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

Bodmin Moor

Plymouth

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

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

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

Eat a Devon cream tea the Devon way, with clotted cream spread first and the jam on top, in Tavistock

Browse Tavistock's Pannier Market, the market hall of 1860

Walk the canal and the mining remains at Morwellham on the Tamar

Tavistock grew rich on tin and copper — its stannary town and mining landscape are part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining World Heritage Site — and the Pannier Market of 1860 still fills the hall in the middle of town. A Devon cream tea is served the Devon way here, with the clotted cream spread first and the jam on top.

Tavistock: The Pannier Market and the Devon Cream Tea

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

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

See the Black Friars Distillery building of 1431 on Southside Street

Try the 57% navy strength, the traditional strength the Royal Navy demanded

Find the Black Friars name embossed on the bottles, from the friary the building is said to have been

Walk the cobbled streets of the Barbican around it and find the Elizabethan House

Plymouth Gin has been distilled on one site on the Barbican since 1793, in a building put up in 1431 that is said to have been a Dominican friary — which is why it has always been the Black Friars Distillery, a name embossed on the bottles. The Navy took its gin from here, and the distillery still makes a navy strength at 57% ABV, the traditional proof the Royal Navy demanded.

Black Friars: Gin Distilled on the Same Spot Since 1793

Find Men-an-Tol on the moor and look through the circular opening in the stone at dusk

Walk out to Cape Cornwall, thought to be the westernmost point in Cornwall until the Ordnance Survey came

Photograph the Milky Way from the cliffs above Porthcurno

Be at Land's End before dawn and watch the stars set over the Atlantic

In December 2021 West Penwith, the far western end of Cornwall, was designated an International Dark Sky Park — the seventh in the UK and the second in Cornwall after Bodmin Moor — covering the coast from the edge of St Ives round by St Just, Sennen and Land's End to Mousehole, and inland to Sancreed and New Mill. Penwith holds a great concentration of prehistoric and early British remains: the Merry Maidens, Lanyon Quoit, Chûn Quoit, the Iron Age village at Chysauster, and Men-an-Tol, 'the stone of the hole', with its circular opening through the granite. Cape Cornwall, four miles north of Land's End, was believed to be the westernmost point in Cornwall until the first Ordnance Survey in the early 19th century.

West Penwith: A Dark Sky Park at the End of Cornwall

Visit Thomas Hardy's Cottage at Higher Bockhampton, the thatched house where he was born in 1840

Visit Max Gate in Dorchester, the house Hardy designed for himself and lived in until his death in 1928

See the Hardy collection at the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester

Tour Clouds Hill, the small cottage near Bovington that T. E. Lawrence bought in 1925 and moved into in 1935, weeks before his death

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in the thatched cottage at Higher Bockhampton, and he designed Max Gate in Dorchester for himself and lived there until he died in 1928; the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery keeps his collection. Near Bovington, T. E. Lawrence rented the small cottage of Clouds Hill from 1923, bought it in 1925 as a retreat, and moved in on leaving the RAF in 1935, weeks before his death.