With not a single pirate in sight COLIN McALPIN and photographer BRENDA YOUNG explore the charm of Penzance and West Cornwall...

A POLICEMAN’S lot would be a much happier one if he booked into the quite magnificent Hotel Penzance when constabulary duty has been done.

Mention of pirates, policemen and duty will, of course, strike a happy note with fans of Gilbert and Sullivan for Penzance was the setting of one of their most popular comic operas (first performed in l879).

Penzance, with a climate that makes it one of Britain’s warmest places, is a charming, historic town, simply perfect as a base from which to explore the Western part of one of England’s most beautiful, and warm-hearted, counties, glorious Cornwall.

It is a busy, robust town offering great shopping and wining and dining. Built on a wide bay the town offers a breathtaking view of St. Michael’s Mount, the ancient island priory, fortress and Medieval castle reached across a causeway at low tide. Aside from Gilbert and Sullivan’s pirates, Penzance was the birthplace of  Sir Humphry Davy, inventor of the Miners’ Safety Lamp. His statue can be seen in front of the Market House.

And the bonus of Penzance as your base is that you don’t really require a car since public transport is amazingly efficient and surprisingly cheap … a three-hour Cornish Explorer round trip from the bus depot – right beside the railway station and the harbour in the heart of the town – costs £7 and for that you see such places as St. Ives, Morvah, the Geevor Mine, St. Just, Sennen Cove, Newlyn … and Lands End.

St. Ives is a seaside town famous for its artistic colony and for its branch of the Tate Gallery, but while Lands End is a ‘must do’ there is always the element of disappointment in seeing such famous places, that feeling of “is that it, then?”

But, of course, always there is a landscape dotted with inviting sandy beaches and those romantic and mysteriously iconic shells of a once great tin-mining industry; stark stone skeletons cast atop a windswept hill as a memorial to a long-lost way of life.

To read the rest of Colin McAplin's feature on his trip to Cornwall and see all the pictures, pick up a copy of Northern Ireland Travel News...

If you're having difficulty obtaining a regular copy of Northern Ireland Travel News, you can join our subscription list by calling the Travel News Office on 028 90666151.