There are plenty of seaside related things to do at Fowey with the usual water, beach and walking activities.  Fowey is also a place for artists.  Daphne du Maurier lived here and there’s now an annual literary festival.

Trip up river to Leryn

Upriver at Fowey by Kathryn Lewis

The river is navigable up to Lostwithiel and Leryn at high tide.  Leryn is famous for being the inspiration for Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows.  In my world, it’s also famous for being the village where Tom’s parents live.  Whilst we’ve visited plenty of times we had never arrived by boat.

We set off in the tender, under grey skies and with our dirty washing.  The trip was a very pleasant potter.  We passed numerous moored boats that gradually got smaller in the upper reaches of the river.  There’s also a section of river set aside for salmon fishing.  We turned off the main river up the Leryn river to Leryn and felt our way up the river, only grounding once on the falling tide.  As we crept up the last reach to the mooring the rain started and then it was like a tap was turned on and we were wet through.  I stepped out of the tender and slipped on the mud.  Soaked through and covered in mud!  We looked like a drowned ratty when we arrived at Tom’s mother’s house.

Polruan coastal walk

We traveled down-river to Polruan and left our tender on the visitor’s pontoon.  We walked up the hill through the village to find the coastal path out of town.  The views across St Austell bay and the Fowey harbour are beautiful.  If the weather had been more pleasant we would have followed the coastal path down to the beach at Lantic Bay.

Secrets

There’s a railway line running into Fowey.  Between the 1860s and 1960s it was used for freight and then freight and passengers.  These days it’s only use for freight.  It transports china clay onto the ships moored at Carne Point.  If you moor beyond the Boddinick Ferry you can see the loading and unloading and the clanking of trains moving about.

Other activities

If we’d had the time we would have gone:

• Swimming at Readymoney cove by walking through Fowey to the beach
• Walk to Fowey then Polruan to Boddinick and back to Fowey
• Walk to Polkerris for picnic or lunch in the small harbour
• Fowey River Expeditions – kayak or open canoe up river
• Eden project
• Restormel Castle