Cornwall England

I hope that your accommodation has parking. A trip to Cornwall last September was completely spoiled by the inability to find anywhere to park, anywhere!

We took a fantastic small group tour in a small bus with Rabbies Tours in 2025. It was great, our guide knew how to avoid the terrible traffic and we took lots of back roads.

Cornwall is very crowded during the Summer. I DO NOT recommend renting a car, the traffic is horrendous and parking is VERY hard to find.

Our tour also included Devon and all the key places that you mentioned in Cornwall. The tour started near Victoria Station and ended there. We also stopped in Stonehenge on the way and another city on the way back to London.

A trip to Cornwall last September was completely spoiled by the inability to find anywhere to park, anywhere!

And just to add, parking fee machines were one of the few things we found that still required cash (coins). It is slowly changing as they update machines, but I suspect you will still run into a few old ones.

I was in Cornwall in late March of 2024, and even at that time I found it very difficult to find parking, at least in the more popular destinations. I based myself in Falmouth at a place that had parking, so that was nice, but it was difficult to find parking in some of the smaller places, although I did manage to find it. I think St Ives was the most difficult, but if you have a private guide or driver, they might know of better places than I did.

If you don't find one here, you might try contacting the tourist information center for Cornwall or even narrow it down to St. Ives or Port Isaac or some place like that and see if they know of anyone that might be able to help you. For example, on the Visit Cornwall website, they have a couple of tours that might be of interest to you. https://www.visitcornwall.com/local-business/tours. And they also have a list of all the tourist information centers in Cornwall, so you might check ones for specific towns: https://www.visitcornwall.com/essentials

Before you go anywhere look online for parking options. In St Ives you can pay to park at the Rugby Club, for example. Some parts of Cornwall are busier than others but just get out early and be prepared to grapple with a whole load of different parking rules, apps and payment methods. Don’t expect to be able to park on a convenient spot - be prepared to walk a bit.

Try Tim Uff at tourcornwall.com. We took a full day tour with one of his guides and it was a blast. Unfortunately, Tim was not available the day we wanted a guide, but he set us up with Pat (forget his last name). He was very funny, and we had a wonderful day with him. I believe they have some standard itineraries, but you can do your own custom tour if you prefer. Tim is recommended by Rick and is on his show that covers Cornwall.

On our trip to Devon and Cornwall, by far, St. Ives was the MOST CROWDED place that we visited.