Woolacombe beach has always summed up the laziness/stupidity of the British. The 200yds nearest the car park rammed, the other 2 miles of beach empty!!
Always the same at Saunton. Walk 5 minutes down the beach and you have a huge empty beach. Only down side is that your ice cream has melted by the time you walk back to where you've pitched up for the day!
I don't think the beach thing is exclusive to Cornwall from my observations last week on the Moray Coast - lets just say those of a more rotund figure tended to be clustered around the car park (perhaps because they were nearer the burger van) than those that bothered to walk to the other end...
Sunday and Monday took day trips to the Padstow beaches from Plymouth. Don’t visit often but plenty of room on the beaches even with the car parks full by late morning. The issue I found is the life guards with vey good reason keep you pinned into a very narrow bit of water which isn’t much fun when busy.
Woolacombe beach on Thursday, July 30, 2020, Croyde was worse.
As above the honeypot locations will be busy.
[img] 
[/img]
We walked 12miles of the coast path on Sunday, Boscastle & Tintagel were rammed but a mile further on there was hardly anyone.
I'm camping in Croyde this weekend and already regretting the decision. I'm not a people person at the best of times so it could be my idea of hell on earth. Any surfing will have to be done early morning.
We're going next week, camping near Fowey. We'll likely be away from any crowds hopefully anyway as we'll be up in the countryside walking the dog rather than being on the beach. Plus the weather's looking crap, so that'll help keep numbers down 🙁
We're in Hayle next week at a chalet park right on the beach, it's often busy but never that bad , so hopefully will be ok
Forecast looks up & down, Aldi wetsuits for the kids will get some use !
St Ives is a scrum normally, which I'm more than happy to avoid
Booked a day at Tintagel, which is limiting numbers
Possibly use our Tesco vouchers on the Eden project
Taking the bikes so should be easy to get away from it all
Any surfing will have to be done early morning.
It’ll still be busy, and it’ll be busy with people who can actually surf so you’ll have to be on it to get some waves...
I've had a week in Cornwall booked for a while now (between Lizard & Falmouth, we booked a long time ago knowing we wouldn't be going abroad), going in the last week of August. Thinking about cancelling it and going somewhere quieter... not sure if it will have quietened down by then or not, what do stw think?
I believe schools go back at the beginning of September, which is after we're back.
MrsMC calmly announced this morning that she's looking at a weekend in the Lakes for August bank holiday weekend. We avoid the Lakes, Cornwall etc for any bank holiday, whytf would we want to go this year?
Am a local (West Cornwall) it's pretty busy.. St Ives is supposed to be stupidly busy, streets are packed.
Went to St Michael's Mount on Saturday to see a friend who lives there, despite the fact it was shut there were still people walking across the causeway and lingering next to the locked gates like zombies, paying no notice to the "Closed sign".
Even Loe Bar beach (no swimming at all, very dangerous) was busy on Sunday, people with beach stuff, deckchairs etc despite the fact you can't go in the water.
If you're down here, head to a non touristy beach (no shops = less people), and don't take any risks with the sea as I imagine the emergency services are pretty stretched at the moment.
If you've got a choice, probably come another (less busy) time as we've only got Treliske with a handful of beds.
@spicer my experiance when I used to live in the SW was that the last week in august was the busiest week with both the bank hol and the attraction of getting a break jsut before schoools start.
If you can I'd consider going in September instead.. much quieter and often get nice weather
@ferrals thanks for the reply, thats exactly what I'm worried about. September is a no-go due to OH's work, I think I'll look into cancelling and going somewhere quieter instead!
We are based in a major Devon city and decided to stay local in our holidaying last week. We stayed on tiny caravan sites around N. Devon with the exception of one commercial one that was rammed with very little social distancing going on. Most were not using the hand sanitisers and there was only a modicum of mask use in shops (not that we went into many).
We were in Bude for part of one day and it was heaving, as were the canal walks in and the SW path out. The beach wasn't rammed like it could be, but busier than I'd like so we didn't stay.
We walked into Blackchurch Rock beach one day and was surprised there were others there, but it was really spaced out so no issues.
Only visited local beaches such as Exmouth and Dawlish Warren recently and have seen a massive increase in local kids meeting there late into the evening, however my favourite beach is big enough to have space when we head along later in the day, plus we back the van right up to the walkway so we don't need to access anything else.
As for out and about, there just seems to be more people about, but generally if you are prepared to walk and avoid hotspots it's not too bad from what I've seen.
What we have noticed is people camping who are on first ever trips and have no idea of the general etiquette. Large groups sat together late into the night, music blaring until the "quiet hours" of 11pm-8am, effing and cuffing and generally not appreciating there is an unspoken conduct code in campsites. Never so glad for the recent caravan purchase!!
We're heading oop north to visit family next week and wonder what that will be like.
This thread is useful for realising that you know who some of the people are though, yes you @andy_sweet!
Go to West Wales instead. We just got back from Cardigan area and it was quite pleasant, not really that busy at all.
Don't bother. It's awful. You won't have a good holiday in West Wales. Go to Cornwall, it's far nicer.😉
Don’t bother. It’s awful. You won’t have a good holiday in West Wales. Go to Cornwall, it’s far nicer.😉
I would stick to Wales - it's just taken a colleague 30mins to do a 5 min journey in Falmouth.
Comments from people who live there and the pic posted above of Woolacombe would have me reaching for the phone to be cancelling. But no, people will continue to add to the . I've said this on other threads but there is still a worldwide pandemic and the only way to get back to normal is not to go and sit on a beach / sit on the M5 / visit a packed part of the country just because you fancy a jolly. The longer scenes like Woolacombe above are common, the longer this sh*t is going to go on.
Thanks all. To be honest I'm stil not sure. We're going with the in-laws (who we currently live with due to being in between house moves) so it's not just us involved in the decision.
As a cornish resident I do feel that this pandemic has seemingly mostly passed us by.
However - as someone who would go away 1 or 2 weekends a month then usually a couple of weeks away a year one in the UK & one abroad somewhere I've not been doing that.
The furthest I've been is during a week off last month we stayed one night on a Shepard's Hut on Dartmoor.
My opinion is the more people who are going away abroad & travelling up & down the country are basically just extending the pandemic for all of us.
The idiots ruin it – it was only a matter of time.
A very small part of Dartmoor that has always been problematic, but has gone crazy the last few weeks. The other 99.9% of the wild camping zone is still there but >500yds from the car...
No long lens shortening here. Just rammed.
the only way to get back to normal is not to go and sit on a beach / sit on the M5 / visit a packed part of the country just because you fancy a jolly
Actually I disagree, even that picture up there ^^^. Quite a few wearing masks, Outdoor transmission still very very low
Indoors, pubs, shops & restaurants
- Pubs especially are the hotspots, Eat out to help out far more likely to be a cause of infection
As unpleasant as tons of people on woolacombe beach is , not a place where you're likely to catch /spread covid
Actually I disagree, even that picture up there ^^^. Quite a few wearing masks, Outdoor transmission still very very low
Indoors
Yes, fortunately I’m sure none of them are ramming shopping centres, service stations, shops, pubs etc
... they just decided that Falmouth/Bude/Penzance etc High Streets would be a nice place to go for a panoramic pandemic stroll 🤪
I get the point & personally avoiding town centres for mindless shopping is a no brainer (pandemic or not!), but there's plenty can be done to mitigate risk; one way systems, hand washing stations, masks etc
M5 was pretty busy on the way down but
St Ives beach looks reasonably busy across the bay, but Hayle beach was quieter than last time we were here
and waves were great for bodyboarding!
Well that was a great week, we spent almost every day at the beach, which was quieter than normal
The holiday park had moved their clubhouse to a clifftop bar, out of a container that was much better as the kids could just run free.
A day cycling on Bodmin was busy in forestry car park but few further out on the woods
We did Tintagel today which is was limiting numbers because we had to pre-book a week in advance. Town was busy but quieter than when we visited 2 years ago & couldn't go up the castle due to a gail
We didn't do many shops, but mask use was 100% & hand sanitizer everywhere, people very good with queing & distancing
Pasties safely bought from takeaway windows etc
Back on Saturday after 2.5 weeks down there in the caravan, the traffic heading south though was bonkers on the A30 and M5 seemed like the queues went from Bristol to Launceston. It was no less busy than a normal summer, and in some cases on the beaches, busier and RNLI / Coastguard callouts are up. We stayed clear of towns unless we had to go or went in the evenings when the masses had gone home. Falmouth was crackers so we didn't stay, Newquay OK first week of August then got much busier - again in and out to return something.Padstow's park and ride wasn't running and I've never seen parking like it when we walked by to the coastal path, every verge etc parked on, so god knows what the town was like on those days. Shops have done a great job in sanitiser provision, one way systems in a lot of cases and limiting numbers in store, also can't try anything on, but do have very good returns policies. Really good to get away but you can have as much or as little contact with others as you want really if you're careful. We were other than food shopping able to keep ourselves away from folks in the main and use facilities in our caravan rather than shared ones on the site, but their cleaniness was very good too.
