When we told friends that we planned to visit St Austell in Cornwall for a break they were very quick to point out that it was known as St Awfull (gleefully highlighted by the Daily Mail, which I refuse to link to). That when they’d visited they had managed to book themselves into a tired hotel on a business park might have contributed to this comment.
On arrival at the station and making the short walk into what is, apparently, Cornwall’s largest town, you can see that it is clearly suffering from the same problems found elsewhere with a tired, run-down shopping street and empty units. And walking out of town to our destination we passed four funeral directors within the space of 20 minutes. This clearly is somewhere you come to die.
Charlestown – not awfull
Given all of that then why are we here you might wonder? Well, within half an hour in one direction are The Lost Gardens of Heligan and half an hour in the other The Eden Project both worthy of a visit. And, you don’t have to travel very far out of town to end up in the picturesque village of Charlestown where we were staying.
From St Austell to Charlestown it’s downhill all the way – I am not looking forward to the trek back up to get the train back on Saturday but I’ll worry about that then!
As you reach the bottom of the hill you see the harbour in front of you and it really is a beautiful view.
The harbour, apparently now owned by a film and production company, is tiny and narrow. Around the edge of the water is a walkway with stands selling food and drink and a dovecote of all things. I imagine that it is heaving in the summer months (the harbour not the dovecote!) but it is just slightly out of season at the moment so was quiet.
At the far end there is a tiny beach and then some attractive rocks to scramble over. Pretty much all of which disappears at high tide.
We spent a couple of hours there waiting for our check-in time to arrive and it was a pleasant place to do so.
