Padstow Holiday Guide for 2025

Padstow, famous for its harbour, Rick Sein, fresh dining and gorgeous beach has something for the whole family.

Rick Stein has a seafood restaurant and a take away here as well as a shop which tourists love to sample some of his famous fish and chips.

The harbour is a fantastic place with a great atmosphere to explore throughout the day or night, with lots of little shops in the narrow streets surrounding the harbour to explore.

There is a beach called St Georges Cove just half a mile away from the harbour as well and so much coastline to explore around the town.

Padstow is a famous fishing harbour, known for its beauty and working harbour as well as it’s world class cuisine. Home to a Michelin starred restaurant as well as some fantastic Rick Stein establishments, Padstow is a great way to sample some fabulous Cornish cuisine whilst soaking up that Cornish view.

Possibly even going back as far as 2500 BC, Padstow was a harbour since then. It is also thought that St Petroc, one of the Cornish saints, built a monastery here in the town, which was originally called Petroc Stow for this reason.

After Padstow was raided by the Vikings in 981 the monks from the monastery moved inland to Bodmin. Padstow became a fishing port and today its main trade is tourism. Padstow’s population today is around 3,000 but this grows substantially in the summer months each year.

The town itself is a small town so the best thing to do is to leave your car in one of the car parks rather than trying to park in the actual town itself. There is a large car park level with the town called the railway car park, this may be full during the summer depending on what time you arrive. There are other car parks at the top of the town that you can use too. There are buses that travel into Padstow from most towns too so you could do that for a day or night out, obviously check the time table because there won’t be too many in the evenings with it being a small town. There is no train station that comes into Padstow as the old track is now the Camel Trail that provides a fantastic coastal walk or cycle all the way up the coast.