Gorran Haven Cornwall
Gorran Haven is one of the most perfectly scaled and most authentic small fishing coves on the south Cornish coast, a community of granite and slate cottages around a small harbour on the bay between Dodman Point and the Roseland Peninsula whose combination of the working character, the excellent beach on the north side of the harbour and the relative lack of large-scale tourist development compared with more celebrated Cornish villages preserves a quality of genuine coastal community life that more visited places have lost. The village has been home to a fishing community since at least the medieval period and the boats that still work the bay for crab and lobster maintain a connection to this tradition.
The beach at Gorran Haven on the north side of the harbour, a sheltered arc of sand enclosed between the rocky headlands, provides excellent bathing in clean water and the combination of the beach and the harbour creates a compact coastal experience that contains everything that visitors seek from a Cornish coastal village without the scale that transforms charm into congestion. The harbour wall, from which crabbing is a popular activity for children, provides the social centre of the village on summer days.
The coastal path from Gorran Haven in both directions provides excellent walking on the south Cornish coast, the Dodman Point headland to the south providing one of the finest clifftop experiences on the south coast path and the route north toward the Roseland Peninsula passing through some of the most beautiful and least visited sections of the Cornish coast.