Cornwall and Devon by Car: Lanes, Tides and Summer Traffic

How far it really is

The south west peninsula is long. Exeter is roughly halfway to Penzance from London in driving time, and the section beyond Bodmin is slower again. Treating Cornwall as a day trip from anywhere east of Bristol does not work, and even Devon is a stretch. The A30 and A38 carry almost everything, and both are single carriageway for long stretches with limited alternatives. Saturday is holiday changeover day between late June and early September, and the queues on those mornings are legendary and entirely predictable.

The lanes beyond the main roads

Once you leave the trunk roads, Devon and Cornwall have some of the narrowest lanes in England, sunk between earth banks topped with hedge, often with grass down the middle and passing places you cannot see until you are in them. Reversing is a normal part of driving here. The banks are stone underneath and unforgiving. Local drivers move quickly because they know every bend; visitors should not try to match them. Journey times on lanes are roughly double what distance suggests.

Tides, causeways and timed access

St Michael's Mount is reached across a granite causeway at low tide and by boat at high tide, so the visit has to be planned around a tide table rather than a diary. Boats do not run in poor conditions, and the island has its own opening arrangements which should be confirmed before travelling. The same thinking applies to several beaches and coastal paths where access closes with the tide. Building a day around a tide table is unfamiliar to most inland visitors and is the single most common cause of a wasted afternoon here.

• Check tide times before fixing the day for St Michael's Mount
• Coastal car parks fill by mid-morning through the summer
• Some coves have access that closes entirely at high water
• Ferry crossings at Dartmouth and the Fal run to their own timetables

Gardens, moors and the great set pieces

Cornwall's mild, wet climate supports gardens that grow nothing like their equivalents further east. Heligan and Trebah are exotic and steeply valleyed, Caerhays is famous for magnolias in early spring, and the Eden Project sits in a former clay pit. The Minack Theatre is carved into a cliff above a turquoise cove. In Devon, Dartmoor gives open moorland with tors, clapper bridges and free-roaming ponies and cattle across unfenced roads. Exmoor to the north is greener and drops to the sea at Lynton and Lynmouth, connected by a water-powered cliff railway.

Villages, harbours and the crowded ones

St Ives, Padstow, Port Isaac and Clovelly are all beautiful and all effectively closed to visiting cars in season. Clovelly is privately owned and entirely traffic-free, reached on foot down a cobbled street. Port Isaac has lanes that a car simply cannot use. Being set down at the top of a village and collected later is the only comfortable way to see these places in summer. Fowey, Dartmouth and Salcombe are similar, with the added complication of ferry queues.

Seasons and when to go

May and June give long daylight, gardens at their best and manageable traffic. September is warm, the sea is at its warmest and the crowds thin sharply once schools return. July and August are busy everywhere and the roads are the limiting factor. Winter is genuinely good on the coast, with big weather and empty paths, though many attractions close or reduce hours from November. Check individual opening before planning a winter itinerary around any one place.

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