Devon vs Cornwall: which has the best beaches?

Whether you want to swim, hike, picnic or just stop by for a scone, Devon and Cornwall have plenty of competing charms.

It starts with how they eat their scones. In Devon, the jam is dolloped on top of the cream; in Cornwall, the cream is slathered on top of the jam. 

For visitors, this decision is probably less important than deciding whether to head to the windswept moors of Bodmin or the empty expanses of Dartmoor. To savour the Celtic mysteries of Cornwall or Agatha Christie mysteries in Devon. 

Above all, it’s the beaches that holidaymakers suffer interminable A30 traffic jams to enjoy.

Devon vs Cornwall: which is better for beach trips?

Both counties have more than 400 miles of shore, but Devon stands out for having two distinct coasts. The north shore of both counties is, by and large, where the seas are at their wildest, where surfers test themselves against mighty swells, and where the Atlantic winds are most bracing. 

In the south the sea is, by contrast, often more sedate. Here you’ll find more wooded, wandering estuaries, along with Riviera resorts and lapping waves that are generally kinder to a younger beach-going contingent. 

Both counties have beaches for all moods and seasons, and here we sort through some of the best.

This article first appeared in full in the May edition of Which? Travel magazine

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Round 1: Which has the prettiest beaches, Devon or Cornwall? 

Kynance Cove, Cornwall vs Bantham Beach, Devon 

Kynance Cove, Cornwall

The splendour of Kynance Cove is no secret, especially after it played a starring role in the Game of Thrones spin-off series House of the Dragon. Still, for first-time visitors to the Lizard Peninsula, it reveals its riches like a well-paced drama, with plot twists aplenty.  

This is, above all, a beach for exploring: the cliffs are scored with tunnel-like caves which, to the imagination, whiff of smugglers’ dens (and to the nose sometimes smell of dog wee). It’s also National Trust land, which means the beach is otherwise well cared for, and there’s a café where you can find scones to consider the requisite jam-and-cream conundrum.

Bantham Beach, Devon

There’s more room at high tide on Bantham – a south Devon beach that the National Trust tried but failed to buy when it came up for sale just over a decade ago. This horseshoe of sand has a sublime setting, where the last loops of the River Avon unravel into the English Channel. 

Beyond the breaking waves, you can make out the outline of Burgh Island (burghisland.com), where you can find the Art Deco hotel that served as the setting for the Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None, in which the guests are murdered one by one. 

At high tide, the island is cut off: you can idle away happy hours spectating on the ‘sea tractor’ (a bizarre kind of cabin on stilts), which shuttles guests back and forth across the water.

Prettiest beach: Bantham Beach, Devon

Both beaches are glorious, but if one had to triumph, it would be Bantham – an archetypal English beach, full of space, sand and salt breezes, with views of the south Devon shoreline retreating into the haze. It dispatches its Cornish comrade with the cold blood of a whodunit villain.

Looking for somewhere to stay? Pick from the best UK seaside hotels

Round 2: Which has better wild beaches, Devon or Cornwall? 

Lantic Bay, Cornwall vs Soar Mill Cove, Devon

Lantic Bay, Cornwall

Wide, sandy beaches are almost absent on the stretch of Cornish coast between Looe and Polruan: a shore defined by wildflower-strewn sea cliffs. But this is a notable exception. A passing motorist would be oblivious to Lantic Bay, concealed as it is behind thick hedgerows and patchwork fields on a strip of coastline, only by foot. 

The quickest access is from a National Trust car park half a mile away on the Polruan Road. However, the more stirring approach is via the South West Coast Path from Pencarrow Head, where you can glimpse Lantic’s golden sands emerging from horizons of golden gorse, before making a steep descent on a zigzagging path. Lantic Bay is truly wild. 

There are no shops, no toilets on the sands, nor is there a lifeguard – just the hush of the tide raking away at the shingle, and, on our visit, the song of skylarks above. Here, outside of high season, you get a sense of this peninsula as it might have appeared to prehistoric tin merchants and roving Celtic saints making landfall centuries ago: a shore unblemished by development.

Soar Mill Cove, Devon

On the opposite side of the Tamar, South Hams is south Devon’s holiday heartland. Thousands flock annually to this bulge in the coastline between Paignton and Plymouth. Between blockbuster beaches such as South Milton Sands and Blackpool Sands, there are secret coves, places that have barely known the jingle of an ice cream van.

Halfway between Salcombe and Hope Cove is one of the best: Soar Mill Cove is a little slither of a beach to set the soul soaring, next to an offshore islet named Little Ham Rock. There’s accommodation and limited parking at the high-end Soar Mill Hotel, but it’s better to make the three-mile trek from Hope Cove. 

It’s by no means a chore, with the South West Coast Path cresting a series of green cliffs, offering views of seabirds on the wing below.  

Best wild beach: Lantic Bay, Cornwall

Lantic Bay wins this particular seaside beauty competition – for its remoteness, its rawness, and the fact you can stand on the foreshore, pivot 360 degrees and see almost no sign of the modern world, apart from ships inching along the Channel horizon.

Holidaying in Devon or Cornwall? Some of the best UK walks are on your doorstep…

Round 3. Which has the best small village beaches, Devon or Cornwall?

Mawgan Porth Beach, Cornwall vs Combesgate Beach, Devon

Mawgan Porth Beach, Cornwall

Between Trevose Head and St Ives are North Cornwall’s all-star surfer beaches, which expand to miniature Saharas at low tide. Mawgan Porth lies at the centre of them – slightly smaller and more manageable, and backed by an upmarket village. 

Here you can find all you need for a seaside stay, including an unpretentious pub in the form of the Merrymoor Inn, where Morris dancers performed between the tables on our visit. 

There are a number of accomplished seafood joints and shops, located close enough that you can return to your towel and find your pasty still hot. The beach is family friendly too: little streams for damming, rockpools for probing and the kind of pristine sands of which bucket-and-spade dreams are made. Beware, however, of rip currents. 

Combesgate Beach, Devon

North Devon’s Woolacombe Beach is another epic surfer beach. It has a tiny annex at its northern end, barely a few hundred metres wide, divided from the main body by a rocky point. Combesgate Beach is quieter and more beautiful – postage-stamp size at high tide, but unfurling into an intricate maze of rockpools.

Here you have the choice of two characterful villages. A 10-minute walk along the esplanade brings you to the cheery Woolacombe, announced by its grand Victorian hotel.  But we prefer clifftop Morthoe, a 10-minute potter up the hill, where two little pubs bookend a Norman church. There’s even a tiny museum that details the ships lured to a watery end on nearby rocks.

Most visitors are lured to Morte Point, the headland at the farthest end of the village, from whose windy heights you briefly imagine you can see all of Devon and Cornwall’s north coast. 

Best small village beach: Combesgate Beach, Devon

This is possibly the loveliest village in north Devon, an English idyll where it feels as though clock hands have stood still since some serene post-war Sunday afternoon. In our view, it surpasses Mawgan Porth.

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Which is better to visit, Cornwall or Devon?

Devon – the only English county to claim two separate coastlines –  wins for the diversity of its beaches. There are riches in the south: pebbly beaches near the Dorset border ideal for fossil hunters, plus the little coves of the South Hams for picnics and the red sands of Paignton, poised beside a pier and fairground rides.

But best of all are the sweeping beaches of north Devon that lie an hour’s drive up the A361 from the M5 – Woolacombe, Combesgate, Saunton Sands and Croyde. These are some of the most sparsely inhabited countryside in southern England and the Bristol Channel – truly the cream of the crop.

Devon also beat Cornwall in our previous best seaside towns survey, where Dartmouth, Devon’s top-rated contender, scored 79%, beating Cornwall’s highest-placed beach town of St Mawes. 

Of course, beachgoers in Cornwall won’t be disappointed – almost nowhere in the county are you more than half an hour’s drive from the coast, within easy reach of top-rated UK walks like Botallack Mine Walk and the Lizard Peninsula Circuit. If you’re passing through, consider a visit to the Isles of Scilly, winner of our best UK National Landscapes survey.

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