Bird watching hide

You'll find yourself crouched in a wooden shelter with binoculars trained on the Cornish coastline, and it's genuinely brilliant for catching sight of things you'd never spot from the clifftop. The hide itself is simple enough - walls with viewing ports, a roof to keep the worst of the weather off - but the real payoff is watching waders, gulls, and if you're lucky, something rarer drifting past. Penzance is close enough that you can pop down from town and be settled in within twenty minutes.

Walkers and keen birders get the most from this. Fair warning: you'll need patience. Some days the water feels empty; others you'll have your notebook full inside an hour. The light matters too - early morning or late afternoon tend to be when things are actually moving about. It's free to use, which makes it an easy add-on rather than something you need to commit time and money to.

If you're based at Roselands or Lands End just down the road, this works well as a morning activity before heading elsewhere. Kids might manage half an hour if they're genuinely into birds, but it's not a place to drag reluctant teenagers. The real draw is that you're essentially paying nothing to use proper binocular-friendly viewpoints rather than squinting into the wind from a public footpath.