Cornwall Slow Travel

As much an entertaining armchair read as a practical guide, this is a personal, slow, tour of Cornwall.Experience crashing waves and glorious beaches, wild moorland and wooded valleys, and the quiet and hitherto unsung byways of the Cornish landscape. Take time to savour the outstanding cuisine and seek out the lively arts scene. Interviews with locals - from blacksmiths and bakers to artists and fishermen - paint an intimate picture of the people of the region. Kirsty Fergusson enriches your stay with her local knowledge on where to stay, eat and drink and what to see and do. Tips on where to paddle with the tide up wooded creeks to village pubs, on where to discover lost varieties of Cornish apples and on riding a bike from standing stones to swimming holes, provide an intimate picture of this popular tourist destination.

Many of Cornwall's wildest or most curious corners as well as the exciting new range of places to eat, sleep or drink are often overlooked in the headlong race to get to the beach or the well-known tourist spots. Taking the Slow approach, using local knowledge and the author's endless curiosity, this guide offers both visitors and seasoned residents alike the chance to discover what lies behind the immediate and obvious attractions of Britain's favourite holiday destination.

Many of Cornwall's wildest or most curious corners as well as the exciting new range of places to eat, sleep or drink are often overlooked in the headlong race to get to the beach or the well-known tourist spots. Taking the slow approach, using local knowledge and the author's endless curiosity, this guide offers both visitors and seasoned residents alike the chance to discover what lies behind the immediate and obvious attractions of Britain's favourite holiday destination.

Folkestone resident and globe-trotting travel writer Simon Richmond turns the spotlight on his home county in this brand new title, part of Bradt's award-winning series of Slow travel guides to UK regions. Walkers, cyclists, families, food and art lovers, and wildlife enthusiasts are all catered for, with coverage of a wide range of attractions, as well as all the practical information you could need to plan and enjoy time spent in this delightful corner of England. The diversity of Kent is striking, from Canterbury Cathedral, part of a Unesco-listed World Heritage Site, to Dungeness, Kent's southernmost point, Britain's only officially recognised desert and home to artist and film-maker Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage. The village of Pluckley was once named England's most haunted by the Guinness World Records, while St Leonard's Church in Hythe has the largest and best-preserved collection of ancient human skulls and bones in Britain.This in-depth guide covers all the most popular places as well as many of the lesser-known ones, dividing the county into five easy-to-follow chapters. Explore Dover and spend time at its iconic White Cliffs, saunter through Vita Sackville-West's gorgeous gardens at the National Trust's Sissinghurst estate, visit the grave of Pocahontas in Gravesend, and contemplate the delightful and thought-provoking public art of the revitalised seaside town of Folkestone. History has been made in Kent, at Hever Castle, where Anne Boleyn spent her childhood and which was later restored by William Waldorf Astor, and at Chartwell, the family home and garden of Sir Winston Churchill. Kent's food and drink offering is increasingly celebrated, with a growing reputation for high quality restaurants and boutique wineries, not to mention the world's oldest brewer and largest collection of fruit trees at Faversham.From flora and fauna to castles, watersports, beaches and wildlife, discover Kent with Bradt's unique Slow guide.

Thoroughly updated and significantly expanded in this new fourth edition, Bradt’s Cornwall & The Isles of Scilly (Slow Travel) is the most well-established guide to a perennially popular British county. Offering in-depth exploration of both frequently visited and less-well-known destinations that will interest locals as much as newcomers, it is written in a friendly, engaging style and includes up-to-date listings of the best (and sometimes least obvious) places to eat, drink and sleep, appealing to all budgets. Long popular with discerning travellers and foodies, the boom in staycations and coverage in TV dramas such as Poldark mean that Cornwall enjoys ever-increasing acclaim as a healthy, wholesome destination. Few places offer such geographical diversity: rugged, storm-lashed north coast and wide, sandy beaches favoured by surfers lie barely a few miles from the south’s sheltered creeks, coves and exotic gardens. Wild moorland is dotted with Neolithic standing stones and mining heritage. And, just 28 miles from Land’s End, the Isles of Scilly offer an exhilarating blend of tropical exoticism and wild isolation. Cornwall thus possesses an enduring appeal as a year-round destination for visitors of all ages and interests. But such popularity makes it all too easy to overlook the diverse character of the county and its less obvious destinations – which is why taking a Slow approach is so rewarding. As local residents have discovered, treasures of all kinds are revealed when you ditch the car and start investigating what lies immediately beyond the doorstep. Explore the ‘Cornish Alps’, the lonely Rame peninsula, secret beaches or stone circles lost amid remote-feeling uplands. Glimpse the future of sustainable technologies at the Eden Project. Listen to world-class musicians playing in tiny rural churches. Celebrate the comeback of the chough, Cornwall’s emblematic bird. Wander around Bodmin Moor’s Kerdroya, a classical labyrinth built of Cornish stone hedging. Discover where oysters are still harvested in the traditional way and where the best Cornish ice creams, pasties and cider are made. The ideal companion for a visit, Bradt’s Cornwall & The Isles of Scilly (Slow Travel) is an invitation to imbibe the region’s rich, diverse delights.

"The Cornish call it the singing of the shores. When fishermen needed to find their way home and land was obscured by a blanket of fog or intense darkness, they listened intently to the sound of the waves breaking upon shore. The shores sang to them, much like the setting sun beckons the wild geese to fly home before it disappears for the day."Somewhere in Cornwall, the bolthole at the western extremity of Britain, a couple of Indian ex-pats take to the coastal paths to explore a land as old as the hills. When author Arundhati Basu crosses the River Tamar with her husband in the summer of 2012, little does she know that they are stepping into a different world order. Vanity and pretensions are useless commodities in the old country where everything comes to a screeching halt for a cream tea or a well-earned box of fish & chips. The couple, newly married and relocated to the Midlands, find the contours of their relationship changing with every tramping holiday in Cornwall, as they get immersed in the relaxed rhythm of the countryside. Overarching their experience is the salt-laden air from the sea, washing over the senses and reminding us that we are at the mercy of nature. In a world wholly caught up in the bog of social isolation, a narrative of slow travels through the West Country is a reminder that somewhere on the horizon, a place like Cornwall awaits. Told in a 'loiterly' fashion, along with illustrations by the author in charcoal, the book is an anti-travel guide, a cure for the anaesthetic impact of a city existence, far from the lightning-fast pace of modernity.

Guide to discovering not just the obvious and most popular sites, but also for getting off the beaten track and understanding what makes this gorgeous part of the country tick

Lonely Planet Devon & Cornwall is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Discover botanical curiosities at Eden Project, roam the bleak heaths of Dartmoor, and add lashings of cream to your jam and scones; all with your trusted travel companion.