Disclaimer

This blog contains family life, holiday enthusiasm, mild meteorological betrayal, and the sort of overconfident packing decisions that make perfect sense until footwear meets Cornish seawater.

The Easter holidays are now behind us and, like all good things in Britain, they ended just as you were getting used to them. It was lovely while it lasted: sunshine in places, ice creams at morally questionable times of day, and that rare feeling that perhaps emails, NHS pressures and laundry had all been permanently abolished.

Sadly, no. We are back. Reality, ever punctual when nobody wants it, has resumed service.

Easter Monday saw us heading down to Cornwall, because apparently sitting still at home was never really on the cards.

On the way down we stopped at the Eden Project, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. For anyone who has somehow avoided it, the Eden Project is what happens when someone looks at an exhausted clay pit and thinks, “this could use a rainforest.”

It began as a regeneration project and is now an educational charity and environmental attraction built around reconnecting people with nature, sustainability, education and the general idea that wrecking the planet may not be our best long-term strategy.

It is also quietly one of the bigger Cornish success stories, with more than 25 million visitors since opening and a sizeable economic impact for Cornwall and the South West. As for the future, Eden is not remotely content with just being giant biomes in Cornwall: it is pushing ahead with Eden Project Morecambe, with site work due to begin in October 2026, a public community garden opening in spring 2027, and the full site planned for 2028, while Eden Project Scotland remains part of its wider regeneration ambitions.

In other words, it is still doing what it has always done: think very small by only trying to save the world a bit.

As usual, Eden had plenty going on for kids, which is useful because children have this curious habit of expecting “activities” rather than being content with admiring structural eco-symbolism.

From there we made our way to Hayle, just outside St Ives, where my wife had booked us a static caravan for the week at a Haven park. It was, to be fair, an excellent base. Most of the places we wanted to visit were not that far away and Cornwall, while large enough to generate plenty of scenic driving, is still manageable if you keep moving and accept that every road is narrower than your confidence level.

The park also did what holiday parks do best: provide evening entertainment for children at a volume generally measurable from space. Most evenings we went along and they had a full-blown stage programme running with characters, music, dancing and the kind of energy levels only children and paid entertainers can sustain after 6pm.

I casually observed that this was very similar to a different holiday park in Cornwall we had visited some years ago, at which point my wife informed me, with the accuracy of someone who has retained useful information, that the other one had been Parkdean, not Haven, and that the characters were different. She was, of course, correct.

Briefly put: Haven’s current children’s line-up centres on its Seaside Squad — Annie, George, Jaz and Rory — with a distinctly coastal, clean-the-seaside, wholesome mascot energy, whereas Parkdean’s entertainment revolves around the Starland Krew — Sparky, Sid, Lizzie, Sparkle and Naarky — and leans more heavily into broader kids’ entertainment alongside licensed character appearances.

Different mascots, same overall objective: to ensure no child goes to bed without at least one final burst of chaos.

Tuesday took us across to the south coast for St Michael’s Mount. The last time we were in Cornwall we had been denied this outing by weather, wind and the general Cornish refusal to make things too easy. This time, though, the weather behaved just enough for us to get the first boat over, which felt efficient and slightly smug.

We stayed for a couple of hours and explored the castle, which at that point was the main attraction as the gardens were still closed, with the official reopening not until 1 May 2026. The gardens, it turns out, are beautiful but fragile, which is more than can be said for most tourists.

After a few hours we took the boat back to the mainland and noticed that low tide had started to reveal the walkway. St Michael’s Mount has that splendidly theatrical habit, rather like Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, of deciding it may or may not be attached to the mainland depending on the tide.

Our son, quite reasonably, wanted to go back over using the walkway, because getting there once by boat was apparently not enough. So we waited. Eventually we judged it passable, which was technically true, although not in the way my Adidas Spezials had hoped.

My wife’s Doc Martens remained completely dry, because naturally they did. Her boots behaved like a military-grade logistics solution. Meanwhile, my shoes and our son’s Sambas absorbed enough seawater to become temporary marine exhibits.

Later that afternoon we headed back to the park and then down to the beach. It was windy and colder than the calendar suggested it ought to be, but neoprene swimming suits did their job and the sea, while not warm in any conventional sense, was at least enthusiastically Cornish.

Wednesday was set aside for Glendurgan Garden, a National Trust favourite near Falmouth and one we have visited before. We arrived early enough to discover that being early risers is only glamorous until you realise you are earlier than the opening times. Still, it gave us enough time for the usual pre-adventure admin. Glendurgan is one of those places that feels almost specifically designed for children and adults who like pretending they are merely accompanying the children.

It winds through three valleys down to Durgan beach on the Helford, has a historic maze that has been confusing visitors for more than 200 years, and manages the rare trick of feeling both carefully cultivated and mildly wild at the same time. It is, in short, excellent.

After lunch we made our way to the Minack Theatre, just south of Penzance. If you are in Cornwall and do not at least consider going to the Minack, you are making a strategic error.

The place is absurdly impressive: an open-air theatre perched above Porthcurno Bay, created through the vision and labour of Rowena Cade, who essentially looked at a cliff and decided it should become one of the most spectacular performance spaces in the country.

Even if you are not there for a show, it feels theatrical simply by existing. If you are there for a performance, I suspect the line between drama and scenery becomes fairly academic. The weather that day was glorious — the warmest of the year so far, I think — and consequently both our son and I caught the sun slightly, because British people have a long and proud tradition of being surprised by sunlight.

Thursday was a little greyer, but Cornwall in overcast weather still manages to look like it knows exactly what it is doing. We headed to Helston, where my wife had found a bike hire place called Lakeside Cycles, handily placed for access to Penrose.

The owner was excellent: friendly, knowledgeable, and refreshingly willing to tell us about the free car park across the road rather than quietly watching us donate to RingGo. That alone deserves recognition. Once the bikes were sorted, he pointed us towards the ideal route through Penrose and out towards Porthleven.

Penrose itself is National Trust land with woodland, parkland and trails around Loe Pool, and it makes for exactly the sort of outing that sounds gentle until you remember you are, in fact, cycling with a child and therefore operating inside a shifting ecosystem of enthusiasm, snack requirements and sudden opinions about gradients.

The ride to Porthleven was around three miles one way or so and featured a few hills that were just steep enough to remind us that cycling and pushing bicycles are, in family settings, basically the same activity.

Still, it was a brilliant outing. Once in Porthleven we had the only fish and chips of the trip, plus Cornish pasties, because there are some regional obligations one should not dodge.

Friday morning was homeward-bound, though not before one last stop at Trelissick near Truro. The weather had turned rainy, which felt like Cornwall trying to reassert tradition before we left.

Even so, Trelissick was worth it. The estate sits on its own peninsula with broad views over the Fal estuary, and even in drizzle it manages to look effortlessly composed, as though wet weather is simply part of the design brief.

We wandered through the gardens and house, had lunch, and then set off back towards Somerset, where Devon traffic was waiting to offer us a final, authentic South West travel experience.

We got home at around 4.30pm, which was just enough time for my wife to do the truly heroic post-holiday task of restocking the fridge and cupboards, while our son prepared for his first “summer” cricket practice with the Taunton Vale development group. “Summer,” of course, remains one of those optimistic British terms, like “light showers” or “moderate traffic.”

And so the week ended as all family holidays eventually do: not with a dramatic finale, but with unpacking, laundry, fresh milk in the fridge, and a slightly stunned return to ordinary life.

For my wife, that meant straight back to NHS normality over the weekend, with the postgraduate doctor strike still very much ongoing. I was back yesterday myself, but that particular descent into reality deserves its own entry.

Cornwall, then: Eden’s eco-optimism, tidal causeways, maze-running, cliff-top theatres, bicycles, beaches, chips, pasties, wet shoes, dry boots and the annual British delusion that sunshine means we are somehow prepared. It was excellent. Briefly.

And now, like Easter itself, it has passed — leaving behind memories, photographs, and a suspicious amount of sand.