Cornwall Is England’s Most Magical County. Here’s Where to Go.

25.10.2024 - 15:45 / nytimes.com / Arthur

Cornwall, England’s craggy southwestern tip is laden with myth and legend: Mermaids are said to have lured villagers into the sea here and piskies, a mischievous tribe of fairies, to skip across the area’s wind-whipped moors. Its real-life history includes Neolithic standing stones and the 13th-century Tintagel Castle, built on the cliff-top site where King Arthur was thought to have been conceived. No wonder the county has provided creative inspiration for hundreds of years. “Artists have been drawn to Cornwall since the time of [J.M.W.] Turner [in the 1800s] because of the natural light and the outstanding beauty of the landscape,” says Anne Barlow, the director of the Tate St. Ives art gallery.

The remote, rural county, about 250 miles southeast of London, continues to attract creative people, although today they’re more likely to be working for a fashion label or design agency than painting seascapes. Cornwall has one of England’s largest number of B Corps — businesses that meet high social and environmental standards — after London: All this innovation means that many young Cornish people now return to the county after university instead of heading to London or Bristol. Still, the county’s desirability as a vacation destination, which rocketed during the Covid pandemic when international travel restrictions forced Brits to rediscover the bounty in their own backyards, has pushed up property prices in many areas, causing tension with locals, leading Cornwall’s roads and seaside towns to become choked in the summer months.

Come in October and you’ll find a different scene. “The maddening crowds have gone, the sea is the perfect temperature for swimming, the blackberries are out and the landscape is all rust colors,” says Frieda Gormley, a co-founder of the homewares brand House of Hackney. It’s the best time for surfing, too: “You start to get those autumn swells,” says Tom Kay of the outdoor clothing line Finisterre.

Rent a car and you can easily explore Cornwall’s peninsula in a single trip, taking in its wild Atlantic coast, with rocky headlands and wide, white beaches, and more sheltered southern coast, known for its fishing villages, sandy coves and estuaries, as well as the brooding landscape in between. Better still, lace up your hiking boots and hit the South West Coast Path, lined, at this time of year, with gorse and heather. “It’s really cozy to be out in a bracing wind on a cliff top and then go to a tiny pub with a wood-burning stove,” says Barlow. Here, Barlow, Gormley, Kay and the chef Jude Kereama, all of whom live and work in Cornwall, share their favorite places in the county.