Harlyn Bay

This is by far our favourite beach , it’s beautiful as are the other beaches on this part of the Cornish coast
Also dog friendly.

Having holidayed in Cornwall many times over many years, we’ve only discovered Harlyn recently after changing our base from Falmouth to Camelford.

We love Harlyn as there’s always a bit of beach to run our Sprocker Spaniel, even at high tide.

The car parking is reasonably priced (but patrolled by a very effective parking attendant so make sure you don’t over-run) and there’s plenty of it. Be aware that when the flat car park next to the beach is full, the rest is on the adjoining hillside so access for less mobile people may be an issue unless you drop off and then go park.

There’s another great Beach Box cafe with some outdoor seating for a snack or hot/cold (non-alcoholic) drink and in high season an ice cream van sets up on the beach.

There are toilets in a block on the other side of the road from the entrance to the beach car park.

The beach itself widens as the tide goes out giving plenty of room for visitors to spread out. A shallow freshwater stream crosses the beach at the top end so you may need to wade across to reach the sea-side.

All in all, it’s a great beach for an all-day excursion or just an hour with the dog in the evening.

Beautiful beach but terrible car park- They take photos of you entering and leaving and send you fines for overstaying as they don’t take into account the fact that you have to cross two fields and queue to pay for parking. Avoid it at all possible.

Harlyn is a lovely beach but unfortunately hopelessly overcrowded in August. Maybe it is better at low tide. We spent an hour there during high tide and left because it was much to full to relax and enjoy the beauty of the landscape. .

We’ve been coming here for the last 25yrs and didn’t recognise the car park end on our recent visit. The Harlyn Inn has been demolished, making way for luxury accommodation!
The car park is now machined with increased prices, and the snack hut is now the Beach Box ripoff cafe.
We had a beautiful day on the beach with a walk along the headland to Mother Ivy’s bay. On our return we decided to try the new (ish) Beach Box Cafe….Don’t bother, totally overpriced and very rude staff, they got our order wrong and there was no apology, just a rude grunt when we kindly asked where the rest of our order was?
Not a sorry, please or thank you, let alone a smile in sight.
Maybe the City dwellers that have descended on this beautiful part of the coast are used to such rudeness, but for people like us that actually live in Cornwall, well….it’s just plain ripping off the locals and down right rude!
And they wonder why we don’t like Emmets & Grockles!

You may want to keep dogs on a lead, ours was attacked by a lose dog. Also the roads are narrow which people bomb down in their overpriced, ostentatious Land/Range Rovers, inconsiderate of human life. We were nearly killed by some idiot who looked like Richard Branson (club 33) who just smiled at us. If you want some stress, get yourself down!

Saw lots of lovely reviews so we were keen to go. What a disappointment. Beach is too small at anything other than low tide for the hundreds of families and dogs. Would never go again in summer. Holywell beach knocks harlyn out of the water every day of the week.