Cornwall in May doesn’t really believe in predictable weather.
The train leaves Paddington in greyness, but still with that strange early-summer mugginess hanging in the air. As we head west: hail, sunshine, intermittent heavy showers. A complete rollercoaster of optimism and everybody slowly becoming convinced the BBC Weather app is an idiot.
By Plymouth, laptops were officially down. The Wi-Fi had been terrible from the start anyway, which felt less like an inconvenience and more like permission to stop pretending anybody was going to work properly on the journey down.
If you’re heading to St Ives by train, sit on the left-hand side after Plymouth. The coastline starts appearing beside you in flashes between cliffs and rain-streaked windows. Grey sea. Tiny beaches. Wet rocks. Everything already feeling quieter than London.
Everyone arrived at slightly different times depending on trains, work and how optimistic they’d been booking tickets a few weeks earlier, which somehow suited the weekend perfectly. Less organised group trip. More gradually gathering by the sea over the course of a Friday evening.
We’d come down for a friend’s birthday, although Cornwall seems to reorganise everybody’s priorities fairly quickly. After a few hours there, the weekend had already settled into something simpler: long walks, decent food and spending as much time outside as possible.
Saturday started at The Tinners Arms in Zennor.
Cheesy chips. Guinness. Waterproofs half-zipped while everyone collectively convinced themselves the clouds were probably moving away rather than towards us.
Objectively the correct way to begin six miles on the South West Coast Path.
The walk back towards St Ives felt like several different versions of spring stitched together. Bright sunshine one minute, low cloud the next. Every time it looked like the weather might properly settle in, the sky would suddenly clear again.
At one point we accidentally came off the coastal path entirely and ended up forcing our way through narrow overgrown tracks lined with aggressively spiky bushes before eventually admitting defeat and climbing back towards the actual route, muddier and significantly more humbled than before.
The beaches below were scattered with washed-up kelp from storms earlier in the week, while wild rosemary seemed to grow out from the cliff edges in impossible places. By Sunday afternoon, most things (curls included) had picked up a slightly windswept quality.
Somewhere around halfway through the walk, the weather started turning again, which sped everybody up considerably.
By the time we reached St Ives, we’d somehow made it to The Fish Shed earlier than expected. They opened happy hour a few minutes early for us...a small act of generosity that felt deeply appreciated after six miles of walking.
For about ten minutes, the clouds cleared completely and the harbour fell into warm evening sunshine while we sat outside drinking Negronis feeling considerably more accomplished than we probably deserved.
Then the clouds drifted back in again.
The evening unfolded from there in the way good weekends usually do. A stop into The Sloop Inn for another Guinness. Wandering through narrow streets filled with surf shops, independent galleries and fisherman jumpers that looked considerably softer from a distance than they did once you actually touched them.
Later, live jazz tucked away above the harbour while the town slowly quietened around us.
St Ives was busy, but in a way that never really felt stressful.
Sunday’s plans revolved less around walking and more around finding somewhere good to stay for as long as possible.
We’d originally booked the sauna cabin on Porthminster Beach for the morning but a food festival had taken over the beach that weekend, and suddenly the idea of running half-dressed past families eating loaded fries lost a little of its appeal.
One for next time.
Instead, attention turned towards stretching the weekend out for as long as possible before heading back east again.
Porthmeor Beach Café delivered exactly what was required: scallops, squid, mussels and rosemary chips gradually covering the table while the afternoon drifted by in warm patches of sunshine overlooking the sea.
Mostly though, Cornwall does seem to reward people who stop trying to optimise the weekend quite so hard. Wandering into shops without buying anything. Staying somewhere longer simply because nobody really feels like leaving yet. Watching the light change across the harbour while conversations drift slightly slower than they usually do back in London.
There was also a slight panic at the station before heading home after realising I’d somehow nearly left Cornwall without properly fitting in a Cornish pasty all weekend.
An emergency extra-large pasty was purchased for the train back to London, which felt less like a snack and more like an important administrative task before Monday morning arrived.
By Sunday evening we were heading east once more, boots kicked off under the train seats, everyone slightly quieter than they’d been on the way down.
And somewhere around Reading, Cornwall already started to feel slightly unreal again — although maybe the best weekends are the ones that leave something behind after you’ve returned.
Not escapism exactly.
Just a slightly better pace to bring home with you.
UNTAMEABLE NOTES
Best for: Long walks, slow lunches and temporarily forgetting what day it is
Weather report: Constantly changing, but rarely bad enough to stop anything
Worth slowing down for: Porthmeor Beach Café on a Sunday afternoon
Unexpected highlight: The Fish Shed opening Negronis slightly early after the coast path walk
The plan vs reality: Sauna morning quietly replaced by seafood, sunshine and wandering around St Ives
Most likely purchase: A fisherman's jumper that looks significantly softer from a distance
Walking conditions: Mostly easy, aside from one aggressively spiky detour
Hair situation: Slightly windswept by day two, but probably better for it
Energy on return: Clear-headed, salty and faintly resistant to reopening a laptop immediately
Untameable means: Letting the weekend unfold differently than planned