Central Cornwall

Central Cornwall is not the destination most visitors have in mind when they book a Cornish holiday, but it contains some of the county's most significant attractions. Truro is the only city in Cornwall - a compact cathedral city with a Victorian indoor market, independent shops on Lemon Street, and the Royal Cornwall Museum. The Eden Project, south-east of Truro near St Austell, fills a former china clay pit with two vast biomes: the Rainforest Biome replicates a tropical rainforest, the Mediterranean Biome a warm temperate climate. It draws around a million visitors a year. The Lost Gardens of Heligan, 6 miles away at Mevagissey, are the other major garden attraction - 200 acres of Victorian walled garden and jungle valley, abandoned for decades and restored from 1990. The china clay industry left a distinctive white landscape around St Austell - the Cornish Alps, the local nickname for the waste tips - that is now being gradually reclaimed. The Camel Trail, Cornwall's most popular cycling route, begins at Padstow on the north coast and runs through Wadebridge and Bodmin to the fringe of Bodmin Moor. Central Cornwall makes sense as a base for anyone who wants to access both coasts without a long drive.