My first glimpse of Cornwall came on the sleeper train from London’s Paddington Station: a blur of green hedges and farmland blushing pink with the burgeoning day. I’d slept for most of the roughly seven-hour journey, opening my eyes to the view with just enough time remaining to gulp down coffee left by the night porter. As we pulled into the station at Truro, Cornwall’s capital and its only city, the spires of the Gothic Revival cathedral glowed in the late September light. In the early morning, Truro’s tidy, brick-walled train platform was quiet, my breath a series of cloudy puffs in the 45-degree air.
A sparsely populated peninsula more than 200 miles west of London, the county of Cornwall is famous for its seaside beauty—and for gifting the world Cornish pasties, the novels of 20th-century writer Daphne du Maurier, and the smoldering BBC television romance Poldark. With a long coastline exposed to the Atlantic’s favorable swells, Cornwall is also known for scenic walking trails and steep cliffs that tumble to every flavor of beach: white sands, golden dunes, rocky coves with caves and tide pools. I’d long wanted to come here for the epic cold-water surf that arrives in the fall, when the summer crowds have left and the locals remain. A chilly immersion is something I’m fond of, familiar to me as a surfer at home in Northern California.
At the station, I met Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana UK, the British arm of the global conservation group. Tagholm lives in Truro, but we were swapping places, as he was on his way to California for an event with marine biologist Sylvia Earle and other environmental luminaries. Before Tagholm boarded his own train, though, he bought me a coffee, handed me a surfboard, and dropped me at Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Beyond the scenery, the peninsula— with a population density less than half of England’s national average—is characterized by villages including Porthtowan and purpose-driven businesses like Otter Surfboards.
Photos by Max Searl
“You can just give the surfboard to anyone; it’ll find its way back to me,” Tagholm said. I assumed this was an exaggeration. But then he told me about the time he left a surfboard on a train platform in Taunton, Somerset, because the conductor wouldn’t let him bring it along. He posted a photo on Instagram; within a day someone picked it up and brought it home for safekeeping. “That’s Cornwall,” Tagholm said with a laugh.
The county’s charm and emphasis on community are inseparable from its role in England’s modern environmental movement. In 1990, local surfers founded Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) to protest the pollution of coastal waters caused by failing infrastructure. Their grassroots campaign captured national attention and drove concrete policy change, which continues to this day; in 2025 alone, the organization removed 160,000 pounds of waste from Britain’s waterways.
Over the past three decades, Cornwall’s blend of surf culture and conservation has continued to shape thought far beyond the county. The region of South West England, which includes Cornwall, has the highest concentration of B Corp–certified businesses in the country outside London and has become a hub for ocean-focused organizations and advocates—including Tagholm, who pushed for Oceana to open a Cornwall office so he could be reminded daily of what he was fighting for. I came here because I wanted to see how the place itself shaped this water culture and advocacy.
Chris Hines, who helped turn Cornwall’s surf culture into a conservation movement, caught his first “proper” wave in Sennen, Cornwall.
Photo by Max Searl
After I bade Tagholm goodbye, I loaded his surfboard into the black Peugeot I’d rented and pointed the car northwest to the village of St. Agnes. At Wheal Kitty, a commercial development in an old tin mine, I found the headquarters and retail shop of Finisterre, the United Kingdom’s answer to Patagonia. Founder Tom Kay, a lean, energetic man, bounded into the room, shook my hand, and informed me that Tagholm was godfather to one of his children.
For the past 23 years, Finisterre has been on the forefront of designing outdoor gear for cold-water surfers around the world. When Kay started the company in 2003, he said, the board shorts and flip-flops he saw from most other surf companies were very clearly “not appropriate” for what he was doing in the Atlantic in the middle of February.
When Kay first moved to St. Agnes, he also became a member of a lifeboat crew for the venerable Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Founded in 1824, the RNLI is a volunteer marine rescue corps that has saved nearly 147,000 lives in the United Kingdom and Ireland and is a formidable presence in Cornwall. This history of place quite literally weaves itself into the clothing.
“In the 18th century, each coastal village in Cornwall had its own knit pattern,” Kay said. “It’s so that if you were ever lost at sea, the people who found you could identify where you were from.” Finisterre makes a collection that benefits the RNLI, with a knit from Polperro, about an hour across the peninsula from St. Agnes. That sweater is a beautiful, tight-knit navy wool with patterns that represent waves, ropes, and ladders.
From left: Finisterre was the first outdoor apparel brand in Europe to earn B Corp Certification when it did so in 2018; In St. Agnes, the Driftwood Spars pub takes its name from beams that were salvaged from shipwrecks along Cornwall’s coast. They were woven into the building’s structure centuries ago.
Photos by Max Searl
“I’ve been in Cornwall more than 20 years, and it’s still the same: boards, wet suits, dogs,” Kay told me, a grin crossing his face. “That’s why I love it.”
Later that afternoon in St. Agnes, as the sun sank low in the sky and the shadows grew long, I walked down from my B&B room above the Driftwood Spars pub to watch youngsters play in the whitewater at Trevaunance Cove. (Boards, wet suits, dogs.) I spotted Kay picking up his young daughter from the surf lifesaving club in front of the RNLI office and waved.
I’d been here less than 12 hours, but already I had a pretty good taste of the small-town life where everyone knows your name.
The first thing I noticed was the remarkable clarity and color of the sea: crisp gradations of aquamarine I associate most with Caribbean climes, not the North Atlantic.
The next morning, I drove four miles from St. Agnes to paddle out at Porthtowan Beach with Tagholm’s surfboard, a wet suit borrowed from Finisterre, and excitement for the scene before me. The first thing I noticed was the remarkable clarity and color of the sea: crisp gradations of aquamarine I associate most with Caribbean climes, not the North Atlantic. But the cliffs that bracketed the seaside village were indisputably Cornwall, all of it bathed in glorious autumn light. On a morning like this, after weeks of rain, it seemed as though the whole town had turned up to enjoy the day at the beach.
Here came the waves, clean and shoulder-high. I tend to be extra cautious when surfing a new spot, but there was friendly energy and plenty of smiles in the lineup. About an hour and a half later, I emerged from the water to meet local surfing legend and environmental advocate Chris Hines, who greeted me enthusiastically on the sand. Hines is the cofounder of SAS and a member of the Order of the British Empire—an honor bestowed upon him for his work campaigning for clean coastal waters.
Cornwall is home to ancient ruins including the early Christian chapel of St. Helen’s Oratory (pictured left), Bronze Age stone circles, and Tintagel Castle, the legendary birthplace of King Arthur.
Photos by Max Searl
These days, despite the accolades and the hair that’s gone white, Hines still possesses the unassuming charm and springy energy of the young surfer he was when he moved here from Devon, England, in the 1970s. The day we met, he sported purple corduroy shorts and a charcoal-gray hoodie from the surf shop up the road. If it’s always sea p.m. in Cornwall, it’s because people like Hines agitated to make it so. When Hines cofounded SAS in 1990, the coast’s pollution had become so severe that “it was like surfing in the toilet.” He and his friends called a town meeting at the church in St. Agnes, where some residents leaned in through the windows to say their piece. Within months, their outrage—and environmental message—was reverberating across England, Wales, and beyond.
SAS became known for its protests outside Parliament and European Commission meetings. “We wore wet suits and gas masks, carried spray-painted surfboards, and hauled around a giant inflatable poop,” Hines said, laughing. “But it wasn’t just a gimmick.” The group also bought shares in water companies, worked with scientists to gather evidence, and learned the engineering behind water treatment. Under pressure, water companies invested in methods such as ultraviolet disinfection. Today, SAS continues its work through data investigations, crowd-sourced citizen science, and an app that lets beachgoers check water quality before entering the ocean.
Over the next few days, I enjoyed the fruits of that continuing work. At the end of 2025, 98 percent of Cornwall’s bathing waters met the minimum standards set by the U.K. government’s Environment Agency. I spent time surfing and swimming with people such as Bella Bunce, who, at age 30, was the first woman to edit the United Kingdom’s longest-running surf magazine, Wavelength, in its 45-year history; the publication is based in the surf town of Newquay, about 30 minutes up the coast from St. Agnes. “Wave-riding in our cold little corner of the globe is special,” Bunce told me one brisk morning as we suited up in the parking lot at Porthtowan.
Bella Bunce documents Cornwall’s waves—and works to protect them—as an ambassador for Surfers Against Sewage, which was formed in St. Agnes in 1990.
Photo by Max Searl
In between waves, we bobbed and chatted in the glassy Atlantic. I couldn’t get enough of that water-level view of the coast: Craggy cliffs overhead shifted their moods depending on the light and shadow. A bit of offshore wind groomed the sets, with peaky waves that peeled right and left. Once the sun emerged, with ocean temps inching toward the mid-60s, it felt practically balmy compared to the chilly Pacific back home. Bunce pointed south to where she lives in an RV in nature. “What I love about this place is the way we share everything: boards, wet suits, a place to stay,” she said.
That everything-is-connected ethos shaped her stewardship of Wavelength, which has published pieces about surfing through war zones, surfing as a political act, and the lack of women board shapers in the United Kingdom and Europe. “You can’t travel the world for stories and ignore the hardships in those places,” Bunce said. “Unless you’re surfing your local break with a wooden board and a recycled-rubber wet suit, surfing has an impact.”
Later that night in Falmouth, a historic seafaring town on the south coast about a 40-minute drive across the peninsula from St. Agnes, I attended a surf film night held by Roma, a beloved independent surf shop. The event took place in a beautiful old arts cinema attached to the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, more commonly known as “the Poly,” which also has a bar and a gift shop. The lineup included Lucuma, a meditative feature about a surf friendship, and Of Waves and Worth, a short film about Bunce’s water photography and the changing representation of women surfers in Cornwall.
From left: The Cornish town of Newquay is highly walkable and unfolds around Bank Street; built as a place for people to gather, St. Agnes’s Miners & Mechanics’ Institute reflects Cornwall’s industrial past, when tin and copper mining shaped the village. Today, its 1893 building houses an all-day café that serves a rotating selection of sandwiches made with local produce.
Photos by Max Searl
At the preshow happy hour, I chatted with people who made art, clothing, magazines, and surfboards. All brought a commitment to environmental responsibility to their work. This sensibility permeates shops, cafés, and galleries around Cornwall. Such a way of life doesn’t just happen, of course. Today, given the global political landscape, it may be harder than ever to deliberately choose to live differently. But here folks are doing just that.
During his final year studying furniture design at the University of Plymouth, James Otter made his first wooden surfboard out of 42 pieces of cedar sourced from Cornwall.
“It changed me,” the surfboard shaper told me at his workshop in Porthtowan a day after we’d surfed together. “I’d been surfing here since I was a teenager, going through boards every two years. Wood can last a lifetime.”
Though Otter Surfboards is known for custom handmade surf craft, what Otter the man loves most is teaching other people to make their own. The studio holds regularly scheduled one- to five-day workshops in building hand planes, surfboards, and bellyboards. Bellyboards, which can be made in a single day, are constructed from thin wooden sheets laminated together, based on traditional Hawaiian paipo boards, which were first introduced to the United Kingdom in the early 1900s; they remain extremely popular among all ages in Cornwall.
In 2020, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of SAS, Otter made a surfboard to present to then Prince Charles when he became the charity’s patron. A lifelong environmentalist, Charles donated oak and a round of wood from his favorite tree, a 200-year-old cedar of Lebanon that had been taken down from his garden years earlier due to fungal disease; Otter inlaid the wood onto the board, which Charles came to Cornwall to sign. It’s now displayed at the SAS headquarters. Not many people can say they made a surfboard for a king.
James Otter shows off a finished wooden surfboard.
Photo by Max Searl
That afternoon, back in town, I had one of the best sandwiches of my life at Institute, the café just beyond the glorious stained-glass panels on the front of the 130-year-old St. Agnes Miners & Mechanics’ Institute (MMI). The Institute Sabich was a tower of crispy eggplant with tamarind mango chutney, cucumber salad, pickled cabbage, and a soft-boiled egg piled high on ciabatta. I ate my sandwich in a postsurf stupor outside on the patio, the sun warming my head and tahini dressing running down my arm.
Institute’s chef, Adam Vasey, returned home to St. Agnes after stints in London and as head chef at Chalet Eden Rock in Austria’s Alps. His work at MMI shows the vibrancy and the versatility of the food scene on the Cornish peninsula writ large—you’ll find everything from a microbrew-focused seafood bar (Verdant, in Falmouth) to a hyperlocal tasting menu at a Michelin-starred restaurant (Ugly Butterfly, in Newquay).
The next morning, I went back to MMI for a coffee during the community open house, which, despite a steady rain, thrummed with music and the chatter of families catching up with each other. It was the energy of a place that anchors village life.
I spent the last two days of my trip in the surf town of Newquay, where I booked a room at Watergate Bay Hotel overlooking the beach. There, I met filmmaker Demi Taylor for a surf session and lunch at the hotel’s lounge bar Living Space as the shoreline filled with surfers, bodyboarders, and bellyboarders of all ages. Everyone seemed ready to play.
From left: Demi Taylor; Cornwall’s Atlantic-facing north coast draws surfers year-round.
Photos by Max Searl
Taylor is the cofounder of the London Surf / Film Festival and one of the filmmakers behind The Big Sea, an award-winning documentary about the toxic effects of neoprene production and its ties to the surf industry. Raised in Cornwall, she returned in 2003 to settle in St. Agnes as an adult. When Taylor drives to the far west of Cornwall, the first view of St. Michael’s Mount, a castle on a rock out at sea, stirs something in her.
“The connection to the ocean never leaves you,” Taylor told me. “There’s something magical about that landscape. It has quite a physical effect.”
The surf that day was bigger than it had been down in Porthtowan, and the current was strong; after we’d caught a few waves together, Taylor and I were separated. I found myself surfing with one of the beach lifeguards. “My break’s almost over!” he exclaimed, checking his watch. We scanned the horizon, looking for a set wave to take us in.
To swim with a sense of purpose, with all sorts of people who are thinking about how to make the world better, was energizing. I admired the vast wildness of the sea, and the potential it held.
The Afar guide to Cornwall
Sandy beaches, dramatic cliffs, fishing villages, coastal hikes, and some of Britain’s best surf: this pocket of England delivers in every direction. Here’s what to know.
When to go
To avoid high season, visit Cornwall in September, as writer Bonnie Tsui did. You’ll get much of the late-summer weather without the summer crowds.
How to get there
Take the scenic route via train from London Paddington to Truro, the Cornish capital, which is about a five-hour journey. If you’d rather get some shut-eye, the Night Riviera train departs London close to midnight and arrives at Truro early in the morning. Several flights a week depart to Cornwall Airport Newquay (NQY) from London Stansted (STN). Once you’ve arrived, rent a car via a short walk from the terminal—and choose small. Roads here are narrow.
Where to stay
The 80-room Watergate Bay Hotel near Newquay sits so close to the beach that guests can watch surfers from their balconies. A full redesign, unveiled in 2021, added seven loft accommodations with surf-in, surf-out access and brought fresh energy to a property that has been welcoming holidaymakers since 1900.
For something with even more character, the inn at Driftwood Spars offers rooms both above one of St. Agnes’s most beloved pubs and in a building across the street, three minutes walking from Trevaunance Cove Beach. Before its life as a hotel, the building also served as a chandlery, tin-mining warehouse, sail loft, and fish cellar.
What to do
With some of the top beaches in the United Kingdom, Cornwall is best experienced from the water. Companies including Escape Surf School (Newquay) offer two-hour lessons for beginners.
At Land’s End, nine miles southwest of the town of Penzance, you can stand at mainland England’s most westerly point, where the Atlantic opens in nearly every direction. Land’s End is also connected to the South West Coast Path, the country’s second-longest National Trail, tracing roughly 300 miles of Cornwall’s coastline (out of 630 path miles total). Follow it on a multiday walk, stopping in the art colony of St. Ives and the county’s surfing capital, Newquay, or stroll short sections near where you’re staying.
Also within reach of the South West Coast Path are two of Cornwall’s best-known companies, Otter Surfboards (Porthtowan) and Finisterre (St. Agnes), where you can shop or take a workshop tour to see how sustainability is incorporated into the surf culture and community. —Katherine LaGrave
