Things to Do in St Ives

There’s a particular quality of light in St Ives that painters have been chasing for over a century, and you feel it the moment you arrive — a clean, silvery brightness bouncing off the water and the whitewashed walls, the kind of light that makes everything look freshly rinsed. It’s why the artists came, why the Tate followed them, and why a town of cobbled lanes on a granite spit at the far end of Cornwall became one of the most beloved seaside places in Britain.

But St Ives isn’t a museum piece. It’s a working harbour, a surf town, a foodie haven and a walker’s launch pad all at once, packed into a footprint small enough to explore on foot in a long, happy day. The trick is to slow down and let it unfold. Here’s how to spend your time — the beaches, the art, the harbour, the food, the walks and the days out — without rushing a single bit of it.

The beaches: two coasts, one town

For somewhere so compact, St Ives is absurdly well off for beaches — four of them within easy reach (more further afield), each with its own character, facing different ways so there’s almost always somewhere sheltered.

Porthmeor — the surf beach

Porthmeor faces the open Atlantic on the town’s northern edge, which means it catches the swell — this is where you’ll find the surf schools, the longboards and the bodyboarders, and the famous light at its most luminous. The Tate sits right behind the sand, so you can quite literally go from a gallery to the waves in two minutes. Lessons run for all abilities, and even if you never get wet, it’s a glorious place to sit and watch the surfers and the sunset. If you want to go further afield in search of waves, we’ve rounded up the best surf spots along the coast.

Porthminster — the family beach

On the other side of town, sheltered and south-facing, Porthminster is the gentle one: soft pale sand, calm clear water and a sun-trap aspect that holds the warmth into the evening. It’s ideal for families and paddlers, the swimming is safe and easy, and the views across the bay to the Godrevy lighthouse are postcard-perfect. There’s a celebrated beach café here too, the kind of spot where lunch quietly turns into the whole afternoon.

Bamaluz and Carbis Bay

Tucked beside the harbour, little Bamaluz is the locals’ beach — small, dog-friendly out of season, and easy to miss, which is rather the point. And a short way round the bay, luxurious Carbis Bay offers a broad sweep of sheltered golden sand and turquoise water that wouldn’t look out of place a great deal further south. You can walk there from St Ives along the coast in well under an hour, or hop one stop on the train.

For more of Cornwall’s coastline beyond the town, see our guide to the best beaches in Cornwall — there’s a lot of sand to get through.

The art: Tate St Ives and Barbara Hepworth

St Ives is one of the great art towns of Britain, and you don’t need to know your Hepworth from your Heron to feel it. The modernist painters and sculptors who settled here in the twentieth century were drawn by that light and the raw Cornish landscape, and their legacy is woven right through the town.

The two essential stops:

• Tate St Ives — perched above Porthmeor beach, this is a gallery with one of the best views in the business. It shows modern and contemporary art with a strong connection to St Ives and Cornwall, and the rooftop café looking out over the surf is worth the trip on its own.
• The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden — the former home and studio of the great sculptor, left much as it was, with her work set among the subtropical planting of her garden. It’s a quiet, moving, genuinely special place, and arguably the most atmospheric thing to do in town.

Beyond the big two, the lanes are dotted with independent galleries and working studios — St Ives has long been a place where artists actually live and make things, not just exhibit them. Wandering in and out of them is half the pleasure, and you’ll often find the artist themselves behind the counter.

The harbour and the old town lanes

The heart of St Ives is its harbour — a working one still, with fishing boats leaning on the sand at low tide and gulls patrolling for an unguarded pasty (hold onto yours; they’re bolder than they look). Around it spreads the old town, a tangle of narrow cobbled lanes with names like Teetotal Street and Bunkers Hill, fishermen’s cottages painted in soft colours, and the salt-and-flowers scent of a proper Cornish fishing town.

This is a place made for aimless wandering. Let yourself get pleasantly lost in the lanes, follow the smell of fresh bread, browse the little shops, and find your way out onto the harbour wall or up to the small chapel on the headland known as the Island for a view back over the whole rooftops-and-sea sweep of it. There’s no agenda required — the old town rewards the unhurried.

The food: seafood, straight off the boats

With a working harbour on the doorstep, St Ives takes its seafood seriously, and eating well here is one of the great pleasures of a stay. The town runs the full range, from a paper of chips eaten on the harbour wall to candlelit dinners of the day’s catch.

What to seek out:

• Fish and chips by the harbour — a Cornish rite of passage. Find a wall, watch the boats, mind the gulls.
• The day’s catch — mackerel, crab, lobster and line-caught fish landed locally and cooked simply, as it should be.
• A proper Cornish pasty — crimped on the side, ideally still warm, eaten while walking. Non-negotiable.
• A cream tea — scones, clotted cream and jam. And yes, in Cornwall the jam goes on first; arguing otherwise is asking for trouble.

Tables at the best spots fill up fast in summer, so if there’s somewhere you’ve set your heart on for dinner, it pays to book ahead.

Coast-path walks: St Ives to Zennor

St Ives sits on the South West Coast Path, and some of the most spectacular walking in Cornwall starts right from the edge of town. Head west and the landscape turns wild and ancient almost immediately — heather and granite, crashing surf below, hardly a building in sight.

The classic is the walk to Zennor, a remote and beautiful stretch of coast path that rewards you at the far end with a tiny moorland village, a famous old inn and the legend of the Mermaid of Zennor, said to have lured a local chorister into the sea. It’s a proper hike — rugged, undulating and not to be rushed — so go properly shod, take water, and check the time and weather before you set off. Many walkers do it one-way and catch a lift or a seasonal bus back, which is no bad plan.

If that sounds ambitious, gentler options abound: the shorter headland loops around the Island, the easy coastal stroll to Carbis Bay, or simply following the path until you find a quiet cove to call your own for an hour.

On the water: boat trips and Seal Island

To see St Ives at its best, get out onto the bay. Small pleasure boats run from the harbour in season, and the highlight is the trip out to Seal Island — a cluster of rocks off the coast where Atlantic grey seals haul out and bask, often in good numbers. You’ll likely spot seabirds along the way, and on a lucky day dolphins put in an appearance. Seeing the town from the water, low and white against the green headland, is a memory that tends to stick.

Days out from St Ives

St Ives makes a brilliant base for the far west of Cornwall, with some of the county’s finest sights an easy drive or scenic ride away:

• Minack Theatre and Porthcurno — an open-air theatre carved into the cliff above a white-sand beach, near Land’s End. Unforgettable for a performance, spectacular even just to visit.
• St Michael’s Mount — the fairy-tale tidal island and castle off Marazion, reachable on foot across a cobbled causeway when the tide is out.
• Land’s End and Sennen Cove — the very tip of mainland Britain, with one of Cornwall’s loveliest surf beaches right beside it.
• The Penwith moors — ancient stone circles, quoits and standing stones scattered across a landscape that feels older than history.

Getting there and getting around

Here’s a tip that turns the journey into part of the holiday: arrive by train. The branch line along St Ives Bay is one of the most scenic in the country, curving right along the coast above Carbis Bay with the sea glittering below — far more romantic than the car park, and a great deal less stressful. The town’s streets are narrow and steep, and parking in high season tests the patience of a saint, so many visitors leave the car at their cottage or a park-and-ride and let the train and their own two feet do the work.

One honest word: St Ives is popular, and in the height of summer it knows it. The lanes get busy and the beaches fill up. The locals’ secret is timing — early mornings and evenings are quieter and lovelier, and the shoulder seasons of late spring and early autumn give you the same light and warmth with room to breathe.

Stay in the thick of it

St Ives is a town best taken slowly — and the surest way to do that is to stay right in it, so you can slip out for a dawn swim, wander back for breakfast, and be on the harbour wall with chips as the light turns gold, long after the day-trippers have driven home. A week here that still leaves change for the pasties; front door to sand in minutes.

Every place in our collection is personally approved— chosen for the view, the welcome, or simply the short walk to the water. Browse our cottages in St Ives to put yourself in the heart of the old town, or our beachside cottages to wake up beside the sand. Find the right one, and St Ives stops being a place you visit and becomes, for a week, somewhere you live.