Fowey

Wooded creeks branch off the estuary into silence, the tide swelling beneath overhanging oaks where herons stand motionless on the mud. Fowey is the town Daphne du Maurier made her own — a harbour sheltered so deeply from the open sea that the Atlantic feels like a rumour.

Fowey's deep-water harbour has mattered since the medieval period, when the Fowey Gallants — the town's privateering fleet — harassed French shipping across the Channel. Du Maurier lived at Menabilly, the hidden estate she transfigured into Rebecca's Manderley, and the town keeps her flame with an annual spring literary festival. The Hall Walk, a four-mile circuit crossing the estuary by ferry, follows a sixteenth-century path through oak woodland above Pont Pill creek, compressing the whole harbour into a single frame, while the 28-mile Saints Way pilgrimage route to Padstow starts at St Fimbarrus church. The Bodinnick ferry crossing takes about ninety seconds; the estuary is deep enough for ships yet compact enough to read in one glance; and Polkerris cove, a mile south, provides the sand when the tide bares the river mud.