How to Travel from London to Cornwall in Style

The journey from London to Cornwall takes between four and six hours, depending on how you travel and whether you stop to look at a 5,000-year-old stone circle on the way. Both options are good. One involves a train, a window seat and a glass of wine. The other involves Stonehenge. Either way, your Kernara guide is waiting at the other end.

First class on the Great Western Railway

Most of our guests take the train, and there’s a reason for that — the journey itself is part of the trip.

The Great Western Railway runs from London Paddington to Penzance, and in first class the seats are wide, the carriage is quiet and the meal service begins somewhere around Reading. You settle in with a coffee, and then the landscape starts to change. London’s grey suburbs give way to the green of Berkshire. By Somerset the hills are rolling. Through Devon the valleys deepen, the rivers widen and the fields slope toward the coast.

Then you cross the Tamar.

The Royal Albert Bridge — Brunel’s 1859 masterpiece — carries you from Devon into Cornwall, high above the water, and something shifts. The light is different. The sky is wider. The hedgerows are wilder. You are, unmistakably, somewhere else.

First class includes a full meal service — hot food, cold food, tea, coffee, wine, beer. The seats have tables, power outlets and enough legroom to stretch out and watch the countryside pass. The journey takes four to five hours, which is exactly long enough to read a chapter, eat lunch and arrive feeling like the holiday has already started.

Your guide meets you at the station. No taxis, no rental cars, no navigating unfamiliar roundabouts on the wrong side of the road. You step off the train and the week begins.

Private transfer via Stonehenge

If you’d rather travel by road — or if Stonehenge is on your list — a private transfer from London takes you west through Wiltshire, where a detour of an hour puts you face to face with the most famous stone circle on earth.

Stonehenge sits roughly on the route to Cornwall if you take the A303, and a stop of a couple of hours gives you time to walk among the outer stones, visit the exhibition centre and stand in a field in Wiltshire wondering how anyone moved 25-tonne sarsen stones from 25 miles away without a wheel. It is worth the stop. The scale of the thing is impossible to grasp from photographs.

From Stonehenge, the road continues west through the rolling farmland of Devon and into Cornwall. The drive is longer than the train — five to six hours including the stop — but the flexibility is its own reward. Your own vehicle, your own schedule, a chance to see the English countryside unfold at road level.

Before you travel

US and Canadian visitors need an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) to enter the UK. Apply online before you travel — it’s straightforward, but don’t leave it to the last minute.

However you arrive, the first thing you’ll notice is the air. Salt and gorse and something green and ancient that doesn’t have a name. Your guide will be there. Your bags will be taken care of. And the walk — the real reason you came — starts tomorrow.

The journey is the first chapter. Cornwall writes the rest.