Peaceful Perfect Porthgwarra

Climbing out of Porthgwarra

Some people suffer from the January blues here in the northern hemisphere and someone just asked us to recommend a place in the UK to which they could escape and recharge their batteries. Porthgwarra, the tiny fishing cove tucked in its shallow, sheltered valley just south of Land’s End that is a little corner of paradise perched upon the very edge of our green and pleasant land.

So charming and somehow cosy is little known Porthgwarra, that it is one place I’d consider living in if I weren’t ensconced in my native hills. 

The valley dips from the high plateau of West Penwith taking with it a stream, accompanied by all manner of bird-filled thickets surrounded by wild flowers. Up at the higher reaches, ancient farmsteads lurk as if they’ve been here since the very granite rock itself was born, but lower down there’s a scattering of cottages old and not so old – with the odd 1920s shack thrown in for romantic measure.

This attractively cluttered, secluded and protected vale eventually terminates at the cove itself, but it’s not a simple meeting of rock and wave. The soft, partly decomposed granite has been eaten away in different chunks so that a mini-headland is able to jut into the middle of the cove. An old stone slipway stretches down to the sand on one side, but on the other access can be gained through a rough hewn tunnel, carved many years ago by local miners to help farmers glean seaweed from the beach. 

This somewhat cluttered indentation of the coast has a strange picturesque quality that creates a romance all of its own. The various tunnels carved here and there in the soft rock suggest an age of swashbuckle and smuggling, though most were dug and blasted for prosaic workaday reasons.

But there’s something extra wild about the sea out here in the far west. It may be a mere nuance born of a journalist’s fancy – but I’d swear it looks more angry and potentially more perilous than elsewhere. After all, England’s ultimate corner, Land’s End, lies just around the corner from Gwennap Head. And just offshore there’s the clanging buoy that marks the dreaded Runnel Stone – a needle that has taken countless mariners to a watery grave. 

There’s almost always seal or two lurking in the cove at Porthgwarra, as if to remind visitors that they really are halfway to a world that is more water and wave than rock and soil.

I’d recommend a stay in one of St Aubyn Estate cottages at Porthgwarra