Category × County
12 Best Adventure Days Out In Cornwall
Twelve entries, but count the distinct places before you plan. Three of them — Newquay Mystery Treasure Trail, Bude Mystery Treasure Trail and Porthleven Spy Mission Treasure Trail — are self-guided walking trails from the same family of products, dropped into different towns. They are a good thing and worth doing, but they are one idea repeated, not three separate destinations. Behind them Cornwall has the real variety: Geevor Tin Mine and Carnglaze Caverns underground, Hangloose Adventure Eden and Via Ferrata Cornwall high up and harnessed, and Enigma Escape Cornwall indoors and puzzle-shaped. Those five are the ones that fill an afternoon on their own.
Top adventure days out in Cornwall
Showing 1–12 of 12
Activity CentresVia Ferrata Cornwall
Indoor PlayEnigma Escape Cornwall
AdventureGeevor Tin Mine
Activity CentresHangloose Adventure Eden
AdventureCarnglaze Caverns
AdventureBude Mystery Treasure Trail
AdventureThe Padstow Mystery Treasure Trail
AdventurePorthleven Spy Mission Treasure Trail
AdventureLooe Mystery Treasure Trail
AdventureFalmouth Mystery Treasure Trail
AdventurePoldark Mine & Rural Open Air Museum
AdventureNewquay Mystery Treasure Trail
Age sorts this list cleanly. The trails need a reader, so they start working at about seven and are at their best from eight to eleven. The mines and caverns take anyone who can walk and hold an older child too. The high and harnessed entries have minimums that rule out primary-age children entirely, and the escape room wants a child old enough to think in a group under time pressure, which is usually ten and up. Choose by the youngest in your party and you will not be disappointed.
Adventure Days Out in Cornwall: FAQs
Are the treasure trails worth doing?
They are, with the right child. A self-guided trail turns a walk round a town into a task, and a seven-to-eleven-year-old who can read the clues will drag you round with real purpose. Younger children lose the thread and end up being carried, and teenagers tend to decide it is beneath them within ten minutes. What you should not do is book two of them in a week, because the format is the same wherever it is set and the novelty is the point.
Where can a five- or six-year-old join in?
Geevor Tin Mine and Carnglaze Caverns are the best bets, since both are places to walk into and look at rather than activities to be tall enough for. Going underground is exciting at that age in a way that needs no explaining. The high-level attractions are out — Via Ferrata Cornwall and Hangloose Adventure Eden exist for older children and adults, and a five-year-old brought along will spend the visit watching. If your children straddle that line, plan for one adult to sit out.
What is the escape room like with children?
Enigma Escape Cornwall is filed under indoor play and is the one wet-weather entry on this list of any substance, which alone makes it worth knowing about in Cornwall. Escape rooms work from roughly ten upwards, when a child can hold several clues in their head at once and cope with a countdown without becoming upset. Below that they are usually a room where the adults solve everything, which is not much of a birthday treat for the child it was booked for.
So how many real days out are on this list?
About five or six once you have collapsed the repeated trails into one idea, and that is a fair number for a county where most families are here for the coast anyway. The trails remain useful as filler for an afternoon in a town, and they cover parts of Cornwall the big attractions do not reach. Just do not read twelve as twelve distinct places, because you will build a week's itinerary that keeps handing you the same activity.