EXCITING EVENTS IN 2025

Here’s our roundup of the top proper Cornish days out that are worth a visit in 2025.

Feast Days and Saint’s Days 2025

Dancing through St Ives

St Ives Feast Day: February 10th. Celebrates the consecration of the Parish Church of St Eia in 1434, featuring the ancient game of Hurling the Silver Ball.

The day begins with a procession of musicians and schoolchildren through the town’s narrow cobbled streets. The children wear crowns of ivy in remembrance of St Eia, the saint of St Ives, who crossed the sea from Ireland on a boat made of ivy.

At the well of St Ia, overlooking Porthmeor beach, the parish priest blesses a silver ball. The main event, Hurling the Silver Ball, takes place at St Ia Parish Church yard. The town’s Mayor hurls the silver ball into the crowd on the sands below, shouting “guare wheg ya guare teg” (fair play is good play in Cornish).

The game, dating back at least a thousand years, is played by children and teenagers who scramble and run around town to keep possession of the ball. The child who keeps the ball returns it to the Mayor at noon for a reward.

St Piran’s Day: March 5th. Celebrated across Cornwall with parades, processions, and festivities in honor of St Piran, the patron saint of tin miners.

Helston Flora Day: May 8th. Townsfolk will be dancing through the streets adorned with greenery and flowers to mark the end of winter and the arrival of spring. With a fair and high spirits this is a great Cornish event.

Golowan Festival, Penzance Harbour

Golowan Festival: June 20th-29th. Golowan is Penzance’s 10-day festival of arts, performances, culture, fireworks and parades celebrating midsummer.

Montol Festival: December 21st. Montol Festival is a traditional, colorful Celtic-meets-Christmas midwinter festival in Penzance. It features processions, guising (costume-wearing), and mask-making workshops. The festival culminates on Montol Eve with community singing, lantern parades, and traditional Mummers plays.

Tom Bawcock’s Eve: December 23rd. Celebrated in Mousehole with the tradition of eating Stargazy Pie. Why not check out the fantastic harbour Christmas lights too.

Food and Drink Festivals 2025

St Ives Food Festival – credit Lizzie Churchill

Don’t miss the St Ives Food and Drink Festival 16th-18th May. On Porthminster Beach, with fab food, chef demos, live music and this year even a beach spa. It’s our favourite Cornish food festival.

Others worth tasting are the Porthleven Food Festival 2nd-4th May, the Falmouth Food Festival 23rd-26th May and the Falmouth Oyster Festival 9th-12th October.

Liberty horses demo – Royal Cornwall Show 2024

Royal Cornwall Show

If you want to dive right into rural life, the Royal Cornwall Show, June 5th to 7th, is an incredible event celebrating the best of Cornish agriculture, crafts, food & drink, and a packed live programme of entertainment for everyone to enjoy!

The main and showing rings have a packed programme of prize-winning livestock parades, stunt demos and equestrian events.

There are music and dance stages throughout the showground, food and drink stalls, a Food and Farming Pavillion, tractors and farm vehicles, a funfair, vintage rally and steam fair, Flower Show, small animal and bird marquees, rare breeds, Countryside Village, Woodlands Area.

Rare breeds at the Royal Cornwall Show

Hooray & Up She Rises!

Heave ho, the Falmouth Sea Shanty Festival runs from June 13th to 15th – the largest free nautical music and song festival, celebrating Falmouth’s seafaring heritage.

ACapella Moonshine – Falmouth based shanty singers

Heave away, haul away…to the St Ives Shanty Shout, which runs in various venues around St Ives on 21st & 22nd November.

St Ives September Festival 2025

13th-27th September: The St Ives September Festival is an exciting 15 days of music and arts including poetry, films, exhibitions, talks, walks, workshops, Open Studios and so much more . . .with free admission to many of the events.

Book a stay at Beersheba Farm

Want to come and enjoy an event – take a look at our availability online.

Creepy Tales from Cornwall

As Halloween approaches, it’s time for spooky stories around the fire. We’ve been sitting in the wood after dark, sharing creepy tales about Cornish myths and mysteries. Here are a few of our favourites…

Lost at sea

The coast around West Cornwall is a wild and dangerous place, and with so many lives lost at sea, we’re not surprised that there are so many reports of hauntings. There are tales of bells tolling inland to warn of impending doom at sea, of ghostly lights on clifftops, of the sound of barrels being dragged by long-dead smugglers…

One of our favourite Cornish ghost stories is the ship that sails close to Porthcurno, before vanishing like smoke in the mist. The ghost ship has been sailing by Porthcurno since the seventeenth century, and has also been spotted further west along the coast. Read more chilling tales from Bays of the Dead if you dare!

Local sea myths to explore include the famous Mermaid of Zennor (look out for her carving in the village church) and Morgawr, a terrifying water monster whose name translates as “sea giant”.

Spooky tip: explore the creepy caves at Porthgwarra, and visit the old coastal churches and engine houses that are dotted around the Penwith peninsula.

Wreck of the Jeune Hortense 1888, in front of St Michael’s Mount

Myths on the moors

Moors are naturally places of legends, and our local landscape is no exception. Around Beersheba, our moors are said to be the haunt of giants.

A (very) local legend is that Cormoran had an ongoing battle with a giant from nearby Trencrom. They threw boulders at each other, which still litter the landscape, including the stone at our neighbouring Standing Stones Stables. Cormoran eventually met his match, when he was defeated by Jack the Giant Killer and imprisoned in a well on St Michael’s Mount.

Spooky tip: Walk in the steps of giants. Hike the St Michael’s Way, which you can pick up at Beersheba and takes you over Trencrom to the Mount. Or, take a drive to Cornwall’s most famous moor, Bodmin, home to the legendary Beast and the super-spooky Jamaica Inn.

Sketch of the Cornish Knockers by Marc Potts

Sounds underground…

One of the most hair-raising hauntings in West Cornwall happens underground, in the old mines. The knockers are small, human-like figures who live in the mines – (see the Knockers beautifully brought to life by Marc Potts illustrations here). They’re either very specific members of the faerie clan or the ghosts of dead miners, depending on whose version you read.

The knockers also vary in character from mine to mine and story to story. Sometimes they’re benevolent, knocking to warn of danger or to lead miners to rich seams of tin. In some legends, they’re the ones that cause the danger, by knocking away the supports. Occasionally, they’re simply mischievous, blowing out candles and stealing miners’ crowst (food).

Whichever version you believe, the idea of ghostly knocking underground is enough to keep you safely on grass (the surface) forever! The miners knew to respect the knockers, leaving them bits of pasty as a practical insurance policy against harm.

Spooky tip: take the underground tour at Geevor Tin Mine. You may not encounter a knocker, but you’ll experience first-hand the dark, dank atmosphere of the old mines.

Holidays in spooky St Ives

If you’re coming to St Ives this autumn, make sure you take a walk through our town after dark. With its cobbled lanes, narrow passageways and old fishing cellars, St Ives is a spooky place… To find out more about the ghosts of St Ives, book your place on one of Shanty Baba’s famous lantern ghost walks.

Come and stay in Brea Cottage this autumn or winter. Shut out the moors, huddle up to the wood burner, and share some scary stories…

Mythology