Fans of Doc Martin already know the secret: the grumpy doctor’s village of Portwenn is a real place. It is Port Isaac, a working fishing village on the north Cornwall coast, and across the show’s run its harbour, slipway and steep granite lanes have stood in for Portwenn. The village is small enough to walk in 15 minutes, which means most of the filming locations sit within a few hundred metres of each other. Bring comfortable shoes - the lanes are steep and cobbled in places - and you can tick off the lot in a morning.
Here is where to find them, and how to plan a visit that the village can cope with.
Doc Martin’s surgery - Fern Cottage
The most recognisable building is the surgery. Doc Martin’s house and consulting room are filmed at Fern Cottage, which sits just past the harbour on the coast path heading towards Port Quin, looking back over the rooftops to the water below. It is the spot every fan wants a photo of. The cottage is a private holiday let rather than a museum, so the polite thing is to take your picture from the lane and leave whoever is staying there in peace.
The harbour and the Platt
The heart of Portwenn is the harbour and the Platt, the open slipway where the fishing boats are hauled up and where so many village scenes play out. At low tide the harbour drains to sand; at high tide the boats float in the basin. It is genuinely a working harbour, with shellfish landed here, so you will often see crab and lobster pots stacked along the wall. The Platt is also where the Fisherman’s Friends, the Port Isaac sea-shanty group, sing on summer evenings - the group’s own story became a feature film, and they remain very much a part of village life. The walk out along the harbour arm gives the view of the village that opens many episodes.
The Crab & Lobster - the Golden Lion
The show’s pub, the Crab & Lobster, is the Golden Lion, a real pub on the harbour front. It is a proper Cornish local with a terrace above the water, and it has been used for filming as well as appearing as itself. It makes an obvious stop for a pint after a circuit of the village. Nearby, the Liberal Club doubles as the village shop in the series.
The school - the Old School Hotel
Louisa’s school exterior is the Old School, which sits above the harbour and is now a small hotel - the Old School Hotel - where you can actually book a room with a view over the village. The classroom interiors for several series were filmed at Delabole, a few miles inland, so the building you see outside and the rooms inside are not always the same place, a common trick in television.
Port Gaverne and the wider village
Many exterior shots range beyond the harbour into the lanes around Roscarrock and down to Port Gaverne, the sheltered cove a short walk east of Port Isaac. Port Gaverne is quieter than the main village and worth the ten-minute stroll for the small shingle-and-sand beach and the rock pools at low tide. It is a good place to escape the crowds in high season while staying within the filming area.
While you are there
Port Isaac has become a serious food destination as well as a film set. Outlaw’s Fish Kitchen, Nathan Outlaw’s small harbourside restaurant, serves seafood landed yards away, and tables are worth booking ahead. Make a day of it by combining the village with the wider north coast: Tintagel and the clifftop ruins of Tintagel Castle, with their King Arthur legend, are about a 20-minute drive north, while the National Trust hamlet of Port Quin sits at the end of the coast path west of the village.
Getting there, parking and visiting responsibly
Port Isaac is tiny and hugely popular, and the lanes are too narrow and steep for casual parking. Use the main car park on New Road (PL29 3SB) as you come into the village and walk the 15 to 20 minutes down to the harbour - do not try to drive into the centre. Allow around two and a half hours to see the locations, take photographs and walk back up, or longer if you stop for lunch. Visiting outside the middle of a summer day makes for a calmer experience. The village is a real community, not a theme park, and it rewards a quiet, respectful wander.
Plan your Doc Martin visit
You can see every location on foot in a morning. Base yourself in Port Isaac to wake up in Portwenn itself, though space is tight and it books up well ahead - there are holiday cottages in Port Isaac ranging from harbour-view fishermen’s cottages to larger houses up the hill. For more choice and easier parking, Padstow and Wadebridge are both a short drive away and put the Camel Estuary and the Camel Trail cycle path within reach as well, while Tintagel makes a good north-coast base if you want castles and coast path alongside your filming-location tour.
