Sapphire

We will be spending a week in the Lake District in mid-September 2019 followed by a shorter stay in Betws-y-Coed to sample Snowdonia NP and a short stay in Bocastle to visit Tintagel Castle. We plan to fly into Manchester and fly out of Heathrow. It will be our fourth time visiting the Lake District but our first time in Wales and Cornwall. We added northern Cornwall because we are traveling with friends who have always wanted to see Tintagel Castle. I am looking for input on our tentative itinerary and any suggestions you may have for places you have enjoyed seeing, eating, etc. Our friends are in their mid-70s and enjoy gentle walks, gardens, pubs, etc. I love landscape photography and have my favorite places in the Lake District (like Blea Tarn) and welcome suggestions for similar places.

Arrive in Manchester and pick up rental car

Grasmere in the Lake District - 7 nights
Use Grasmere as our home base for touring the Lake District.

Betws-y-Coed in Wales - 3 nights
Two and a half days seeing a bit of Snowdonia National Park and visiting Conwy, Caernafon, Llandudno, etc.

[One long day of driving from Wales to Cornwall]

Bocastle in Cornwall - 3 nights
- first day visit Tintagel Castle and perhaps St. Michael's Mount and Porthcurno?
- second day sample Dartmoor NP. Go to Haytor Crags and have lunch in Chagford? Could spend some time in Bude before heading back to Bocastle.

WIndsor and LHR airport hotel - 1 night
Drive to Windsor and have an early dinner there on our last day in the UK.
Spend the night at an airport hotel before catching a flight back to the USA the next morning.

We are locked into our three nights in Wales but can adjust our time in Cornwall depending on availability. Should we add another night in Cornwall to make it easier for our friends to see St. Michael's Mount as well as Tintagel Castle? (It looks like it would take about 90 minutes to drive from one to the other.) We initially planned to focus on the northeastern part of Cornwall but have some flexibility. Are there other places in Cornwall that you would highly recommend seeing? We will be there during the last week of September.

Thank you!

Sapphire

Our friends are also interested in seeing a few gardens. Are there any in the Lake District that you might especially recommend?

nanabee

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/fea...potters-garden

We visited Beatrix Potter's (Peter Rabbit) garden years ago. Although not large or grand it is very sweet and the head gardener tries to keep it true to her time.

Sapphire

Thank you for your recommendation! My friend used to teach kindergarten (she taught our youngest son), and I think she would love to visit Beatrix Potter's home and garden. Good to know that the head gardener tries to keep it authentic.

texasbookworm

Whatever mapping app you use to give you times for driving in Cornwall, multiply by at least 2--no kidding.

Tintagel Castle is worth half day; St. Michael's Mount as a day trip from Bocastle is a whole day trip--it might be 4-5 hours just driving there and back. I'd not suggest you try to do them both in a day. In fact, I'd suggest you spend a night closer to SMM and see some of the Penwith and/or Godrevy coastlines.

We LOVED Cornwall, but the driving was quite stressful. Although actually (and pertinent to your plans), the worst/narrowest roads we encountered on our trip last June were not in Cornwall, but were actually in Dartmoor between Exeter and Tavistock--both car mirrors brushed the greenery (hiding solid stone walls) at the same time. So just be fore-warned--any description of the narrow, windy, white-knuckle-inducing, gorgeous, breathtaking drives in Cornwall (and Dartmoor) are NOT exaggerating! So it was worth it for us and we highly recommend Cornwall, but you need to go understanding the extra time needed; and if you find your particular routes are not that narrow nor do you get behind a farm vehicle nor does the weather factor in, then, yay, you will have more time at your site.

If I had to choose between time in Cornwall and time in Dartmoor, Cornwall wins.

Sapphire

Thank you for your helpful input! Perhaps it would be wiser to savor the wild beauty of the Lake District and Snowdonia NP and then focus on Cornwall. I did find a recommended route in Dartmoor via this forum, but the Cornwall coast offers something completely different than we will have seen in the UK. And I hear you about the narrow roads and long drive times.

On the topic of driving, I am very grateful that my husband is willing to drive places like Mount Evans in Colorado and Hard Knott Pass in the Lake District, but that kind of driving is tiring. On our last trip to the UK (for a conference in August 2017 followed by a few days in the Lake District) our most difficult driving - apart from double round abouts - was being diverted onto local neighborhood roads in London because of construction. The car was unscathed but I was holding my breath. [Note: I had taken photos of our rental car when we picked it up. But the previous renter of our vehicle had scraped up an area under the front bumper and I had not photographed that. Fortunately, that had been reported before we picked up the car. But it still took awhile to sort it out.).

Spending a night (or two) closer to St Michael's Mount would make it easier to sample more of Cornwall while greatly reducing the driving for DH. Your experience with the actual drive times is very helpful. Thank you for taking time to respond!

PalenQ

Penzance is a nice base for St Mike's Mount as is Mousehole ('muzzle' I think)

We enjoyed Clovelly not far from tintagel - kind of an artificial village however as completely tourist oriented yet a one of a kind:

https://www.google.com/search?q=clov...h=535&dpr=1.75

a village that literally spills down to the sea - there is a life boat station at the bottom. A nice few hour stop.

texasbookworm

Here's my TR if you want to look; the first 5 days are in London, so you could skip down to the Day 6 when we went to Exeter or even Day 7 when we drove from Exeter into Cornwall. We also went to Wales for a lovely, lovely time!!

A Celebration—Capital Cities, Cornwall Coasts, Cymru Castles—and More!

Sapphire

I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) your trip report when I was preparing our tentative itinerary a week ago. Thank you for sharing it, then and now! Our circumstances are somewhat similar in that my husband is retiring at the end of June (after 43 years), and we will have been married 46 years when we take this trip.

Sapphire

Thank you. I will take a look at these. I remember reading the words "impossibly lovely" in someone's description of Clovelly.

annhig

Hi Sapphire, great news that you are planning on coming to Cornwall. I'm sure you will love it.

This is what we've got so far:

<<Bocastle in Cornwall - 3 nights
- first day visit Tintagel Castle and perhaps St. Michael's Mount and Porthcurno?
- second day sample Dartmoor NP. Go to Haytor Crags and have lunch in Chagford? Could spend some time in Bude before heading back to Bocastle.>>

<<Penzance is a nice base for St Mike's Mount as is Mousehole ('muzzle' I think)

We enjoyed Clovelly not far from tintagel - kind of an artificial village however as completely tourist oriented yet a one of a kind>

As others have intimated, [Hi Texasbookworm!] it is easy to underestimate driving times. So I've come up with a slightly different plan bearing in mind that you said your time in Cornwall was flexible.

Day 1. Leave Betsy -Coed, and drive to Bristol - about 4 hours. This would enable you to take a route through Shropshire and Herefordshire rather than taking the motorway so you could stop off in, say, Ludlow [lovely little town] and Hereford to see the cathedral and the Mappa Mundi. you could stay in Bristol itself [a great city, needs a lot more than one night but still worth a stop if that's all you've got]

Day 2 - From Bristol drive to Tintagel via Dunster [on the North devon coast] across Exmoor, to Clovelly, and Boscastle. Dunster is great place to stop en route - very pretty village and a NT Castle - and if you are a Poirot fan you may recognise the top of the village as a setting for one of the TV adaptations, though in the book it's supposed to be Cornwall. Then onto Clovelly, which as Pal says is indeed one of a kind, and Boscastle. Honestly I wouldn't bother with Bude; a much nicer place to see is Hartland Quay with its fantastic rock formations, or, a little further south along the coast, Morwenstow, where you can walk out to the cliffs and see the hut where the Rev. Hawker used to watch for ships that his parishioners would be trying to wreck so that he could go down to the beach and try to save those who were cast up upon the shore. you probably won't have time for all of this, which is a shame.

Day 3 - This is your day for taking a bit of a rest from driving and going to Tintagel, Port isaac and Polzeath or Padstow. There is lovely walking all along the coastline here.

Day 4 - It's about an hour and a half to Marazion [the village where St Michael's Mount is situated] and the Mount will take you at least half a day so for the rest of the day I suggest a short drive into Penzance and a visit to the Penlee Gallery and Museum which is set in beautiful gardens and has a great cafe. if you've got the energy have a wonder round the streets and make sure you go down Chapel Street to see the Egyptian House and the pubs.

Day 5 - Head for Windsor via Dartmoor, Chagford, etc.

If you could squeeze another night, or decide to do the whole drive from Wales to Boscastle in one day, I would suggest spending 2 nights in Boscastle, and 2 in Penzance or St Ives, which is marginally closer to Windsor but honestly it makes little difference. If you choose Penzance, on the second night you might go to eat in Mousehole [pronounced Mousel, with the stress on the first syllable] and I would suggest making a reservation at 2, Fore Street which is one of the best restaurants in the area that I know. [the Old Coastguard is pretty good too but 2, Fore Street is better].

Hope this helps - please feel free to ask me any questions that may spring to mind.

texasbookworm

Listen to annhig (HI Ann!)--she knows her Cornwall--and surrounding area and sites.
Whatever you do will likely be terrific and also frustrating in the "there's not enough time!" way. Enjoy!

annhig

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Texas. As you say there's never enough time - but that applies to everywhere worth visiting I think.

Sapphire

Thank you very much for the detailed response! I was in South Africa when you posted it and just got home a few days ago. Looking forward to giving this more thought and asking more questions. At this point, I think we will try to drive from Snowdonia to Bocastle in one day, but take the route you suggested and stop in Glastonbury for a late lunch and to see the Abbey. (That's something our friends would like to do if we can fit it in.)

We will spend two nights in Bocastle, visit Tintagel our first day in Cornwall and take your advice to see St. Michael's Mount the next day. I still need to explore the final part of our itinerary as we were too busy in South Africa to research this, but we may well add another night in the UK. And we will look at Penzance or St. Ives for a place to stay after touring St. Michael's Mount. Thank you again for taking the time to give such thorough input!