Penwith Heritage Coast

Penwith Heritage Coast is a 50-kilometer (33 mile) coastal strip around the Penwith Peninsula, from the city of Penzance to the holiday resort of St. Ives. It combines the beauty of the cliff coast with a mild climate. Thanks to the bay current, the sea is exceptionally warm. For lovers of bathing and water sports there are many sandy, wide beaches with a gentle descent to the sea floor. Wandering along the coast offer many attractions to lovers of nature and history, being a combination of original nature and post-industrial landscape. The mining landscape of Cornwall was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2006.

A convenient way to learn about the natural assets and history of the Penwith peninsula coast is to take advantage of the nearly 30 km (17 miles) Cornwall Coast Path. The path, considered quite difficult and requiring good condition preparation, leads, among others by Porthmeor beach (considered one of the best in all of Cornwall), a settlement from the Bronze Age, next to gray seal colonies, through the Tregurthen cliff, where DH Lawrence (author of "Lady Chatterley's Lover"), numerous buildings of the former mines and the Kenidjack Valley, where there is a water wheel with a diameter of 20 meters.

Tin and copper in Cornwall were mined in ancient times, and then on a massive scale in the Middle Ages. In the nineteenth century, cornwall machinery buildings, equipped with high chimneys, became part of the Cornish landscape - more than half of all copper production in the world came from here. Mine-driven steam engines and high-pressure pumps manufactured in Cornwall were exported to many countries around the world. In the twentieth century mining dusk took place - the last mine was closed in 1998.