A trip to St Ives in Cornwall

July 9, 2019

Taking advantage of a sunny summers day in England we took a trip to St Ives on the North coast of Cornwall.

We decided to go here before the English school holidays start as from past experience everywhere seems to get extra busy then.

View from hill in St Ives

We were staying near Exeter so driving here took around and hour and a half with all the slow moving caravans on the road that day. Unusually for us we did some pre planning and opted to use a nearby park and ride at the village of St Erth, it’s not far from St Ives with the train trip only taking about 10-minutes.

It’s a scenic journey but, unfortunately the train windows were too dirty to get any good pictures. It worked out cheaper and easier than driving into St Ives, then having the hassle of searching for parking.

As with most touristy seaside towns the price of food in the cafes and restaurants can be high, so we opted to have lunch in the Wetherspoons pub as we know you can always get a cheap meal there.

The centre of town was packed with people and the odd car driving through the narrow streets to drop off their luggage at their holiday homes.

Like many of the towns we’ve visited around the coast of Cornwall, St Ives has a wide variety of small independent shops with many selling locally made products.

Shops selling artwork are dotted all around, and the variety of works on display was awesome the kids loved looking at all the different styles picking out their favourite pieces in each shop and gaining inspiration to create their own at the same time.

After our stroll through town we took a walk up the hill towards St Ives Head to get a scenic view of the town below, by this time the kids were desperate to have a play on the beach, so we took them down and let them run around till the tide started coming in.

On the train trip back we stopped off at Carbis Bay to give the kids another play at the beach, it looked like more of a surf beach than the ones at St Ives. Walking from the train station you go down a steep hill (this was the easy bit) the climb back up the hill exhausted us.

It is a good little town to visit and we’d go again if we had enough time, as the beaches a perfect for the kids but, as there are so many towns like this in Cornwall we’ll probably find another one around the corner.

The cost of a day trip here including parking, train and food was less than $80 for the four of us, which is cheap for the UK

Some useful website for visiting here are www.stives-cornwall.co.uk and Visit Cornwall