What Makes Cornwall so Special?

Cornwall is a large peninsula in the southwest corner of England that draws visitors year-round. What makes Cornwall so special? With a few extra hours in our weekend, we took a road trip to find out. Cornish used to be a language all its own. Today, locals have a distinctive accent that you won’t hear in other parts of the country. There are dozens and dozens of villages to choose from when planning a trip. One woman told us she visited Polperro on the south coast of the peninsula and was amazed at the views. In our case, we selected two towns on the north coast of the peninsula: Port Isaac and Tintagel. Hold onto your hats because with secluded coves, petit beaches, and cliffside coastal walks, the views are out of this world!

The Cornwall Environment

The first thing to understand is that Tintagel (where we stayed) is a 5-6 hour drive west from Cambridge where we live. We were fortunate that one Friday, my husband was able to work a partial day and then we hopped in the car and headed off. Our goal was to arrive before dark. This turned out to be a good decision because as we got closer buildings became less frequent, the landscape became more rural, and the roads presented new challenges.

The last few miles we drove single-lane roads with massive walls of green hedges on both sides. In a few places, we could see that on the other side of the hedge was grazing land for animals and the hedge acted as a natural fencing system. Although, in some places, the barrier was vine-covered stone walls and not pure greenery.

The roads are blind curve after blind curve. You cannot see over the greenery on the sides. All this makes you feel that you are in the most uninhabited, rural place that time ever forgot. In fact, if you were a character in a horror movie and you were on that road alone in the dark, no one could hear you scream.

Eventually, though, travelers will approach a village again. Farmhouses appear, as do rolling green grazing lands, and best of all, in the distance, is the ocean.

Our Lodging

We could have stayed at an inn or taken a room above a pub, which is common in small-town England. In fact, I considered doing just that. But, in the end, I decided on a short-term rental as we had done so many successful times before. I’m glad I did because the view in this one was nothing short of extraordinary.

Our apartment was the renovated annex of a farmhouse. This is also a common arrangement in rural England. I’ve learned this from watching real estate shows on English television.

Port Isaac was a 20-minute drive and Tintagel was a 5-minute drive away. The apartment was small, cute, and perfectly functional for a long weekend. Between the view out the rear French doors and the proximity to the villages we wanted to visit, I over the moon. We hit the jackpot on this one.

What Makes Cornwall so Special? Port Isaac Views!

After you read this article, bring up your Netflix or Prime Video account and watch an episode of Doc Martin if you aren’t already familiar with Cornwall, England. Then, you will know why I wanted desperately to visit Port Isaac. In the show Doc Martin, the fictional village of Port Wenn is so important to the story that it functions like another character. The action could not take place anywhere else. If it did, it wouldn’t be the same show at all.  The introduction and closing often include sweeping views of the town.

These views are so quaint and unspoiled that I worried I would see Port Isaac (the actual filming location) and discover to my crushing disappointment that it was all CGI. I feared that the views weren’t real and that computers made up this simple, blue-collar fishing village where the lanes are so steep & narrow most people just walk instead.

I have a lump in my throat as I write this: It’s real. It’s all real. The landscape is God-created not computer generated.

Our lodging hosts also let us know that, by coincidence, there was a major festival happening in Port Isaac that weekend. The Port Isaac Shanty Festival is an annual event that celebrates the musical tradition of sea shanties and raises funds for the town’s community center. Both sea shanties and the community center are the heart of small fishing villages like this one. In fact, both are integral to the town’s culture.

By an extraordinary stroke of luck, live performers filled every pub, restaurant, outdoor stage and courtyard all weekend. We settled in on the second floor of a restored-church-turned-restaurant to listen.

Fun fact: In 2019, the movie Fisherman’s Friends told the story of the how the group by the same name started and became world famous for singing ancient sea shanties that were passed down through the generations. The real group started in Port Isaac and returned home to sing at this festival (though we missed that performance). Check out the YouTube video of them singing Keep Hauling, which includes scenes from the movie and the real town of Port Isaac.

Tintagel

If Port Isaac is all about myths and shanties passed from one weather-worn generation to the next, then Tintagel is about legends and whispers of the past never quite proven. You see, this is the place where King Arthur is said to have been born. However, researchers have never quite proven that it’s true or, in fact, that King Arthur was real at all.

I can tell you that there are certain places that when you visit, you suddenly understand why they became the stuff of legends in the first place. The stories write themselves as you stand in a field in Chipping Norton and study The Rollright Stones and the same is true when you stand on mist-dampened paths on the island off the coast of Tintagel.

Previously, the town of Tintagel was cut off from the tiny island where Arthur is said to have been conceived and born. In 2019, the organization English Heritage completed a landmark project, a suspension bridge that connects the little island to the mainland for the first time in centuries.

A traveler can’t avoid the voices of the past here. Where was the round table at which Arthur strategized with his knights? You’ll walk away believing he was real. I promise you that much.

In the town center, the buildings may be newer than the castle ruins, but they are still hundreds of years old. The 14^th Century post office has a (locally mined) slate roof. The slabs are, in fact, so heavy that the roof line sags under their weight.

Unfortunately, the weekend we visited was rainy. We spent a lot of time wet. Being wet, however, is also a great excuse to duck into an ancient pub for something hot. At Charlie’s, we ordered a hot chocolate to share and were rewarded with this:

Throughout the weekend we also tried the world-famous Cornish Pasty. These are baked dough stuff with meat and veggies. The traditional one is steak and potato, but other varieties exist as well. They’re delicious and it is easy to see why they became popular in this area of the world. They are hearty fare for a windy and wet environment.

There is something unspoiled about many of the places in Cornwall, England. I am told the weather here gets warm in the summer thanks to certain ocean winds bringing warmer air. Moreover, the beaches get mobbed in the summer with Brits on vacation. However, for us, the Cornish coast was a century away from our regular life. For a weekend, that’s just what we were looking for.

Is there a place you had high hopes for that lived up to your expectations once you got there?

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