Back to the future in Cornwall

Jeremy Gates finds both old-world charm and up-to-the-minute attractions in England’s West Country

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FOR an old girl in sight of her 60th birthday, the Cornish Belle chugged into Falmouth harbour at such a lively pace that squawking seagulls overhead wisely kept their distance.

“This is the largest natural bay in the world after Sydney,” boomed the commentary above the engine roar moments after we passed one of Henry VIII’s defensive forts standing proudly on the hills above St Mawes.

A giant car ferry, in mid-refit, towered high above us.

A £7 return ticket took us on the voyage from the waterside pub at Tolverne – still a place of pilgrimage for Americans because thousands of US troops set sail from the River Fal here for the Normandy landings in 1944 – and down the drizzly estuary of the Carrick Roads.

Each inlet, including the celebrated Mylor Creek, was crammed with yachts at their moorings as we chugged towards the open sea.

The pubs on Falmouth’s seafront, I imagine, have changed little since the brave Yanks sailed by. We explored narrow streets around the National Maritime Museum, including Willow & Stone in Arwenack Street, stuffed with brass Victoriana, fingerplates, earthenware jars from France and brass fish door knockers at £70 apiece.

Then it was back on board for our return to Tolverne – and possibly a cream tea at the Smugglers Cottage, a 15th-century inn with rosettes from both Les Routiers and Egon Ronay, if we felt peckish at the end of the voyage.

Quite often, Cornish days can take you back to the 1950s. But just as you’re settling down to watch Eamonn Andrews on Crackerjack, you get torpedoed abruptly into the 21st century.

The next day, for instance, we were at The Hotel and Extreme Academy in Watergate Bay, on the north coast near Newquay, where managing director Will Ashworth is splashing a million or two turning an elderly family-owned hotel into “the ultimate beach chic indulgence”.

Thirty rooms already resemble a city-centre boutique hotel – plasma-screen TVs, solid oak floors, funky modern table lamps among minimalist furnishings. Mid-season overnight B&B for two starts at £145 per night.

Directly beneath the hotel, on a surfers’ paradise of a sandy beach, is Fifteen Cornwall, the Jamie Oliver-inspired restaurant created as a charitable enterprise to turn keen young locals into top chefs.

Try to book at lunchtime when the beach is packed with rubber-clad surfers on huge boards and dazzling light is reflected upwards from the sand. My soaring spirits weren’t even squashed by a bill of £258 for six.

With the A30 now dual-carriageway all the way west to Indian Queens and low-cost flights into Newquay from Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Newcastle, Cardiff, and Cork slotting into place, Cornwall is nearer than ever before.

No wonder the early-evening crowds are heaving on the harbourside in Padstow, another magnet for tourists, brilliantly rejuvenated by Rick Stein’s restaurants and picture-postcard pretty.

“Even at three in the morning, your car incurs a parking charge,” the parking attendant told me with glee as seagulls dived on half-eaten pasties on the pavement.

Suddenly I realised why one regular Cornish visitor who loves his view from Pentire Point, in Betjeman country near Trebetherick, wrote to ask the etiquette expert of a national magazine: “What is the correct amount of time one should occupy such an eyrie following a somewhat demanding walk?”

Her reply was: “One minute on a bank holiday, two minutes for the rest of the good weather season. As many as three in winter, when the ranks of fellow solitude seekers are greatly diminished.”

Stick to simple pleasures, however, and Cornwall won’t disappoint. I love friendly, helpful welcomes in local shops, rich hedges on country lanes, dark headstones in graveyards where stirring epitaphs straddle the centuries, spectacular gardens and breezy cliff-top walks.

Our base for the week was the village of Devoran, just off the A39 south of Truro. The Sail Loft, which probably hummed with skilled craftsmen a century ago, has been converted into a three-bedroom home with a massive living room/kitchen area at first-floor level beneath a vaulted ceiling and exposed beams.

The location, at one end of a sleepy village where the only shop opened on Monday afternoons, was perfect for a restful week; just across the road was Devoran Quay, an open, grassy area for picnics and upturned boats looking out across a muddy inlet where the tides of the river rush in twice a day at a cracking pace.

Before the bay silted up a century ago, the locals say Devoran was a focal point for timber exporters. Today, the only jams are made of cyclists following a trail of discovery devised by the hire firm.

Barely 100 yards away, up a slope which seemed more challenging on the return leg in the dark, was The Old Quay Inn, with local ales and delicious home-cooked meals for less than a tenner a head. The friendly regulars cheerfully spin a yarn or two over pints of St Austell’s finest.

In the daylight, climbing the lanes of Devoran, past the church and a grey stone junior school, made a perfect stroll in a setting reminiscent of the Welsh valleys.

Within a dozen miles of the village, there’s plenty to see and do. Around the corner are the magnificent gardens of Trelissick, where 370 acres of parks and woodland, crammed with rhododendrons, hydrangeas and maples, have been tended by the National Trust since 1955.

Thanks to an ingenious contraption called The King Harry Ferry, one of only five chain ferries in England, cars and passengers can hop across a narrow stretch of the River Fal below Trelissick for faster access to St Mawes and the Roseland Peninsula.

A few miles north of Devoran is the city of Truro, its splendid “mediaeval” cathedral completed only in 1910 – but more ravaged by time than you might expect because it’s made of Bath stone. An anonymous benefactor pays the bill for its illumination every night of the year.

As a city, Truro is fun because superstores are kept carefully clear of old, narrow streets and alleyways – including the delightfully named Squeeze Guts Alley.

The city’s choice of restaurants gets better all the time: try locally sourced venison in Tabbs, the bistro-style Bustopher Jones, recently and lavishly refurbished, and Mannings in the Royal Hotel, owned by Lyn Manning, sister-in-law of late comedian Bernard.

Head south from Devoran, and Falmouth becomes the gateway to The Lizard, with an intriguing array of family attractions, including the Flambards Experience, Poldark Mine and Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station Experience.

In a week, or even a fortnight in Cornwall, you’re bound to run out of time – because there is so much to see.

Our single setback during our stay was an attempt to microwave a Cornish pasty as an evening snack: it came out looking like a dry, dusty relic from Stonehenge, leaving us a little peckish for the long night ahead.