One of the small joys of owning a lodge at Whitsand Bay Fort is the geography. Sit a holiday park in deepest west Cornwall and the closest "day out" is forty miles down a single-track road. Sit one on the Rame Peninsula, with the Tamar to the east and the A38 a short hop inland, and the whole of south-east Cornwall plus a chunk of Devon falls inside an hour's drive. Half the year you don't even need the car. Six favourites, in roughly the order our owners discover them.
01Mount Edgcumbe Country Park
The closest day out and one of the most underrated. Mount Edgcumbe is Britain's first country park, 865 acres of formal gardens, deer-grazed parkland and coastal woodland descending all the way to the Sound. The house itself charges admission, but the grounds are free, all day, every day.
Walk the Italian and French gardens, head down to the orangery for coffee, then follow the coastal footpath through the deer park to the folly at Maker Heights. On clear days the view across to Plymouth Hoe is the kind of thing locals stop noticing and visitors photograph for an hour.
02Cawsand and Kingsand
The twin villages of Cawsand and Kingsand sit cheek by jowl on the Sound, separated by a stream that, until 1844, also marked the Devon-Cornwall border. The houses lean into each other, painted in pinks and whites and dusty blues, with the lanes barely wide enough for a small car.
Park up at the top, walk down, find a bench on Cawsand Square, and order something from The Devonport Inn or The Cross Keys. Bring swimming things in summer. The sheltered beach is one of the best places to get in the water on the south Cornish coast.
03Looe and Polperro
If a guest has never been to Cornwall before, this is the day out to start with. Looe is the bigger of the two, a working fishing port split into East and West Looe by an estuary and joined by a Victorian bridge. The seafood is right off the boat. Sarah's Pasty Shop on the harbour does what it says on the sign.
Carry on five miles down the coast to Polperro and the scale drops by half. No cars allowed in the lower village. Just slate-roofed cottages tumbling down to a perfect harbour, painted houses, fishermen mending nets, and the kind of view that ends up on a thousand jigsaws.
04The Eden Project
The big-ticket Cornish day out. Sir Tim Smit's biome project, built into a former clay pit near St Austell, opened in 2001 and quietly transformed how the rest of the country thinks about Cornwall. Two enormous interconnected greenhouses, one Mediterranean, one tropical, surrounded by themed outdoor gardens and one of the better farm-to-fork canteens in the South West.
Allow a full day. Pre-book online for cheaper tickets and skip-the-queue entry. If you visit between November and February, the ice rink and lights are worth the drive on their own.
05Fowey
Fowey is where the upmarket south-coast Cornwall starts. Whitewashed sailing town, deep natural harbour, narrow streets climbing up from the water, and a literary heritage running through it all (Daphne du Maurier wrote much of her best work here). The independent shops are real shops, not gift shops, and the food scene is quietly excellent.
Catch the foot ferry across to Polruan for a different angle on the harbour, or walk the Hall Walk loop. End the day with fish from Sam's on the Quay and an ice cream from the window of Pinky Murphy's.
06Plymouth
Sometimes the change of scene is the point. Plymouth is a working city with serious maritime history, a thoroughly redeveloped waterfront, a proper aquarium, the Box (one of the best regional museums in the country), and a Barbican area full of independent restaurants and the original gin distillery.
Take the Torpoint Ferry rather than driving round via the Tamar Bridge. The crossing is part of the day. Eight minutes, three vessels in rotation, 24 hours, and you stay in the car. By the time you've finished your coffee you're on the Devonport side. More on the Plymouth journey here if you're considering ownership from that side of the water.
One last bonus: just stay put
The thing none of the day-trip lists tell you is that the best day out from Whitsand Bay Fort is often the one where you don't go anywhere. Walk straight from the lodge onto the South West Coast Path. Drop down to the four-mile sweep of Whitsand Bay below. Find an empty stretch (you almost always can, even in August), eat the lunch you packed, walk back up. Lunch at The Fort Inn or in your own lodge. Read on the deck.
The point of owning a lodge here is having all six of the day trips above on your doorstep. The bonus is having a place you'd happily not leave.
Quick reference: drive times from the park gate
- Mount Edgcumbe: 10 minutes
- Cawsand and Kingsand: 10 minutes
- Plymouth (via Torpoint Ferry): 20 minutes
- Looe: 35 minutes
- Polperro: 40 minutes
- The Eden Project: 50 minutes
- Fowey: 55 minutes
Want to see the location for yourself? Browse our current lodges for sale, read more about lodge ownership in Cornwall, or book a no obligation park tour.