St Ives

Follow the South West Coast Path north from Porthminster — 10 minutes of clifftop blue and the harbour suddenly unfolds beneath you. Walk to the very end of Smeaton's Pier, built in 1770 by the engineer behind Eddystone Lighthouse, and turn back: you'll see the entire town stacked like sugar cubes above its bay, the most-photographed angle in Cornwall. Mid-morning light is still soft, the painted fishing boats are catching the sun, and Downalong's slate roofs climb the hill behind them.

Tip: Check tide times the night before — low tide between 11:00 and 13:00 is the magic window, when you can walk on the harbour floor among the moored boats. High tide makes the boats float prettily but hides the beach completely, so half the photos people travel here for vanish.

Walk west around Smeaton's Pier and along Wharf Road for 5 minutes — The Island (a peninsula, despite the name) rises ahead of you, a wild grassy headland crowned by a tiny 15th-century granite chapel built for the patron saint of sailors. The climb takes 8 minutes and rewards you with a 360° view: Porthmeor to the west, the harbour to the east, the open Atlantic to the north. This is the highest point in town and the moment St Ives stops being a postcard and starts feeling like a place you'll remember in your bones.

Tip: The chapel is usually unlocked — duck inside for 30 seconds (it's a single stone room with a candle, no more) — but the real moment is to sit on the seaward grass and watch kittiwakes wheel below the cliff. Bring a windproof layer even in July; the headland is fully exposed and easily ten degrees cooler than the harbour two minutes below.

Descend The Island via the western path to Porthgwidden Beach, then cut up through the Downalong fishing-cottage warren — 8 minutes of slate roofs and lanes barely wide enough for two. Pengenna on High Street is where locals queue for the best traditional Cornish pasty in town: hand-crimped each morning, beef-and-vegetable, the pastry buttery and the steam scalding. Order the traditional steak pasty (£5.50 / ~€6.50) and a slice of saffron cake (£2.80 / ~€3.30) for after, take it down to the harbour wall, and eat it sitting on the granite — that's the proper Cornish way.

Tip: Skip the harbourside chippies advertising 'World Famous Fish & Chips' with laminated photos in the window — they're £18 tourist traps aimed at coach groups, and locals will tell you so plainly. A real pasty from Pengenna costs a third of that. Arrive 13:00–13:30; the steak and the saffron buns sell out by 14:00 in summer.

Walk west from the harbour along Back Road West — 6 minutes through granite cottage lanes — and Porthmeor opens up: a 400-metre crescent of pale sand facing the Atlantic, with the white modernist drum of Tate St Ives anchoring its eastern end. This is the surfers' beach and the artists' beach; the same cool north-facing light that drew Hepworth and Nicholson here a century ago is exactly why the Tate built its outpost on this spot. Wander the sand barefoot, watch the longboarders take the afternoon sets, and photograph the Tate's curved façade glowing against the dunes when the sun swings west.

Tip: The Tate's rooftop terrace café is open to non-ticket-holders — take the lift to the top floor and step outside for the single best free view of Porthmeor and the Atlantic, no admission required and nobody checks. Afternoon between 15:00 and 17:00 is when the white walls glow brightest and the surf behind turns electric blue.

Stay exactly where you are — the café is built into the historic bathhouse at the back of Porthmeor Beach, your toes practically on the sand. From May to September the sun sets directly over the water in front of you between 20:45 and 21:30, painting the Atlantic gold from your plate. Order the Cornish hake (£24 / ~€28) and the local mussels with cider cream (£14 / ~€16) — both come from boats you can see from your window seat — and expect ~£40 / ~€47 per person with a glass of Cornish white.

Tip: Reserve online a week ahead and specifically request a window table on the west side — without a booking from June to August you'll be turned away. Two final warnings: the harbour pubs (Pedn Olva, the Sloop Inn restaurant) are visible and convenient but locals don't eat there, and the last train back to St Erth on summer evenings leaves around 22:40 — allow 20 minutes to walk back along the seafront after sunset and you'll catch it without rushing.

Descend the Island via the Porthgwidden side and cut up Barnoon Hill — twelve minutes through the maze of fishermen's lanes that inspired Hepworth's geometric vocabulary. The museum is her actual studio and garden, left exactly as on the day she died here in 1975: half-finished sculptures still on the workbenches, bronzes framed by subtropical foliage. One of the most intimate artist studios open anywhere in Britain.

Tip: Skip the indoor display first — the garden is east-facing and gets direct sun until noon, after which the bronze surfaces go flat. Photograph 'Four-Square (Walk Through)' from the bench in the back-left corner; the doorway frames the harbour beyond.

Five minutes back down Barnoon Hill to High Street — the pasty smell pulls you in. Pengenna has been hand-crimping Cornish pasties since the 1970s and remains the unanimous local choice. Order the Traditional Steak (£6.50) and a Cornish cream tea afterward (£5); this kitchen still uses skirt steak, swede and onion as the original tin miners ate them.

Tip: Buy your pasty and walk to the harbour wall to eat with feet dangling — but cup it with your other hand. The St Ives gulls have learned to dive-bomb tourists with surgical precision and lift the entire pasty in seconds; a fierce 'oi!' usually scares them off.

From the harbour walk west along the seafront — five minutes past Porthmeor's surf — and the Tate appears as a curved white drum facing the Atlantic. The collection traces the St Ives modernist movement (Hepworth, Nicholson, Wallis, Frost) through galleries with sea-facing windows that frame the same coastline the artists painted. The afternoon timing is deliberate: the upper gallery uses natural light filtered through skylights, peaking 14:00-16:00.

Tip: Take the lift to the top floor first and work down — the rooftop café has the best Porthmeor view in town and is half the price of the beach café below. Ask the gallery attendant on level 3 about Alfred Wallis; they're often retired artists and the stories beat any audio guide.

Exit the Tate, descend the steps — you're already in the sand. By 16:30 the surf school packs up and the beach belongs to late-light walkers. Porthmeor faces north-northwest, so the sun arcs across the bay rather than setting into it: warm gold light on the dunes for nearly two hours, with the Atlantic surf as your soundtrack.

Tip: Walk to the western end and look back: the Tate, the houses climbing toward the Island, and the surf together make the postcard shot of St Ives. Best between 17:00 and 18:00 in summer when the granite warms to honey colour.

You don't change beaches — the café is built into the dune wall behind you, one flight up. The terrace seats fewer than thirty and faces the Atlantic head-on. Order the Pan-Roasted Day-Boat Hake with Cornish new potatoes (£24) and a glass of Camel Valley Bacchus from down the coast (£9), and watch the surfers ride the last sets as the sky goes copper.

Tip: Reserve at least three days ahead for any 19:00-20:30 slot in summer and explicitly request 'a terrace table' — the indoor seats face the wrong way. Avoid the row of harbour-front fish-and-chip restaurants on Wharf Road that look obvious; they're priced for tourists who don't know to walk five minutes for the real thing.