Cornwall’s Seven Bays: A Beach-by-Beach Aerial Guide

Trevone has two beaches. The sandy one is Trevone Beach proper: Porthmissen on old maps and Porth Musyn in 1355, though nobody knows what the second half means. Round the small headland to the west is Rocky Beach, which maps and the council call Newtrain Bay. It has the rock pools and the big tidal swimming pool cut into the rock platform; both are at their best around low water, and the pool is only for calm seas.

On the headland north of the sand, Round Hole is a collapsed sea cave more than 24 metres deep, still joined to the bay by the cave beneath it. In July 2021 a man and a woman climbed down into it and could not get back up; he scrambled out after more than an hour to raise the alarm, and she left through the sea cave and swam out to a lifeguard boat. See it from the coast path and keep well back from the edge.

In November 2022 the coast path here gave up the skeleton of a man of 30 to 50, probably from the late 1700s, his teeth worn in a way that suggests gripping rope. Isotopes suggest he grew up around Somerset or Gloucestershire, and he was most likely a sailor washed ashore and buried where he was found. In 2025 he was reburied in Padstow cemetery, in a grave kept for anyone else this coast gives back.

From the air: Trevone changes with the tide more than any of its neighbours. The reef that shows dark through the water at high tide is bare rock at low water, when Rocky Beach is more pool than beach. The three photographs above span one spring and summer.

Surf: Trevone likes a west swell, a south-easterly wind and low to mid tide. It is the nearest surf beach to Padstow and picks up more swell than Harlyn. At lower tides waves form off the rocks at both ends, and there is a strong rip off the rocks on the right as you face the sea. It is small, so it gets busy quickly when it works, and it suits surfers with some experience better than a first lesson.

Harlyn is the one that always works. It faces north to north-east, so Trevose Head takes the weather from the west and the bay is usable at every state of tide. At low water it is every bit as big as Constantine, a huge sweep of sand with rock pools at both ends, and the car park, toilets, café and surf school are all right behind it. At high water the sea comes close to the back of the beach, so set up with the tide in mind; a northerly wind makes it messy.

From the air: From above, the sheltering effect is obvious: Harlyn is the bay that goes glassy and turquoise on a summer high tide when the west-facing beaches are still white with surf, which is why the surf schools live here.

Surf: A south-westerly wind is offshore here, so surfers come to Harlyn when Constantine is blown out. Low tide tends to be faster with more close-outs; it is better from mid tide up. Small days are ideal for lessons, and this is where most people around here learned.

In 1864 men digging a pond at Harlyn found two crescent-shaped gold collars, or lunulae, hammered around 2200–1950 BC, with a bronze axe. Then in 1900 an Iron Age cemetery turned up behind the beach: about 130 slate-lined graves holding men, women and children, little parcels of flint, charcoal and felspar (the makings of a fire) laid by the heads, and brooches with cousins in Spain and Portugal.

In April 1872 a gale drove the Sunderland barque Viking, carrying coal from Cardiff, into the bay. Padstow’s lifeboat was hauled overland on its carriage by farm horses and launched into the surf here. It saved seven people, among them the master’s wife, his young son and a baby. The coxswain and second coxswain both won silver medals. Above the bay, the Grade II listed Cataclews Fish Cellars carry a motto on the lintel: Lucri dulcis odor, profit smells sweet. Remember it when you read about Mother Ivey’s.

Mother Ivey’s sits on the eastern side of Trevose Head, facing away from the open western surf beaches. The curved sandy beach lies beneath the fields with the lifeboat station at the far end, and because there is no public parking it stays quiet even in August. Approach on the coast path from Harlyn, or from the National Trust car park at Trevose Head.

Padstow’s lifeboat moved here in 1967 because silting at Hawker’s Cove had made the old site unusable. The present building opened in 2006 for the Spirit of Padstow. It is a working station, so check visitor arrangements before making a special trip.

Into the 1800s this was Polventon, from the Cornish Poll Fenten, pool of a spring; “Mother Ivey’s Bay” appears in print later that century. The name comes from a legend: a wealthy Harlyn pilchard family, left with a cargo they could not sell to Italy, ploughed the fish into the field above the bay rather than give it to starving villagers. Mother Ivey, a local wise woman, cursed the ground: if ever its soil was broken, death would follow. The story goes that the eldest son was thrown from his horse and killed crossing it, and the field is said to lie unploughed today. The white modernist house on the cliff above is Polventon House, built in 1936 for the Stein family; Rick Stein spent his childhood summers there.

Surf: On an ordinary day there is none, and sheltered from westerly winds it is usually the calmest of the seven in settled conditions. On a big swell it flips: sets wrapping round the headland stand up on the steep beach and dump as a heavy shore break that local bodyboarders love. It is not one for beginners, and there are never lifeguards here.

From the air: The slipway runs straight out from the station into deep water, and the contrast between the sheltered bay and the Atlantic beyond the head is clearest from above. Carry on round Trevose on the coast path to the lighthouse, first lit in 1847. Its fog signal was a 36-foot trumpet designed by Lord Rayleigh, in use from 1913 to 1963, and the light flashed red from 1912 until the last keepers left in 1995. From there the path drops towards Booby’s.

Booby’s is the smaller bay immediately north of Constantine. At high water the rocks of the point divide the two and most of Booby’s sand disappears; at low tide the sand between them is uncovered and they run together as one beach. The rock pools are full of life and this is where we come to hunt for cowries. As the tide rises, leave by the coast path rather than the shore. There are no steps or ramps down, only rocks or a steep, uneven path, so it is not a beach for anyone with limited mobility. Nobody knows for certain where the name comes from; it is usually linked to the booby, a tropical cousin of the gannets that dive offshore here in rough weather.

Constantine Island, the small tidal island at the point between the two bays, is a burial ground. In 2007 a walker looking for flint found a tooth in the eroding turf, and an emergency dig uncovered a man buried crouched in a stone cist between about 1380 and 1100 BC, facing west to the sea. Just above the beach is Tom Parsons’ Hut, a tiny stone cottage that was home in 1841 to the farmer Thomas Parsons, whom local legend makes a smuggler; it is now a National Trust holiday let.

Surf: Booby’s is one of the stand-out breaks on the north coast. The right-hander off the reef at the northern end, on a clean groundswell with an easterly wind at low to mid tide, is as good as anything between Newquay and Padstow, and on its day it is epic. The reef itself is heavy and shallow, with rocks and strong currents, so it belongs to surfers who know it.

From the air: The second photograph shows why the two bays count as one beach at low water. Storms sometimes strip enough sand away to reveal metal wreckage, usually, though not certainly, identified as the Carl, a German sailing ship impounded at Cardiff in 1914 and wrecked here on 7 October 1917 while under tow to the breakers. The storms of early 2014 stripped more than a metre of sand and showed her ribs, an anchor and one largely intact steel mast for a short while. She can still reappear after winter storms, and may be completely buried when you visit.

Constantine is the exposed one: a long west-facing beach backed by dunes, with the golf course behind, and, with Booby’s, the most consistent surf of the seven. It is the place for a long walk at low tide, when the sand opens out towards Booby’s. Margaret Thatcher spent summer holidays here as Prime Minister.

From the air: On a calm high tide the whole reef shows through the water as a dark band, and from above you can see how the sand sits in two halves either side of the stream. In winter light the bay reads as one long curve all the way to Treyarnon.

Surf: Easterly winds are offshore and west or south-west swells arrive without interruption. Beach-break peaks shift with the sandbanks, there is a left-hand reef at the southern end and the Booby’s reef to the north, and different parts work at different tides. The rips are real, notably around the rocks towards Booby’s and on bigger days; learners should pick a small day and go with a local surf school.

Inland, St Constantine’s chapel and holy well sit among the dunes of the golf course. The well, a place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, was lost under the sand until it was rediscovered in the 1910s, then excavated, buried again and later restored. Keep to the signed public paths if you go looking. The links around it were laid out by Harry Colt in 1925, and the chapel’s font, carved with the twelve apostles in the early 1400s from Catacleuse stone quarried on Trevose Head, now stands in St Merryn church.

Treyarnon’s sandy beach sits between rocky headlands, with the tidal pool, part natural and part built, on the northern rock ledge, reachable around low tide. It is a family afternoon of a beach: paddling, the pool, an ice cream from the hut on the cliff, then tea at the hostel café above the sand, with the walk north to Constantine if legs allow. Leave the pool alone when waves are washing over the rocks.

From the air: Treyarnon is the easiest of the seven to read from above, a neat rectangle of sand between two dark arms of rock. The photographs show it in June, in April and at the height of the school holidays.

Surf: Treyarnon gets less swell than Constantine, so it is often the friendlier option and the one for beginners, though it gets crowded. A left-hand reef works at low water, and it is also one of the better high-tide surfs on this coast, the middle of the beach still breaking as the tide fills in when the exposed beaches have gone fat. A persistent rip runs along the southern side; ask the lifeguards where to go in.

The hostel overlooking the beach, Tregonnan House, was built in 1930 as a family’s summer home and taken by the Treasury in lieu of death duties after the war. It was the first National Land Fund property handed to the YHA, singled out by the Chancellor, Hugh Dalton, in his April 1947 Budget speech, and opened that Whitsun with the garage as the men’s dormitory. The ice-cream shack on the cliff was added in 2014.

South of the bay the coast path passes Trethias Island, cut off from the mainland by a deep gully that the sea floods quickly, with three Iron Age promontory forts on the headlands beyond. Further on is Fox Cove, where the tanker Hemsley I, 52 years old and bound for the breakers, ran onto the rocks in fog on 12 May 1969 and was cut up where she lay. Stay on the path: the cliffs here have had rockfalls and rope rescues in recent years.

At low tide Porthcothan is far bigger than it first appears: the narrow inlet opens into a wide stretch of sand with rock pools and smaller coves at its edges, and on a calm day the clear shallows make it the best of the seven for swimming and snorkelling. It is also the quietest of the big beaches, with less surf and more paddleboards. At high water the cliffs enclose a far smaller bay and the routes round the rocks vanish, so watch the incoming tide if you explore the side coves. People have been cut off here.

The two rock stacks on the south side of the beach were a single arch, Jan Leverton’s Island, until the storms of early January 2014 brought the middle down. The playwright Nick Darke grew up here, and his last film, The Wrecking Season, follows him combing the storm wrack along this beach.

From the air: The stream that winds across the sand at low tide is the best guide to how far out the water goes. In early May the inlet points almost straight at the setting sun.

Surf: The low-tide beach break is usually less powerful than its neighbours, so small days suit lessons and bodyboarding; at high tide the cliffs block the swell. Rips still form around the rocks.

For a walk, the Porthcothan to Treyarnon circular is 3.7 miles (6 km), past Fox Cove and the forts above Trethias. This was a smuggling coast: in 1765 a Padstow man, William Rawlings, complained to the Earl of Dartmouth that his servants had met sixty horses carrying tea up from one of these beaches.