Every summer somebody rings us and asks the same thing: "We've got a week — is Cornwall doable?" It is. We've done this exact loop in Pacha twice and in Hacienda once, and it's about as good as a week in a camper gets in this country. Here's the route, warts and all, with a pin on the map for every stop.
One thing before you set off from Essex: don't try to do the whole run down in one go with a 9am start. The M25–A303 crawl past Stonehenge will eat your soul. Leave stupidly early or leave after lunch, and treat day one as a driving day. The van's happiest cruising at 60-ish anyway.
Night 1–2: Dartmoor
Come off the A38 at Ashburton and within twenty minutes you're on the open moor. It doesn't ease you in — one minute it's hedges, the next it's granite and sky. We usually base ourselves near Widecombe-in-the-Moor and walk up to Haytor the first evening, when the coach crowds have gone home.
The ponies will find you. They always do. Feeding them is illegal and they know it, which doesn't stop them staring at your breakfast through the sliding door.
Moor roads are single-track with passing places and the odd cattle grid, and sheep have right of way whether you agree or not. The T5 is small enough that none of this is stressful — it's the people in seven-metre motorhomes you'll see doing twelve-point turns.
Night 3: Kynance Cove, The Lizard
Skip Land's End. Honestly. It's a car park with a gift shop attached. The Lizard peninsula, half an hour east of it, is what people think Land's End will be — and Kynance Cove is the best beach on it. Serpentine rock, white sand, water the colour of something you'd order in a cocktail bar.
Check the tide times before you walk down — at high water the beach mostly disappears, and the café's famous flapjack only softens the blow so much. There are a couple of farm campsites up on the headland; nothing fancy, but you wake up to the Atlantic.
Night 4: St Ives
The drive from the Lizard to St Ives is under an hour and takes you past Marazion, where St Michael's Mount is worth a leg-stretch if the causeway's open. St Ives itself is not a place to bring a vehicle into — park up at the top of town and walk down, or you'll be reversing out of an alley while a seagull laughs at you.
The light here is strange and lovely — painters have been banging on about it for a century and they're not wrong. Get a pasty, sit on the harbour wall, guard it from the gulls with your life.
Night 5: Padstow and Tintagel
Up the north coast next. Padstow is good for lunch and a mooch around the harbour, though in August it's heaving and you may prefer Rock or Port Isaac. Then push on to Tintagel for the afternoon — the castle sits on a headland that barely bothers being attached to the mainland, and the coast path either side is the most dramatic walking of the whole week.
Whether Arthur was ever actually here is a question best left to the gift shops, which have very much made their minds up.
Night 6–7: Saunton Sands
Finish in North Devon. Saunton is three miles of flat golden sand backed by dunes, and it's a proper campervan beach — you can park within sight of the water, dig out the stove, and watch surfers fall off things until the sun goes down. Croyde and Woolacombe are ten minutes further on if you want somewhere livelier in the evening.
From here it's about five hours home, which is why we always give Saunton two nights. Leaving Devon on the last morning with sand still in the van is the whole point of the exercise.
The practical bit
- Total driving: roughly 700 miles for the full loop from Essex and back. Sounds a lot; spread over a week it's nothing.
- Book ahead for July and August — the good coastal sites go months out. May, June and September are kinder on both bookings and traffic.
- Tides matter at Kynance and for the St Michael's Mount causeway. Two minutes on a tide-times app saves a wasted walk.
- Fuel and food: fill up before Dartmoor and before the Lizard; both are thin on petrol stations and thick on farm shops, which is the right way round.
All three of our campers have done this route and it suits them down to the ground — small enough for the lanes, comfy enough for a week. If you fancy it, check dates and prices here and we'll have the van packed with the kettle ready.