They’re rated 4.6/5 on Trustpilot

DiscoverCars.com have cars in 145+ countries, 10,000+ locations, have 500+ partners, and can communicate in 17 languages, which means there’s a DiscoverCars.com pickup location near you, and you can communicate with them in a language that you’re most comfortable with.

There are many locations in London that you can pick a DiscoverCars.com car up from. For a comprehensive list please visit DiscoverCars.com London locations.

As well as London, there are locations around Cornwall that you can hire a DiscoverCars.com car from; two of these locations are Exeter and Plymouth.

Exeter is one of the most vibrant, attractive and historically interesting cities in England, packing a lot of attractions in a small space. Its location within Devon makes it a perfect starting point for a Devon and Cornwall trip, which many tourists like to combine.

Another location that you can hire a car from is Plymouth, which is located in Devon, but has a small part of its territory extending into Cornwall, making it a perfect location for a Cornwall road trip.

Plymouth was one of my favourite locations during our week in Cornwall, if hiring your DiscoverCars.com car from Plymouth, you can visit the same places I did in and around Plymouth, which I discuss below.

Whether hiring a car near Cornwall, or hiring one in many other locations including Heathrow Airport, Cambridge, Oxford, Birmingham, Southampton, or Bristol, there’s sure to be a car hire pickup location from DiscoverCars.com that’s conveniently located near you.

My week in Cornwall

Once we arrived in Cornwall, we were lucky enough to have warm weather everyday, which meant we could maximise the time we had there by seeing as much as we could.

Here’s what we got up to in our week in Cornwall.

Porthleven

Porthleven was 15 minutes from our first hotel in Helston, so we visited here on our first night.

Apart from restaurants, there were souvenir shops, cafés, and bakeries here, and of course the granite harbour, pier, clock tower and surf areas that Porthleven is best known.

After dinner we walked to the pier to admire the views, then headed back to our hotel to rest up for our first full day in Cornwall.

St Ives

St Ives is normally the image you have when thinking about Cornwall. It’s a beautiful fishing harbour and seaside town, with a sand beach, shops, restaurants, cafés, and bars.

After we parked our car we took a bus from the car park to the beach, where the boys played in the sand and water, which they loved.

We then had a very quick look around the village as we had to get back in the car to visit our next destination, St Michael’s Mount, to get there in time for our timed visit.

St Michael’s Mount

20 minutes from St Ives is St Michael’s Mount, a National Trust location that consists of a rocky island with a medieval church, castle, and gardens within it.

If you’d like to visit St Michael’s Mount you need to book your visit prior to getting there, which you can do on the St Michael’s Mount booking website.

You get to the Mount in low tide by foot, but as we were there during high tide we had to take a boat to the Mount, that you can buy tickets for as you wait for the boat.

Catching the boat to the Mount was the highlight of our first Cornwall day out for Thomas. He’s transport obsessed, so being on a boat with his hair blowing in the wind, and getting water splashed on his face was his idea of bliss.

Once we got off the boat we walked towards the Mount’s entrance, and to get up to the castle on the hill we had to walk up a very steep cobblestone path, with big steps, all of which mean you can’t take a buggy up, and you have to carry little ones, so it’s quite a workout.

Once we reached the top we had really nice views of the surrounding village, and were able to go inside the castle.

Minack Theatre

Straight after our visit to St Michael’s Mount, we headed to Minack Theatre to see The Piskie in the Garden, a show we booked a couple of months prior to our week in Cornwall.

Minack Theatre was high on our Cornwall to see list, because it’s a theatre carved into the side of a cliff, and we were intrigued to see what this meant, as well as wanting the boys to have a unique experience.

Even though Minack Theatre was only 30 minutes from St Michael’s Mount, we were 30 minutes late to the show because we got stuck in traffic for 40 minutes on a narrow lane.

This didn’t matter to Ryan, he loved the amount of show that he saw, and he laughed out loud a lot.

Carnglaze Caverns

Before heading to our next hotel in Plymouth, we stopped at Carnglaze Caverns; Cornwall’s only underground slate mine.

It only took 20 minutes to walk through the mine, where we were able to learn about how the mine was made, how dark it could get, and what the working conditions for the miners were like.

Outside of the mine were really pretty gardens as well as a café, where the boys had some ice cream.

Plymouth

Plymouth is located in Devon, but due to having a small part of its territory extending into Cornwall, it was the perfect spot to explore on its own, but also to drive to other Cornwall villages.

We stayed in Plymouth’s City Centre for two nights. I loved how convenient it was to the waterfront, shops, cafés, and many Cornwall villages.

My favourite part of our stay in Plymouth was The Barbican, Plymouth’s old port, which was full of cobbled streets, Elizabethan warehouses, boutique shops, galleries, cafés, and restaurants.

I could have easily spent a coupe of hours walking around The Barbican as it was just so pretty, and had a lot of interesting shops to look at.

Port Isaac

From Plymouth we drove to Port Isaac, a village in Cornwall that’s been a fishing village since the 14^th century.

Port Isaac is best known for its granite and whitewashed cottages, restaurants, cafés, souvenir shops, and as the filming location of Doc Martin.

I didn’t know what to expect here, but I liked it more than I thought I would, as it was a quiet little village, and was really pretty.

However, I think this is definitely a location to visit early morning, as most shops and restaurants were closed by the time we got there at 4pm on a weekday.

Westward Ho!

On our last day in Cornwall we drove from our final hotel location in Tiverton, to Westward Ho! to take the boys to the beach, which we had promised them all trip we’d do.

By the time we got here it was nearly 4pm, and the tide was quickly coming in, so the boys only had about 20 minutes in the water before they had to get out as the tide meant the sand and access out of the beach was disappearing.

Surrounding the beach are a lot of surf shops, ice cream and food trucks, cafés, restaurants, pubs, bars, and holiday cottages, making it somewhere you could easily spend a whole day at.

Thoughts on our week in Cornwall

I really enjoyed our week in Cornwall, and I loved being in three different locations, because it meant that we were able to see a lot of Cornwall and its surrounding locations.

I especially loved St Ives for its great beach and bustling centre, and Plymouth due to the waterfront and location to other Cornwall villages.

I definitely recommend Cornwall as a family friendly holiday destination, or as a destination if you’re looking for some solo relaxation.

What’s on your Cornwall holiday to do list?