Camping and Swimming in Falmouth

Niki and I decided we needed an easy, cheap night away, and headed off on a mini girls’ camping trip to Falmouth!

Even though we only live about 20 minutes away, this was so fun and felt like we were on holiday, as we stayed at a campsite we’d never been to before. We both love camping and being outdoors, and instead of trying to find a date that both of us and our partners were all free, we decided to go just us two for the night!

✨ This is your sign to book a camping trip with your bestie for no reason other than that it’s basically an outdoors sleepover ✨

We knew we wanted somewhere easy and fairly close to home, and managed to book a pitch last minute on the Pitchup website at Penwarne Campsite, just outside of Falmouth. We went food shopping the night before and finished work early on the Friday to pack up the car and drive over.

The campsite is just outside the village of Mawnan Smith and is in one of our favourite areas of Cornwall, within walkable distance to the beautiful beach of Maenporth, and a 10 minute drive to our fave coves on Helford river, or to Falmouth that has all the bars, restaurants and cafes you need while you’re on holiday! Even though we live here it still felt fun to view our local area as tourists.

When we arrived, we were allowed to park up and pitch up wherever we liked – it’s basically a huge field but has a toilet/shower block, water, washing up and laundry facilities, and a little cafe and playground at the top. I love how natural it is other than that, so you can go wherever you like and if you get a secluded part of the field it really feels like you’re wild camping!

We set up Niki’s two man tent (it’s awesome, with a big sleeping area and living space out the front) with two single air mattresses, duvets, rugs and fairy lights to make it snug and cute, and made ourselves a tasty mojito to relax out in the sunshine.

For dinner, we opted for a picnic instead of a BBQ, and ended up having a huge spread between us! We played music and feasted, and then decided to go for an evening walk down to the beach for a swim.

It was about a 20-30 minute walk down to the Maenporth beach, and we both braved the water with just our bikinis on (we couldn’t be bothered to carry our wetsuits!), although full credit to Niki for going properly in (I only managed up to my waist).

There was a bit of drama with some cows in a field that we had to walk through to get back up to the campsite and ended up getting lost… but we were rescued by the lovely lady at the campsite at 10pm (don’t ask!). I’m not sure if she was the owner potentially but she was SO nice and we were so grateful to her for helping us out so late… honestly you wouldn’t believe we lived around these parts 😂.

We got back to our camp, ate sweets and chatted, and then snuggled up to sleep for the night.

There’s something about waking up in a tent to the sound of nature so close outside that I just love, especially when the sun is shining and it’s a lovely day outside. We unzipped the tent and laid outside as the sun came up and THAT is what I really live for when camping.

We got the stove out to cook up a sausage butty and a hot cup of coffee and sat outside just enjoying the Saturday morning calmness – we could even see the sea at Maenporth from where we set up our tent!

At around 10am we packed up our tent and our things and drove down to Swanpool (the next beach over from Maenporth) to spend the rest of the day on the beach. We had our wetsuits this time so we could spend much longer in the ocean, splashing around, jumping in from rocks and generally loving life in the sunshine.

It really was the nicest weekend and I highly encourage you to book a spontaneous camping trip soon for yourself, wherever you are!