Many of Cornwall’s most rewarding coastal spots require effort to reach them. Such is the case with Nanjizal Beach (which also goes by the more prosaic name of Mill Bay), a narrow, handsomely higgledy sea inlet that can only be accessed along the coastal path. It sits about half an hour’s walk south of Land’s End, although the contrast between the two sites could hardly be greater.
If headline-hogging Land’s End has become a theme park, hill-hidden Nanjizal lets you experience a very different Cornwall — a place where the seabirds serve up the soundtrack, where a set of steep wooden steps provide your entry point to the stony sands and where your chances of finding a pasty or cream tea are non-existent.
Land's End saw over 400,000 visitors in 2024.
Less of a crowd at Nanjizal Beach.
Parts of a now-missing episode of Doctor Who from the mid 1960s were filmed here, but many visitors today come to enjoy the so-called Song of the Sea, a tidal pool that fills an open-air fissure in the rocks at high tide. For sea swimmers looking to unleash their inner mermaid, it’s perfect
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A country house that's 'the finest-looking estate between the Humber and the Tweed' (at least according to Queen Victoria)Burn Hall is a treasure-trove of architectural features, from its sweeping staircase to its grand snooker room.
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William Kendall: 'We need to build a lot more solar farms and some wind turbines, too'The thought of losing of productive arable land to renewable-energy developments can be dispiriting and alarming, but informed local knowledge may be the key to their successful design.
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The 'greatest battle for 300 years': England's great estates face up to a green futureThe climate crisis will affect us all. All over Britain, major landowners are stepping up to tackle a warming world and biodiversity loss.
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'He unleashed a series of war cries, then intercepted the vole mid-air': There's nothing remotely common about the common kestrelKnown in Orkney as ‘moosie-haak’, kestrels are fierce hunters but have seriously declined and are now an amber-listed species.
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The truth about P.G. Wodehouse: Robert Daws on playing England's greatest comic writerThe actor Robert Daws starred alongside Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in Jeeves and Wooster back in the 1990s, and the work of P.G. Wodehouse has been part of his decades-long career ever since. He joined the Country Life Podcast.
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Don't judge a plant by its smell: Why 'the little stinkers of the natural world' are just doing their jobReminiscent of love and with an unmistakable odour of death, the little stinkers of the natural world might incite repulsion, but they are only doing their job, pleads Ian Morton
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Puffins and shearwaters, skuas and terns, gannets and gulls and guillemots and wings, these are a few of our favourite things (seabirds)From a heroic long-distance swimmer to a producer of spectacularly eerie sound effects, the seabirds seen swooping and diving over British waters have all manner of singular skills.
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The red kite is a soaraway success story, having escaped extinction to become a familiar sight in our skies againUnhurried in flight and with a sideline in stolen goods, the handsome red kite is the gentleman thief of the raptor world, writes Mark Cocker.
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‘This isn't just silver — it's a story of a man who fell in love with a woman who society deemed unworthy': The large silver sculpture of rutting stags that scandalised Victorian societyGeorge Harry Grey, the 7th Earl of Stamford, was shunned when he married a circus performer. This sculpture was his way of showing the world that he was a fighter — and it's now been acquired by the National Trust.
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The life that thrives among the dead: How wildlife finds a home in the graveyards and churchyards of BritainHome to a veritable ‘Noah’s Ark of species’, thanks to never being ploughed, sprayed or fertilised, our churchyards offer a sacred haven for flora and fauna, says Laura Parker.
