Five million people come to Cornwall each year as visitors, and more ink has been spilt by writers attempting to capture the county than over any other part of Britain.
Kirsty Fergusson, author of Slow Travel Cornwall: the Bradt Guide
It doesn’t seem to matter whether you are a seasoned resident returning home after venturing ‘Up Country’ or a happy holidaymaker heading west towards sun and surf – that moment when you cross the Tamar operates some kind of magical, mythical transformation.
Perhaps this should come as no surprise, for once on Cornish soil, we’re in the land of saints and tinners, whose relics inhabit the folded landscape in the form of weatherworn crosses and holy wells, skeletal chimneys and engine houses; while older communities yet have left their trace in wild moorland littered with standing stones and dark underground retreats or fogous as they are known here.
But despite this common mythology, I’ve come to love the place for its astonishing diversity and multiple identities, and while I completely understand why almost every Kernowphile I’ve ever met feels some deep attachment to a particular part of Cornwall, my own Slow journeying has made it impossible for me to pin my deep affection to one place, one shoreline, one moorland village or town.
I thought I had found it all in Penwith – that remote and wild peninsula stuffed with artists, eccentrics, fishermen and farmers – until I fell in love with the Fal estuary and its lively cultural and horticultural scene and quiet green tidal creeks, but that was before I discovered the exhilarating thrill of the ragged, windswept north coast, the rushing River Fowey on its journey to the sea or the blossom-filled lanes and soaring viaducts of that forgotten peninsula south of the Lynher…
Don’t ask me where I’ll eventually come to roost amongst such incorrigible plurality – all I know is that the Slow road home starts here.
A world first!
Our Slow Travel Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly is, we believe, the world’s first ‘a-book’ travel guide available to the public. What’s an ‘a-book’? Well, in essence it’s a printed book with a treasure trove of additional content – video, audio and photographic – gathered by the author during her travels that those with Android devices can view or listen to while reading.
See here for full details of the research project behind this, and how to access that content – free of charge – if you have an Android device and your copy of the book.
Bradt on Britain – our Slow Travel approach
Bradt’s coverage of Britain’s regions makes ‘Slow Travel’ its focus. To us, Slow Travel means ditching the tourist ticklists – deciding not to try to see ‘too much’ – and instead taking time to get properly under the skin of a special region. You don’t have to travel at a snail’s pace: you just have to allow yourself to savour the moment, appreciate the local differences that create a sense of place, and celebrate its food, people and traditions.