Cornwall

Cornwall is where Britain runs out of land and the Atlantic takes over. The north coast — from Bude down through Newquay to Perranporth — faces the full weight of Atlantic swell and has been producing serious surfers since the 1960s, when the first Australians arrived at Fistral Beach with fibreglass boards and changed what the Cornish thought a day at the beach could mean. Fistral is still the benchmark: a powerful beach break that hosts the Boardmasters festival each August and the annual English National Surfing Championships, a north-facing bay that catches every swell the Atlantic sends. Sennen, at the far tip of the peninsula near Land's End, is the most exposed break in England — a long, clean beach that works on any swell direction and empties out in autumn into one of the best uncrowded waves in the country. Porthleven, on the south coast, is the most serious: a slab break over a harbour wall that produces short, heavy barrels on a southwest swell and has a waiting crowd of photographers every time it fires.

The south coast is a different Cornwall — the Roseland Peninsula, the Fal Estuary, St Mawes, and a stretch of coastline that has been drawing artists, writers, and sailors since the nineteenth century. St Ives built its reputation on the Tate and the light. St Mawes built its reputation on Tresanton and the harbour. The design culture that grew up alongside both — the studios, the galleries, the particular quality of Cornish light that artists have been citing as their reason for being here since Barbara Hepworth set up in St Ives in 1939 — is as much a part of what Cornwall is as the surf. Padstow, on the north coast, is the food town: Rick Stein first, then Paul Ainsworth, and now a culinary infrastructure that has made a harbour village of three thousand people one of the most-booked restaurant destinations in the UK. Penzance, at the far western tip, is where the train from London terminates, St Michael's Mount is visible across the bay, and Artist Residence has been making the case for the town as a design destination since 2011.