Short answer: From Chapel Porth or the Wheal Coates car park (TR5 0NT), the National Trust's Wheal Coates tin mining walk is a 1-mile dog-friendly loop past the famous clifftop engine houses, with steep zig-zags and stony bits. Back at Chapel Porth, the café's "hedgehog" is Cornish ice cream with clotted cream and crushed hazelnuts. Check tides: the beach becomes a narrow gully at high water.
If you only do one thing near St Agnes, make it this: the engine houses at Wheal Coates on the cliff edge, a walk down to Chapel Porth, and an ice cream at the bottom.
The engine houses date from the 1870s; mining at Wheal Coates began in 1802. The National Trust looks after them.
At low tide Chapel Porth opens into a long sandy beach. At high tide it's a narrow gully, and it's very easy to get cut off by the rising tide if you walk along the sand. Check tide times before you go. Access onto the beach is across uneven boulders.
The Chapel Porth Beach Café, in the car park, is famous for the "hedgehog": Cornish ice cream topped with clotted cream and crushed hazelnuts. It's run by a tenant, not the National Trust, and posts its opening times on Facebook; it's seasonal, so check in winter.
Banned 1 July to 31 August, 10am to 6pm; allowed the rest of the time.
Chapel Porth is a small National Trust car park (free for members) down a steep single-track lane, full early in summer. Wheal Coates car park is at the top. St Agnes parking.
Everything else: the St Agnes guide.
Times, prices and dates are the businesses' and organisers' to change — check before you travel. Spotted something we've got wrong? Tell us and we'll fix it.
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