The question from a friend:
re: honeymoon suggestions. we’re looking at 4 nights away mid-week, late Autumn in Devon and Cornwall (perhaps Dorset, too). open to suggestions on location.
Well, here are our suggestions, starting with a place where one of our co-founders took his honeymoon. Note: over the past year and a half, we’ve spent most of our time travelling around the South West so the recommendations come from personal knowledge. There are dozens of other suggestions but we’ve avoided these owing to potential noise (eg Brixham on the English Riviera) or because the locations were too dependent on the weather. Every place on the list is stunning and Romantic in the old fashioned sense of the word.
1. Burgh Island – a tidal island in the South Devon AONB (basically, landscape as beautiful as a National Park) accessible by sea tractor when water’s high and by foot across a very nice beach when low. There’s a very famous hotel on the island (setting for Agatha Christie novels, bolt hole for the very famous, price tag included) and a great pub. Bigbury-on-Sea beach runs into the spectacular Bantham Beach. Endless walking east, west and inland. Salcombe close by.
2. Padstow/Rock – we’re talking about the Camel Estuary basically (eg Rock Beach and Harbour and Hawkers Cove Beach). Miles of blond sand on either bank and walks along the Atlantic coast. Padstow’s compact, has a wide range of high quality restaurants and pubs. Can’t really go wrong here.
3. St Mawes – bottom right hand corner of Cornwall across the water from Falmouth. Magnificent place. Walking, boat trips, restaurants, pubs. The area’s quite wooded, too, so plenty of Autumnal blaze.
4. St Ives Bay – probably St Ives itself at the southern end of the bay which positions itself as one of the world’s most beautiful. There’s a vast arc of sand for walking or horse riding. St Ives itself abounds with cosy pubs. Masses to do in the area as well if the weather misbehaves, eg Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden.
5. Sennen Cove – tricky one, this. In good weather, it’s beautiful and romantic and among the most exceptional locations we’ve seen within the UK. It has the pub and restaurant and walks you’d be looking for and Land’s End is close by but it is small and when the clouds are out, the magic disappears.
6. Fowey – built into the side of a hill overlooking a gorgeous estuary, it competes with any location in the South West for beauty, local walks, boat trips, boozers and restaurants. Eden Project up the road btw.
7. Salcombe – Salcombe for food, pubs, the cosy fire. The Salcombe/Kinsbridge Estuary for walks, boat trips and amazing beauty. Well-heeled. Plenty to do as well including a dramatic National Trust garden called Overbecks.
8. Dartmouth – busier and larger than Salcombe but with the same draw. Exceptional beauty, exceptional range of places to eat and drink. Very well-heeled. One of the best around for people watching. You could spend four days without shifting from the town but if you headed south, there’s an awesome stretch of coast from Blackpool Sands via Slapton Sands to Start Point.
9. Beer– this one’s a bit like Sennen above. It’s unqiue and romantic with a vibe of its own but it’s small and if the weather turns …
10. Others – there are plenty of other options. Porthleven, Looe, Lynmouth and Lynton, Mortehoe all meet the criteria but you might also want to head inland to Dartmoor or Exmoor. The wooded valleys around the edge of the moors are special in Autumn but, again, if you’re pre-booking by weeks and can’t estimate the weather then you could get stuck in the mist. Dartmoor, for example, has some seriously luxurious hotels (Gidleigh Park and Bovey Castle) around Chagford and the place is a dream. There’s the Tamar Valley as well which is a heavily wooded area above Plymouth that’s ablaze at this time of year.
Last, try Dorset as well. We’d head for Lyme Regis, West Bay or Corfe Castle. Lyme Regis is a peach of a place. Plenty of beaches and coastal walking, restaurants and pubs. West Bay is smaller but equally as beautiful with the coastal walking here being among the best in the South West. Corfe Castle is compact and a great base from which to enjoy the Isle of Purbeck which has exceptional walking and coastline.
Update: March 2010
We’re currently adding many new ‘Top 10’ recommendations for places in which to honeymoon across the UK. We’ll update here as we go along but here’s an example of the format we’ll follow for Cornwall:
Top 10 Honeymoon Locations in Cornwall
Top 10 Honeymoon Locations in Devon
Top 10 Honeymoon Locations in the South West
Top 10 Honeymoon Locations in Dorset
Lists for Devon, Dorset, The South West region etc to come.
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