You definitely should visit one or two of the beautiful coastal towns as you
make your way west and further in to Cornwall.
Where the River Looe reaches the sea, there is the town
of Looe on one side of it, and on the
other side, a completely separate town, West Looe.
This is very similar to another pair of towns bisected
by a river just a bit further west - Fowey
(pictured at the top of the page)
and Polruan. But whereas there's a bridge across the
Looe, it is a long 17 mile loop around between Fowey and
Polruan (unless you take a car ferry that goes across the
river on a regular basis).
Both pairs of towns are nice, but our preference would
be Fowey. There's a nice castle at the mouth of the
Fowey river, too - St Catherine's Castle.
There are other small towns scattered along the coast,
and then you come to the much larger town of
Falmouth, with another castle - Pendennis - and the National
Maritime Museum.
Continue in a south westerly direction, and before you
know it, you'll be going down the narrow road to
Lizard Point and its lighthouse.
Lizard Point's claim to fame is that it is the southern
most point on Britain's mainland. If you like going
to places like that, then you'd definitely want to go to
Lizard Point.
Now in a northwesterly direction, if the weather is
blustery and - even better - stormy, why not look in on
Porthleven, considered by many to be the most
storm-battered location in the British Isles. The
waves can break 50 ft up the cliffs on a really rough day,
so careful where you park your car!
Loop around
the bay to Penzance, possibly stopping at
St Michael's Mount, just a couple of
miles out of Penzance. Depending on the tide, you
can either walk along a causeway to the island, or take a
little short boat ride.
Continuing in a southwesterly direction once more, we'd
recommend a detour to the lovely little village of
Mousehole (pronounced "Mozzil"), and then,
perhaps make another detour to Porthcurno, where some of
Britain's original undersea cables came ashore.
There's a well done museum that tells the story of the
cables and their role in peace and war.
Lastly for this section, you'll come to Land's
End, one of the two 'bookends' of
Britain's famous roadtrip between Land's End and John
O'Groats (click link for our article on this).
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