How Three Explorers Built a Guide to the Real Cornwall
We’re Jay, Nikki, and our daughter Evie — and we live in Cornwall.
Not the Cornwall of glossy brochures and drone shots, but the real one. The one where you reverse for half a mile down a hedge-lined lane because a tractor has right of way. Where the sun is shining at home but Golitha Falls has summoned its own personal rain cloud. Where the best pasty you’ve ever eaten comes from a hole-in-the-wall you’d walk straight past if a local hadn’t told you.
That’s the Cornwall we know. And that’s the Cornwall we wanted to share.
From family adventures to a proper guide
Secrets of Cornwall started as a family project — a blog where we scribbled down the places we’d discovered on our weekend adventures. A hidden waterfall. A fishing village frozen in time. An ice cream so good we genuinely talked about it for days afterwards.
Evie would hunt for treasure in river beds. Nikki would find the best lunch spot. Jay would be glued to his camera. It was a system that worked.
But we kept getting the same question from friends, family, and visitors: “Where should we actually go in Cornwall?” Not the obvious places — the real ones. The beach that locals keep quiet about. The cafe tucked behind the harbour. The walk where you won’t see another soul.
So we built something to answer that question properly.
What Secrets of Cornwall is today
We’ve grown from a handful of blog posts into a full Cornwall discovery platform. Live surf reports, real-time tide times, an interactive map of our favourite places, walking routes, events, and a rather opinionated AI guide called Ask Cornwall who knows every cove in the county.
Every place on this site has been visited, vetted, or recommended by people who actually live here. We don’t do press trips or paid reviews — if it’s on Secrets of Cornwall, it’s because we genuinely think it’s worth your time.
We cover the whole county, from the wild Atlantic surf of Fistral to the quiet creeks of the Roseland, from the art galleries of St Ives to the smuggling harbours of Polperro. Whether you’re a first-time visitor planning a week in Cornwall or a local looking for something new on a rainy Sunday, we’ve built this for you.
Built by locals, powered by pasties
We’re a small family operation, not a faceless travel corporation. Jay runs the site through his agency Sharkfin Media. Nikki keeps the editorial honest. Evie keeps us both in check and continues to find treasure in the most unlikely places.
If you’d like to say hello, suggest a place we’ve missed, or just argue about which beach is best, drop us a line at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.
And if you want Cornwall’s best secrets delivered to your inbox, join our newsletter — no spam, just the good stuff.
Secrets of Cornwall — built by locals, loved by visitors.