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West Cornwall is the bit past Penzance where the county narrows and the coast gets serious. Most visitors come for beaches and leave having seen three. This is what else is here, and it is a lot.
St Michael’s Mount
The island castle off Marazion, reached on foot across the causeway at low tide and by boat at high. Check the tide times before you go — the walk across is most of the pleasure, and getting it wrong means paying for a boat or waiting several hours.
The Minack Theatre and Porthcurno
An open-air theatre carved into the cliff above Porthcurno, about twenty minutes from Penzance. Worth seeing even without a performance. Porthcurno beach below it has water an implausible colour on a good day, and the Telegraph Museum explains why a tiny Cornish cove was once the centre of global communications.
Mousehole
A working harbour village a couple of miles from Newlyn, pronounced “Mowzel”. Narrow streets, a tight granite harbour, and in December the harbour lights that bring people from across the county.
Land’s End and the coast path
The headland itself is commercialised. The coast path either side of it is not, and walking twenty minutes in either direction gets you the view without the gift shop. Sennen Cove to the north is the better beach.
Lamorna and the Penwith coves
South of Newlyn the road drops into a string of small coves — Lamorna, Penberth, Porthcurno. Lamorna in particular gave its name to a whole school of painters, and the valley walk down to the cove is one of the best short walks in the county.
Newlyn
One of the largest fishing ports in the country, a mile round the bay from Penzance. Not prettified, which is the appeal. Go early if you want to see it working.
The ancient stuff
West Cornwall is thick with prehistory: stone circles, quoits and standing stones scattered across the moorland between Penzance and St Just. Men-an-Tol and Lanyon Quoit are the well-known ones. Mostly free, mostly unattended, and considerably older than almost everything else on this list.
When it rains
It will. Penzance handles it best because everything is close together: Penlee House gallery, the Jubilee Pool with its geothermally heated section, and the shops along Chapel Street.
This is also where we come in. Escape Rooms Cornwall is on New Street in Penzance, and an hour in a locked room is entirely weatherproof. It is also, unusually, something a mixed-age group can all do together — four rooms, 2 to 8 players each, up to 23 across the rooms at once, from £60 per room rather than per head (about £20pp when full). Under-7s play free and well-behaved dogs are welcome.
Open 10am to 10pm, seven days, so it works as an evening plan as easily as a wet-morning one.
Getting around
Penzance station is the end of the line with the bus station beside it, and buses run out to St Just, Land’s End, Mousehole and Marazion. A car helps for the moorland sites and the tidal timing at St Michael’s Mount, but a week here without one is perfectly workable.
If you are basing yourself in Penzance
Most of the above is within half an hour. See escape rooms near Penzance for what is on our doorstep, or check availability if you want to book the wet-weather plan before you need it.
