St Ives, Cornwall

St Ives feels likes the town you would you find if you drove for ages and ages and – just before you drove straight off the coast of Britain – you stumbled upon a really good secret.

Because that’s exactly what it is.

This town on the North side of Cornwall is charming and quaint and English in all the best of ways. If you stumble upon it as my mom and I did last summer, you’ll wish you’d booked yourself in for more than two nights.

We stayed at the gorgeous B&B Headland House in nearby Carbis Bay (their website doesn’t seem to be working at the moment, but you can find them here). Two bays down from St Ives, we loved having chosen not to stay in St Ives itself. (Traffic was crazy and the roads are tiny. I got a driving fine while there for driving in a bus lane… which remains a mystery to me seeing as the roads were definitely not big enough to fit our car AND a bus.)

After the horrors of driving around St Ives, our B&B felt perfectly indulgent – we arrived late and found a huge slice of chocolate cake waiting for us because we’d missed teatime. They had an honor bar on the ground floor and a huge ceiling fan in the room. And the morning breakfast was enough to make you not want to eat for the rest of the day.

We would peter down the hill from the house to the local train which runs between the two towns. We’d curve through a mini forest and cling to a cliff. 15 minutes later, we were in St Ives, where we’d wander down through tiny alleyways until we come to the seafront.

It reminded us why seafronts are what people flock to in the first place. To watch the tides and breathe in the sea air. To wander the little alleyways and take in the views. To run screaming from the aggressive seagulls when they steal your ice cream cones (ok, that only happened once and the woman in question marched right back to the vendor she’d just come from to ask for another one). To look at its ancient church and wonder how many generations had come looking for the same thing we did.

Cornwall is a wonderful escape away to the coast. No wonder so many people come here.

We went in early July, before the major August crowds hit and it was perfect. St Ives is about a 6 hour drive from London assuming you don’t hit any traffic. Keep in mind that the further west you drive, the smaller the road options get. But don’t fret, its worth the drive.