St Ives

St Ives offers everything from grand clifftop resorts to intimate harbourside guest houses, and where you stay shapes the kind of trip you have. Downalong's converted fisherman's cottages and boutique guest houses put you inside the town's cobbled core, close enough to walk to every beach and gallery without needing a car. Along Porthminster and toward Carbis Bay, sea-view hotels and spa resorts trade a little proximity for space, pools and quieter surroundings, while still keeping the branch-line station or coast path within easy reach.

The properties below span three brackets. At the top end, Carbis Bay Hotel & Estate and Tregenna Castle Resort offer full-scale resort facilities on private grounds just outside the town centre, while Blue Hayes brings an adults-only boutique intimacy overlooking the bay. In the middle, Pedn Olva, Trevose Harbour House and Boskerris Hotel combine characterful rooms with genuinely sea-facing positions, each within a short walk or drive of the harbour. For a simpler, more affordable base, Primrose House and Cornerways Guest House deliver comfortable rooms and proper Cornish breakfasts in the heart of the old town.

Whichever bracket suits your trip, book well ahead for the summer months: St Ives is a small town with a finite number of rooms, and its best-located properties sell out for July and August weekends many months in advance. Outside peak season, particularly in spring and autumn, rates ease considerably and availability is far more forgiving, making it an excellent time to try one of the town's higher-end resorts at a fraction of the summer price.

St Ives packs a surprising amount into its small footprint, from world-class art to some of Cornwall's best surf.

• Tate St Ives shows modern and contemporary art in a striking building overlooking Porthmeor Beach, with changing exhibitions alongside works by artists who lived and worked locally.
• Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden preserves the sculptor's former home and studio, where her bronze and stone pieces stand among subtropical planting exactly as she left them.
• Porthmeor Beach is Cornwall's most reliable spot for beginner and intermediate surfing, with several surf schools operating from the promenade above the sand.
• St Ives Harbour remains a working fishing harbour as well as the town's social hub, ringed by pubs, ice-cream stalls and the lifeboat station.
• The Island and St Nicholas Chapel is the grassy headland separating the town's beaches, with coastal views back over the rooftops and out to the Godrevy lighthouse.
• Leach Pottery, founded by Bernard Leach in 1920, still fires studio pottery in the tradition that shaped British ceramics, with a shop and small museum open to visitors.
• St Ives Museum covers the town's fishing, mining and shipwreck history in a converted net loft near Porthgwidden, run largely by local volunteers.
• The South West Coast Path to Zennor follows dramatic granite cliffs west of the town, passing the Wicca Pool coves and the isolated Zennor Head before reaching the Tinners Arms pub.

Seafood dominates the town's menus, unsurprising given the boats still landing at the harbour each morning: expect fresh crab, lobster and daily-changing fish specials at harbourside restaurants, alongside the ubiquitous Cornish pasty from bakeries along Fore Street. St Ives has built a genuine reputation for its restaurant scene, with several establishments earning national recognition for modern Cornish cooking that draws on the day's catch and small local farms. A proper Cornish cream tea, with scones, clotted cream and jam, is available at cafés throughout the town, and no visit is complete without a wander to one of the harbourside ice-cream stalls whose queues stretch down the quay on sunny afternoons. Small producers sell fudge, pasties and local ales from shopfronts along The Warren and Fore Street, and a farmers' market held periodically near the Guildhall showcases Cornish cheese, bread and fish alongside crafts, giving visitors a direct taste of the wider Penwith peninsula beyond the harbour itself.

Camping around St Ives puts you within cycling or walking distance of some of Cornwall's finest beaches, without the summer premium charged by the town's hotels. Several long-established touring parks sit on the fringes of St Ives itself, on the gently rising ground between the town and its surrounding farmland, giving pitches a rare combination of rural quiet and a short hop into the harbour and beaches on foot, by bus or by bike.

Facilities across the local sites range from simple, well-maintained touring pitches to fuller holiday parks with heated pools, on-site shops and family entertainment, so the choice largely comes down to how much you want built into your stay versus how much you plan to spend in town. Dog owners are well catered for at all three parks below, each of which welcomes well-behaved pets, and all offer electric hookup alongside modern shower blocks.

Because St Ives itself has limited flat ground and no camping within the old town, every genuine camping option sits a mile or two out, connected to the centre by the frequent local bus, a coastal footpath, or in one case a private bus service laid on by the site. Booking ahead for the school summer holidays is strongly advised, as the best-positioned pitches are claimed early each year.