A selection of images from some of my favourite places in and around Devon and Cornwall (plus some adjoining areas of Dorset & Somerset) in the United Kingdom.

THINKING OF VISITING?
The counties of Devon and Cornwall are at the far South Western corner of the UK. They are richly diverse in terms of landforms including granite, red sandstone, yellow sandstone, greensands/limestones, chalk, slates and clays, and strongly folded rocks from old subduction zones and all of these appear either along the two coasts or at places inland. So you've kind of got the 'whole world' in one little 150-mile long peninsula which rises to 2000ft in the middle. This incredible diversity is what helps make Devon & Cornwall so interesting and popular as a holiday destination. Then there is all the history based on the sea and the ways in which it was used to transport tin and other minerals plus agricultural products before the advent of decent roads, so our little seaside ports have their own little histories to tell, and as much has been conserved they are wonderful places to visit, and some (eg. Clovelly in North Devon)are still only accessible on foot. Many visitors enjoy seeing our villages with their thatched cottages and barns with walls made out of cob, and these are increasingly rare as they're difficult and expensive to maintain.
The 21st Century face of Devon and Cornwall however is much like anywhere else with the bigger cities of Plymouth and Exeter with about 250,000 and 100,000 people respectively having all the usual high street stores. The busy tourist spots like Torbay and Newquay swell to more than five times their winter population in the Summer season, yet they still retain much of their charm.
GETTING HERE BY CAR
The road network is actually quite good with links from London via the Motorway network (M4 to Bristol and then M5 south to Exeter) and if you'd prefer a nicer scenic route then take the M3 and turn off onto the A303 which passes by Stonehenge and joins the A30 just before the Blackdown Hills. The A30 which then runs all the way to Penzance down the spine of the peninsula is now dual-carriageway for 90% of its length from Honiton past Exeter to tip of Cornwall. From Exeter the A38 is dualled all the way to Plymouth and partially so beyond to where it meets up with the A30 near Bodmin. Meanwhile along the Northern coast there's the A39 which is a standard two-way road that takes you via Exmoor, Barnstaple and Bude through some nice interesting countryside and on to many popular hoiday destinations. The main roads only get badly congested on the Fridays and Saturday mornings in the first two weeks of the school summer holidays, and also on Bank Holiday weekends.
BY AIR? You can fly in to Exeter, Plymouth or Newquay on the budget airlines. Exeter's Flybe services are actually very good and that's a nice place to leave for a weekend in the Channel islands (100 miles south) and you can even go out Saturday morning and come back Sunday night. You might also like to visit the Scilly isles which are about 25 miles off Lands End. (Beautiful scenery of a submerged landscape.) Helicopter or boat from Penzance or plane from Lands End, Newquay or Exeter. And then there's Lundy Island in the Bristol Chnannel to vist by boat from Bideford or Ilfracombe.
BEST TIME TO VISIT
The best time to visit for the scenery is in early-mid May when the bluebells, primroses and May bushes are out and many of the bigger trees are still in flower. Days at this time of year will be very long with the sun above the horizon from 5am to after 9pm and good twilight until well after 11pm. It's pretty in June too when the reds of the foxgloves makes a nice contrast against the blues of the sea, and then in late July and early August when the tall Rosebay Willowherb puts a similar contrast on the artistic photographer's palate.
The heat of any summer is usally gone by the end of the third week of August, but early September and October can be nice with an "Indian Summer". Autumn can be less predictable and it's very rare to get 'New England's' intense colours, not just because the species of the trees are different, but because the weather often stays too mild and then all the leaves get blown down by fierce gales in late October and early November. However the soft more directional September/October light can make for lovely landscape shooting conditions and the sun is still setting around about 7pm even at the end of September.
CLIMATE & CLOTHES TO BRING:
What clothes to bring with you? Layers: several thin ones with a waterproof outer - that's the best advice I can give to visitors from overseas. We can sometimes go through all 4 seasons in a single day and there is no wetter or drier season for our 40-60" of rainfall.
Good fine summer weather depends entirely upon the position of the Jet Stream in any particular year. One year it will loop too far South keeping the Atlantic depressions and all their rain coming in one after the other, another year it might allow a High Pressure cell to spread up and outwards from the Continent forcing all those storms to steer clear of us and head up towards Iceland. Very, very rarely we might get 100F (38C) and equally rarely we might get -18C (about 5-10F). Blizzards are equally rare - maybe a bad one every 20 years. But the grass grows most of the year around the coast indicating that its seldom colder than 50F (10C), and that's entirely thanks to the Gulf Stream from the Caribbean transferring its heat northwards. South West England is actually at the latitude of Labrador, yet gets the climate of 1,000 miles further south thanks to this particular ocean current. It keeps us green. In fact the emerald greenness of this part of the world often surprises visitors...

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Copyright 2009 John Farrar.