Fowey
Fowey is one of the finest and most completely realised small harbour towns in Cornwall, a historic port on the western shore of the Fowey estuary whose combination of the medieval and Tudor town houses cascading down to the waterfront, the active harbour with its large ships and small pleasure craft, the views across the estuary and the associations with Daphne du Maurier create one of the most rewarding and most atmospherically complete small port destinations in the southwest. Du Maurier lived at Menabilly, the Rashleigh estate behind Fowey, for twenty-five years and the landscape of the Fowey estuary permeates her most celebrated novels.
The town street descending from the church to the harbour, one of the narrowest and most characterful in Cornwall, passes buildings that range from the medieval period through to the Georgian in a compression of historical layers that reflects five centuries of continuous maritime trading prosperity. The Hall Walk on the east bank of the estuary, accessible by the Bodinnick ferry, provides the finest views of Fowey from the opposite shore and is the walk during which Kenneth Grahame, staying at Fowey in 1907, conceived the river and boat characters who became Rat, Mole and Toad in The Wind in the Willows.
The estuary of the Fowey is still used by large vessels carrying china clay from the St Austell area to markets worldwide, and the sight of a vessel of considerable size navigating the narrow wooded estuary while pleasure craft and the ferry go about their business in the same water creates one of the most characterful maritime scenes on the Cornish coast.