A Roseland ROMANCE

Cornwall is not short of beauty spots, but the Roseland Peninsula, with its magical mix of the pastoral and the coastal, is surely the loveliest of them all

- NATASHA FOGES

In 1926, while on a tour of the country that he would later describe in his classic travelogue In Search of England, the writer HV Morton visited a small Cornish village, St Anthony-in-Roseland. “I took the map,” he wrote, “and one name curled itself around my heart. I do not think that in the whole length and breadth of England there is a more beautiful name… St Anthony-in-Roseland.” Morton rented a pink thatched cottage and explored the ragged contours of the Roseland Peninsula, enthusing over every village and cove.

Almost a century on, the Roseland is still a magical place that rewards visitors with a sense of discovery. Bordered by the Fal estuary to the west and the Atlantic to the east, this secluded enclave offers an enchanting mix of rocky heritage coast and gentle pastoral landscapes.

Journeying down the peninsula towards its wild headland, you pass woodland valleys cobwebbed with crooked lanes, villages named after Celtic saints and solid little waterside churches.

Fishing villages that once heaved with sou’westered fishermen hauling in their nets are now tranquil eyries dotted with holiday homes. Portloe is one of the most picturesque: a cluster of Cornish granite cottages nestling prettily above a craggy cove. The village grew thanks to the pilchard-fishing industry in the 17th and 18th centuries – and became a notorious smugglers’ haunt – but the fishing boats in the tiny cove now number just three. The village trades, instead, on its dreamy beauty: you can rent a cottage here, or stay in The Lugger, a 17th-century inn whose one-time owner went to the gallows for dealing in black-market French brandy.