Discover the countryside: Cornwall

PLACE TO EXPLORE: Meet the Mermaid of Zennor

CPRE Cornwall recommends Zennor, a small village on the north coast between the moors and the sea.

Inside its medieval church is a carved wooden bench-end, around 600 years old, depicting a mermaid said to have lured a young chorister named Matthew Trewella into the sea, never to return. Years later, sailors anchored nearby reported a mermaid asking them to move their boat, as it blocked the door to her underwater home.

Nearby stands Zennor Quoit, an ancient burial chamber on open moorland, a reminder of how long people have shaped this stretch of coast.

LANDSCAPE STORY: Rock the Logan Stone

Above Porthcurno beach, near the village of Treen, sits the Logan Rock, an 80-ton granite boulder once so finely balanced it could be rocked with a single hand.

In 1824, a group of naval sailors, testing a local legend that the stone could never be moved, tipped it from its perch. Public outcry forced the Admiralty to have it winched back into place at the young lieutenant’s own expense, though the stone is said never to have rocked quite as easily since.

PLACE TO EXPLORE: Follow the Helford River

CPRE Cornwall also recommends the Helford River, a wooded estuary south of Falmouth where oak woodland slopes down to hidden creeks and oyster beds.

Wildlife along the water includes egrets, seals, dolphins and the occasional deer swimming between banks, and the river’s Frenchman’s Creek inspired Daphne du Maurier’s novel of the same name.