Escorted Coach Tours and Holidays in Cornwall
Cornwall rewards people who are not driving. The lanes are narrow, the car parks at Heligan and St Ives fill by mid-morning in season, and the best of the county sits at the end of a long day on the A30. Our tours take that away: private coach travel, an experienced driver throughout, and one hotel for the week so you unpack once.
We travel here mainly for two things — the gardens, which grow plants that would die in a Yorkshire February, and the art, which has drawn painters and potters to the far west for well over a century. There is also a short cruise along the south coast to the Isles of Scilly.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Cornwall Tours
The coach tours are five days, giving four nights in a single hotel and three full days of visits. The Isles of Scilly cruise from Southampton runs to six days. We keep tours this length deliberately: Cornwall is a long way from most of the country, and a five-day holiday means the travelling days are properly rewarded. Departure dates and current prices are shown on each tour page.
On several of our Cornish departures a set number of single rooms is available with no supplement, and once those are taken a supplement applies. The number varies by tour — the gardens holiday and the St Ives holidays have each carried a good allocation in the past. Because it depends entirely on the departure and on how early you book, please ask us and we will tell you what is left.
Late February to May is the classic season. Camellias and magnolias come first, often flowering while the rest of Britain is still bare, then the big rhododendrons and bluebells through April and into May. Heligan's productive gardens and Trebah's ravine planting hold up well into summer, and the Eden Project biomes are worthwhile in any month. Ask us which weeks a particular departure falls in.
More than on a town-based tour. Cornish gardens are frequently built into valleys — Trebah in particular runs steeply downhill towards the water — and St Ives is a place of narrow lanes and slopes. Paths are generally good but rarely flat, and there is usually the option to see less of a garden and sit somewhere with a view. Tell us about any mobility concerns before booking and we will be straight with you about a given itinerary.
It depends on the tour. Our Cornwall Gardens holiday includes all suggested excursions. On other departures the position varies, and National Trust and Tate members may find some admissions already covered by their membership — worth bringing your card. Each tour page lists exactly what is included in the price, and if anything is unclear, ask us before you book rather than after.
Yes. Any of our Cornish itineraries can be run as a private group for a club, U3A branch, church group or a set of friends, and prices are worked out on the size of the party. We can also adjust the visits — swapping a gallery for another garden, for example, or building the week around a particular collection. Tell us roughly how many people and when, and we will put a costing together.
Cornish gardens and the Atlantic climate
The peninsula rarely suffers a hard frost, and the sheltered south-coast valleys behave almost like a different country. Tree ferns, echiums, camellias and enormous rhododendrons all thrive here, which is why so many of Britain's great plant collectors sent their seed to Cornwall first.
Our Cornwall Gardens tour is based at the Best Western Fowey Valley at Lostwithiel for four nights and includes all suggested excursions, with guided visits and insights from the people who look after the gardens. The itinerary takes in the Eden Project, built in a worked-out china clay pit; the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which disappeared under bramble after its gardeners left for the Great War and were only reclaimed from 1990; Trebah, which falls down a wooded ravine to the Helford river; Pencarrow, still a family home with its Victorian conifer collection; and Trewidden, known for its dell of tree ferns.
St Ives, Newlyn and the Cornish galleries
Artists came west for the light — clear, reflected off water on three sides — and for cheap fish cellars to work in. They stayed. St Ives became one of the most significant places in twentieth-century British art, and much of it is still visitable within a few streets.
Two of our tours concentrate on this. Both visit Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth Museum & Sculpture Garden, where her studio and the garden she planted around her carvings are much as she left them in 1975. Our art-focused tour adds Penlee House at Penzance, home of the Newlyn School paintings of fishing life, the artist-run Penwith Gallery, and Trewidden. Our St Ives-based holiday takes in the Leach Pottery, founded by Bernard Leach in 1920 and central to studio ceramics ever since, along with the Eden Project, Padstow and Lanhydrock.
What a Cornwall coach holiday involves
Our Cornish tours run five days, with four nights in one hotel — Lostwithiel for the gardens tour, Newquay or St Ives for the others. Travel is by private coach with an experienced driver throughout, so nobody in the party is reversing into a passing place or hunting for parking in Penzance.
Days are built around two or three visits rather than a long list. Cornwall is longer than it looks on a map, and we would rather you had time to walk down through Trebah properly than tick off another garden. Evening meals and breakfast are included on our coach tours.
Several departures carry a number of single rooms at no supplement, which suits solo travellers, and cancellation protection is included. What is covered on any given departure is listed on that tour's own page.
Harbours, beaches and the Isles of Scilly
The two coasts are quite different. The north is Atlantic — Newquay's long surf beaches, Padstow sheltered behind the Doom Bar in the Camel estuary, cliffs that take the weather full on. The south is softer, with wooded creeks running inland at Fowey and the Helford.
Twenty-eight miles beyond Land's End lie the Isles of Scilly, low granite islands with white sand and a climate mild enough for daffodils to be picked at Christmas. Our Bank Holiday cruise with Fred Olsen sails England's south coast and calls at the islands over six days, with return transfers to Southampton, an inside cabin as standard and full board on board. Shore excursions on that cruise are arranged separately rather than included in the fare.
