Paid collaboration with Bailey of Bristol
Part One
Touring the Cornish south coast!
After what feels like an eternity and many date changes and delays, we have finally been given the green light to go and pick up our motorhome from Bailey of Bristol, and head off for a few weeks to Cornwall.
We arrived at the head office of Bailey and picked up our home for the next two weeks a beautiful 6.9 meter top of the line motorhome. Our model was the Autograph 69-2 and it had all the bells and whistles and everything we needed for a fantastic adventure.
Our first stop after picking up the van was a supermarket to fill up our cupboards and fridge. This is also the first trip we had brought Tia and Skye (our two cats) with us, and they needed a rest after the longest car journey of their lives.
After getting suppliers we drove the rest of the way to Cornwall. We arrived at Pentewan Sands Holiday Park. Bailey had asked us to explore some of the best beaches in Cornwall and Pentewan was first on our list. The beach is owned by the holiday park, which means you can arrive and have good facilities and a beautiful beach within meters of your accommodation. At this time of year Pentewan sands only lets you stay for a minimum of 7 nights but we persuaded them to let us stay for just 1 night in order to explore the beach. We thought the fee of £45 was very expensive and the site itself was very busy. We did arrive around 8pm and after some dinner and a short beach walk we went to bed as it was a tiring day. The next morning we arose early to see the beach before it became crowded with holiday makers. The beach itself is a nice beach that we would have been happy to spend a lot of time on. We knew though that there were better beaches to come.
We packed up the van and left the park, our next stop was the Lost Gardens of Heligan that we had been invited to visit. As one of the leading outdoor leisure attractions we decided we wouldn't miss it. We arrived at the opening time of 10am and the gardens were fairly quiet for the first hour. We would seriously recommend visiting these gardens on your next visit to Cornwall. They have possibly become our favourite gardens in the UK, they are just that beautiful.
After a few hours of exploring the gardens the weather was glorious so we decided to head west and along the Lizard coast to Kynance Cove. Kynance Cove is a beautiful little tidal beach with incredible turquoise water. The long walk down to the cove is well worth it, and although the beach can become very busy the tide soon clears out bathers. Then you have amazing views from the cliffs above. We spent a little while just relaxing and sunbathing before making our way back to our van and finding our next stop for the night.
We found a nice little farm called Trerise where we could camp and have an electrical hook up. We had a lovely BBQ with our new Cadac BBQ that Prima Leisure had kindly provided for us. We were camping a little inland from the coast as we wanted to explore the small fishing town of Coverack the next morning.
We woke the next morning to rain and decided to have a bit more time in bed. When the rain did ease we packed up and left the campsite to Coverack. It was the perfect little fishing village and a photo opportunity everywhere we looked. After exploring literally the entire town we made our way back for some lunch. Hannah made some tasty tuna sandwiches. Hannah found an area called the Loe bar, there was a small national trust car park that was free and we just managed to squeeze into. The bar is a beautiful strip of sand that separates the Loe lake and the ocean. The sand bar reminded us of a desert with desert like plants. We walked to the other side and up the cliffs to gain a breathtaking view across the bar.
We decided that we would head to Praa sands where we camped in a car park overlooking the beach. 24 hours of parking cost us £8 and after some kindness from strangers we had enough coins to pay the machine (We only had notes). We set up camp and checked what time the paddle board hire opened in the morning. The weather was looking good and we couldn't wait to spend the next day on the beach.
We hired a paddle board and set out, the water was a bit choppy but we both managed to stand up and had a great time riding the waves back in. After some lunch and returning the board we spent a few hours sunbathing before the weather became more cloudy in the evening. We left Praa as our 24 hours of parking was coming to an end and made our way to Penzance. We parked in the harbour car park which was free in the evening and if we wanted we could even stay in the car park all night for free until around 9 am. We walked around the town and explored the beautiful old streets before picking up some supplies from a supermarket. It was the first day that we were required to wear a facemasks inside stores and it felt strange being in a bigger town again and wearing masks. We were really enjoying our Bailey motorhome and being able to socially distance ourselves as we had all the facilities we needed in our little home!
Tia and Skye sat on the chairs and watched as seagulls landed on our roof and even looked down at us through our skylights. One of them only had one leg and we called it the pirate seagull of Penzance.
After waking up we drove to the Tesco petrol station to fill up before driving to Mousehole, a small harbour town. This was our first experience of roads that were too steep and narrow. Cars were parked all along the road leading to the town and we were very close to getting stuck. We only had millimeters on either side of the van and the cars on one side and stone walls on the other made it a real challenge to get through. We knew that we would never fit through the even tighter streets further on and as soon as we could we found an even smaller side road in town to careful manoeuvre the van around and work our way back up the hill and past the cars and walls again. We parked just outside of the village and walked in. We checked our maps and found out that there was a bigger road leading to the car park and decided from then on to be more careful with our route planning. The little village itself was very beautiful, the locals were swimming in the harbour despite the wet weather and the little stone cottages were beautifully decorated with different varieties of plants.
After strolling around the village for an hour or so we made our way back to the van, we were a little anxious as we had left it on a hill and wanted to make sure it was ok. It was totally fine and we set off for a campsite called Treverven. With the forecast being rain all day we decided to set up camp and get work done. However, by mid afternoon the clouds cleared and it became a beautiful sunny afternoon. We decided to walk from the campsite to Logan Rock to get incredible views over Pedn Vounder and Porthcurno beaches. These two beaches quickly became our favourite beaches of the trip so far and really did live up to their Caribbean cousins.
We walked through a tiny but beautiful fishing hamlet on our way to Logan Rock and the walk along the cliffs was beautiful. When we got back to the van we set up the vans awning to help dry our wetsuits as they were still very wet from Praa sands. We settled in for the evening and were very much looking forward to getting down onto the beaches the next morning.
We woke up and emptied our waste and filled up our water tank before moving onto Treen. We parked up, had breakfast and waited for the weather to improve and then headed out to explore the Minack theatre. We climbed from Porthcurno beach up the side of the cliff where stairs we cut in to the top, unfortunately we hadn't factored in Covid and only a limited amount of tickets to explore the theatre were available and they were all sold out. After a quick pastie with epic views over Porthcurno we made our way back down and across the beach towards Pedn Vounder as the tide was now out just enough that we could climb down onto this hidden gem. Although its popularity has increased in the last few years it is still relatively quiet compared to Porthcurno. Pedn Vounder does have a group of local nudists that spend their time on the beach but there are now many more visitors than locals to this beautiful beach. The real pull of making the difficult climb down is low tide. A large sand bar is revealed making the beach a vast sandy low water Caribbean like paradise. The crystal clear waters are spectacular to see. We spent low tide walking around the bay and exploring other sandy little coves that were now revealed. There are no signs to Pedn Vounder so you need to figure it out, and the last section where you have to climb down rocks to the beach might be tricky for some but it really wasn't as hard as we had heard. We loved watching the unique waves at high tide that bounce off each other and break in funny ways because of the now submerged sandbar. When we got back to the van we found Tia and Skye sat in what had become their favourite places, the two front swivel seats.
The South Coast of Cornwall is full of so many beautiful beaches, coves and harbour towns. It is often referred to as the Riviera of Cornwall and having spent time travelling the South Coast before we absolutely love it. Our journey continues up to the north coast where we would be heading to St Ives and then East towards Bude. We can't wait to share more of our Cornwall adventure with you in our next blog.
Keep an eye out on our website and Instagram where we will be posting about the beaches and places we visited in our Cornwall guides.
Massive thanks to Bailey of Bristol for providing us with one of their motorhomes for an epic adventure! - Check out their site here
