Barnstaple Town Centre :: Cornish Accommodation

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Polzeath
With its glorious position at the mouth of the Camel estuary and the long sandy Hayle Bay famed for its surfing, it is hardly surprising that Polzeath has become so developed in recent years. Only the National Trust’s ownership of Pentire Point and The Rumps has halted the spread of housing and allowed this part of the north Cornwall coast to remain breathtaking. It is hard to believe that in 1936, when people locally and throughout the country raised the money to buy Pentire and present it to the Trust, the entire headland had been divided into building plots and put up for sale. This is Betjeman country, and the late Poet Laureate is buried at St Enodoc Church between Trebetherick, where he spent so much of his life, and the great green swell of Brea Hill on the banks of the Camel.

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Porthcurno
The beach at Porthcurno is one of the most beautiful in Cornwall, with its white sand and shimmering turquoise water in the bay backed by the striking granite ridges of Treen Cliff, but the steeply shelving beach and violent undertow means that it is not the safest place to swim. Until 1993 the village in the valley was home to the Cable and Wireless training college, continuing a relationship that dated back to 1870 when the beach was chosen as the landing-place for an all-undersea telegraph cable link between England and India. As hard as it is to imagine today, Porthcurno became the home of the largest submarine telegraph station in the world. This fascinating story is told in a museum housed in the station’s wartime protection tunnels. Cut into the cliffs to the south of the beach is the renowned open-air Minack Theatre. Any performance seen here, with the unsurpassed backdrop of the sea and the dark, jagged promontory of Treryn Dinas with its famed Logan Rock, is one of the most uplifting experiences that Cornwall has to offer.

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Porthleven
It is rare to find a Cornish harbour which faces south-west, directly into the prevailing winds, and Porthleven’s development as a port was always hampered by its orientation. Doubtless, Porthleven would have remained a small fishing inlet to this day had not there been an overriding need, in the early 19th century, for a harbour of refuge along this forbidding lee shore to which ships could run in times of distress. The construction of the harbour, which was completed in 1825, had been hugely problematical and, although a large drifter fleet was soon engaged in the mackerel and pilchard fisheries, Porthleven remained a dangerous and difficult harbour. Major improvements were carried out in the 1850s and the handsome, massively-built harbour that we see today dates from this time.

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Port Isaac (Hotels in Port Isaac Click Here)
On Cornwall’s spectacular but rugged north coast, where every possible inlet was exploited as a harbour, Port Isaac developed a pilchard fishery from mediaeval times and then, in the last century, a small coasting trade grew up around the shipping of slate from Delabole. Port Isaac is apt to be overrun in the summer but offers fine walking on the cliffs to east and west. The neighbouring settlements of Port Quin and Port Gaverne also have their roots in fishing and the shipping of ores and slate, but both suffered severe declines in the last century with the capriciousness of the pilchard season, the failure of local mines and the coming of the railway to Delabole. In recent years, makers of films and television programmes have used this area as a location.

Archer Farm Guest House - Port Isaac - 01208 880405
Castle Rock Hotel - Port Isaac - 01208 880300
Corestin Christian Guest House - Port Isaac - 01208 880267
Fairholme Guest House - Port Isaac - 01208 880397
Hathaway Guest House - Port Isaac - 01208 880416
Headlands Hotel - Port Isaac - 01208 880260
Old School Hotel - Port Isaac - 01208 880721
The Courtyard - Port Isaac - 01208 880715
The Longcross Hotel - Port Isaac - 01208 880243
Trewetha Farm - Port Isaac - 01208 880256

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Portloe
Portloe is one of Cornwall’s most attractive coastal villages, largely because it has escaped the horrors of unwise development and remains truly unspoilt. Its situation is cramped and dramatic, squeezed in below the echoing, dark cliffs on the western flank of Veryan Bay, and it is hard to imagine when looking at the harbour entrance how any successful fishery could be run from here. Portloe did once support a small drift fleet and a seine fishery, however, whilst trading ketches landed and loaded goods on the beach; and some fishing still goes on today, and lobster and crab potting, to keep the place alive and real.

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Coming soon, the Cornish Accommodation Directory......