Bed and breakfast availability
Newquay b&b, guesthouse and hotel accommodation

Visit Newquay and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Newquay, Cornwall, has the most magnificent beaches in Cornwall, and is the county's most popular seaside resort. There are vast stretches of sand, and it is probably the best place for surfing in England. Behind are tall cliffs with exciting caves, the best being in front of the north-east end of the town round Porth Island on which was Newquay's original settlement.

That settlement was Iron Age. Its remains are just visible. Virtually the only other thing visible built on this town's site before the railway reached it in 1875 is the Huer's House on the headland just West of the harbour. Murray's 1856 Handbook for Travellers called Newquay “a small watering place where the pilchard industry is pursued on a considerable scale”. The pilchards came abundantly, but periodically. The huer's job was to watch for the shoals reddening the water and with a great shout waken the village when he saw them.

The railway was intended to bring china clay and tin to Newquay's port. But the port was not really up to it, the water too shallow, and increasingly the trains brought mainly tourists.

The most attractive places are on the town's perimeter: the harbour, where are preserved several of the old pilot gigs which, in the 19^th century, used to escort in the cargo schooners and ketches; Trenance Gardens, in a valley to the East, containing a new zoo, Cornwall's only one; and Towan and East Pentire heads to the West for views.

The nearest attractive church and old cottages are at St Columb Minor, about 2 miles East, Newquay's mother parish, now one of its suburbs. The church's 15^th-century tower, 115 ft high, finely pinnacled and lichen-coloured, is one of Cornwall's best.

Four miles South West is the village of Crantock, once famous for its smugglers. Its church is worth seeing, a show-piece of Edwardian restoration. It has an elaborate rood-screen which is mainly a reproduction, and a disproportionately large, highly decorated chancel. In the churchyard, as by many Cornish churches, the old stocks are displayed. A plaque tells the story of the last man put in them, c. 1817, “a smuggler's son and a vagabond”. A road leads to splendid dunes beside the narrow, steep-sided creek of the Gannel estuary, and vast sands at low tide.

About 3 miles South East, among narrow lanes and elm trees, is Trerice, an Elizabethan manor house, now owned by the National Trust. It has beautiful east and south façades and fine plaster ceilings. The plasterwork, probably by an Italian, is very similar to that at Buckland Abbey and Collacombe, and the theory is that Sir John Arundell, who built Trerice, passed on his craftsman to his friends, Sir Richard Grenville and Edmund Tremayne respectively. The best route to it is via Lane and Trevilly, passing through a ford.

Nearby towns: Redruth, Padstow, St Austell, St. Columb Major, Truro

Nearby villages: Crantock, Creed, Cubert, Grampound, Ladock, Little Petherick, Mitchell, Nancekuke, Newlyn East, Perranporth, Perranzabuloe, Probus, St. Agnes, St. Allen, Columb Minor, St. Dennis, St. Enoder, St. Erme, St. Ervan, St. Eval, St. Issey, St. Mawgan, St. Merryn, St. Minver, St. Stephen, White Cross, Zelah

Have you decided to visit Newquay or the surrounding villages? Please look above for somewhere to stay in:

• a Newquay bed and breakfast (a Newquay B&B or Newquay b and b)
• a Newquay guesthouse
• a Newquay hotel (or motel)
• a Newquay self-catering establishment, or
• other Newquay accommodation