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

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

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

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

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

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

Take a surf lesson or hire a board on Fistral Beach

Watch a surf contest from the North Fistral complex when one is on

Walk out to the headland and look for the Cribbar breaking on a big swell

Watch the surfers from the beach at sunset with fish and chips

Fistral faces west into the Atlantic, which is why it is one of the most consistent surf breaks in Britain; the Newquay Surf Life Saving Club and the Newquay Boardriders are based here, and it hosts international competitions. Westerly and north-westerly groundswells make powerful waves for intermediate and advanced surfers, and when the swell is really big the Cribbar reef at the north end starts to break.

Fistral Beach: Newquay's Atlantic Surf Break

Walk the dressing floors and the dry at Geevor

Watch the Levant beam engine run under steam

Look out from the cliff over the sea that Levant's tunnels ran beneath

Geevor worked between 1911 and 1990 and produced about 50,000 tons of black tin; it is now a museum kept as a working mine, with the dressing floors, the changing house and a guided tour into the 18th-century Wheal Mexico workings. Next door at Levant the beam engine of 1840 still runs on steam, at the head of a mine whose tunnels ran up to 2.5 km out under the Atlantic. Both stand in the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site.