Visit Jamaica Inn at Bolventor on Bodmin Moor, the 18th-century coaching inn that inspired Daphne du Maurier's novel of 1936, and its smugglers' museum

Walk up Brown Willy, at 420 metres the highest point in Cornwall, or its neighbour Rough Tor

Jamaica Inn stands alone on the Bodmin Moor road at Bolventor, an 18th-century coaching inn on the route the contraband travelled inland from the coast, and Daphne du Maurier used it for the novel after being lost on the moor in fog. The moor around it holds Dozmary Pool, where one story says Excalibur went back into the water.

Jamaica Inn and Bodmin Moor: The Smugglers' Road

Padstow and Tintagel

Plymouth

Down the south coast from Plymouth to Land's End and back up the north coast to Bude: Polperro and the Eden Project, Pendennis and the Lizard, the mines and the Minack in Penwith, then Fistral and Tintagel.

Cornwall: Plymouth to Land's End and the North Coast

Bodmin Moor

Ten nights round Cornwall in a loop from Plymouth: the Eden Project's rainforest, Land's End and the Minack Theatre, the castle on Tintagel's headland, and a last night on Bodmin Moor.

Round Cornwall from Plymouth

Photograph the night sky above the Hurlers, three Bronze Age stone circles by Minions

Climb Stowe's Hill to the Cheesewring, the stack of weathered granite slabs

Look into the Cheesewring Quarry, which supplied the granite for Tower Bridge

Climb Brown Willy (420m), the highest point on Bodmin Moor

Bodmin Moor's east side, around the old mining village of Minions, holds the Hurlers, three Bronze Age stone circles, and on Stowe's Hill above them the Cheesewring, a natural stack of weathered granite slabs beside the quarry that supplied the granite for Tower Bridge. The moor has dark-sky status, and Brown Willy, the highest point in Cornwall, rises to the north-west.

Bodmin Moor Dark Sky Landscape

Cross the 2019 footbridge to the island half of the castle

Walk the mainland courtyards and the curtain wall

Go down to Merlin's Cave under the headland at low tide

Walk the coast path to Barras Nose for the view back

Richard, Earl of Cornwall, built a castle on the Tintagel headland in the 13th century, on a site that was probably a seasonal seat of the kings of Dumnonia. Geoffrey of Monmouth had written a century earlier that Arthur was conceived here, and the legend has clung to the place ever since. A footbridge opened in 2019 rejoins the two halves of the castle across the gap that the sea cut between them.

Tintagel: Arthur's Headland and the Bridge Over the Gap

Walk through the Rainforest Biome at the Eden Project, one of the largest indoor rainforests in the world, in the former china clay pit at Bodelva

Cross the canopy walkway high above the rainforest floor

Walk the Mediterranean Biome with its olives, vines and citrus

Visit The Core, the education centre whose spiral cladding echoes the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower

The Eden Project was built in a worked-out china clay pit at Bodelva, and its Rainforest Biome is one of the largest indoor rainforests in the world, with a canopy walkway high above the floor. The Mediterranean Biome grows olives, vines and citrus, and The Core, the education centre, is clad in a spiral that echoes the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower.

The Eden Project: The Rainforest in a Clay Pit

Walk down into Polperro past the Shell House to the harbour

Visit the Polperro Heritage Museum of Smuggling and Fishing

Polperro is a fishing village packed into a cleft with a harbour that can be shut against the sea by a gate, and smuggling reached its height here in the late 18th century, financed by a local merchant, Zephaniah Job, known as the Smugglers' Banker. The Heritage Museum on the quay tells that story, and Looe, four miles east, is a working fishing port either side of a seven-arched bridge.

Polperro and Looe: The Smuggling Harbours

Cycle the Camel Trail from Padstow to Wadebridge

Take the ferry across the estuary to Rock

Walk out along the estuary to Stepper Point

Padstow sits inside the Camel estuary behind the Doom Bar, a working harbour turned food town. The Camel Trail runs 18 miles from the quay along the old railway line to Wadebridge and on to Bodmin and Wenfordbridge, almost level and traffic-free apart from a short stretch through Wadebridge, and the ferry crosses the estuary to Rock.

Padstow and the Camel Trail

Swim in the tidal sea pool below Summerleaze

Walk or cycle the Bude Canal towpath towards Helebridge

Walk out on the breakwater and up to the Storm Tower

Bude has a tidal sea pool cut into the rocks below Summerleaze beach, filled and refreshed by the tide, and the Bude Canal, dug to carry sea sand inland as fertiliser, running up the valley behind. The breakwater rebuilt in 1839 shelters the beach, on the rock where the hermit Bede is said to have lived.

Bude: The Sea Pool and the Canal Behind the Beach

Visit Stonehenge, the Neolithic stone circle whose bluestones were brought from the Preseli Hills in Wales, and its visitor centre

Walk the Avenue and the Cursus in the wider landscape

See the Neolithic houses and the collection at the visitor centre

Walk out to the barrow cemetery on King Barrow Ridge

Stonehenge was built and rebuilt over 1,500 years from about 3000 BC, and most of its smaller bluestones were brought from the Preseli hills in west Wales, some 240km away, by means still argued over. The sarsens came from much nearer, and the whole monument sits in a landscape of barrows, avenues and the Cursus.

Stonehenge: The Bluestones from Wales

Stargaze in Exmoor National Park, Europe's first International Dark Sky Reserve, designated in 2011

Climb Dunkery Beacon (519m), the highest point on Exmoor and in Somerset

Look for the semi-wild Exmoor ponies on the open moor

In 2011 Exmoor became Europe's first International Dark Sky Reserve. Dunkery Beacon, 519m, is the highest point on Exmoor and in Somerset, with views over the moor and the Bristol Channel, Bronze Age cairns on the hill and a summit cairn marking its gift to the National Trust. Semi-wild Exmoor ponies graze the open moor.