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Check it out here: Our Cornwall Motorhome Adventure - Part 1 | Godrevy Park Camc Review + St Ives Day Out
A year ago almost to the day, we came down to Cornwall, stayed in an Airbnb, watched Andy's sister roll up in a motorhome and thought: we want some of that. Twelve months later we're back in the exact same corner of the country, except this time we've got our own van, our dog and our experience.
There's a bit of an emotional wrinkle to this one though. This is our last trip in our van - VANessa, so we've come back to the place that started the whole thing, in the van that the whole thing started with, which felt a bit too neat to be an accident.
Breaking the journey: our first ever night off grid
We're based in the Midlands, and Cornwall is a solid six to six and a half hours away. Doing that in one hit means a 4am alarm and arriving at the site already fed up, so this time we split it.
We stopped overnight at Gloucester Services on the M5, which is genuinely our favourite service station in the country and, as it turns out, a cracking overnight stop. It was also our first ever night off grid, and we handled it a lot better than we expected to.
A few things worth knowing if you fancy the same:
- There's a dedicated motorhome parking area. We got the last space, but when that fills up they open the main car park for overnight stays anyway, so you're very unlikely to be turned away.
- The main building is now open 24 hours. Toilets and showers all night, and the showers are free.
- The farm shop and restaurant close, but the quick service food counter and the petrol station stay open round the clock.
- Plenty of people were parked up in and around the lorry bays too. It's a well used stop, not a sneaky one.
The next morning we set off for Cornwall. What should have been two and a half to three hours turned into nearly four, thanks to the usual crawl through Bristol and Weston-super-Mare. Standard. Once you're past that it's just one long road and a lot of patience.
Godrevy Park, Hayle
Our base for the first half of the week was Godrevy Park Caravan and Motorhome Club campsite near Hayle, about £170 for three nights. It was absolutely rammed, the fullest site we've ever stayed on, and we were braced for a noisy few days.
We were completely wrong. It was one of the most relaxed evenings we've had on a site. Barbecues going everywhere, the smell drifting round the whole place, three or four families up the road all playing those bean bag and skittle games together. Proper old school and nobody being a nuisance.
The site itself is a mixed bag though, and we'll come to the numbers in a minute.
The warden moment that saved their score
We were on a shared electric post with three pitches on it. Somebody else's plug packed in, and the warden came over, explained he'd have to unplug us to fit a splitter, apologised, kept us updated and then came back later to check everything was still fine. It wasn't our problem, it wasn't his fault, and he handled it perfectly. That one interaction pushed the score up rather than down.
The one way system that cost us a tank of diesel (ok, dramatic - but it was a graft)
Here's the flip side. The site runs a one way system, which we completely understand because the internal roads are narrow. But the service point is positioned so badly that from our pitch we had to drive the entire loop, twice, when leaving. We circled that park four times over the stay purely for water and exiting.
There's a wide stretch of road in the middle that could easily be made two way, or they could put in a second service point on the other side. Either would fix it. As it stands, access is the weakest thing about the site by a mile.
Getting in isn't brilliant either. There's a hill up to the entrance, and the approach lane has overgrown trees that will happily scrape down the side of your van. That last bit is a council issue rather than the site's, but it's worth knowing before you commit.
Toilets: not enough of them
One toilet block with three cubicles for a site that size doesn't work in August. There were seven people in the queue at one point. The showers are the opposite problem: eight of them, always free, genuinely good. Our only gripes were scalding your back on the pipe if you turn round, and the temperature dropping when someone flushes nearby. We'll take a lever handle over a push button any day though.
Cleanliness, on the other hand, was outstanding. They close the toilet block in sections rather than shutting the whole thing, so there's always somewhere to go. We'd never seen that before and it's such an obvious win. The maintenance lad was out pruning and picking up litter twice in one day. Small team, everybody pitching in, spotless.
Review time: the scores
Gloucester Services, M5 (rated as an overnight stopover, not a campsite)
- Amenities: 4
- Facilities: 4
- Location: 5
- Water pressure: N/A
- Cleanliness: 4
- Access: 5
- Staff: 4
- Toilets: 4
- Showers: 4
- Overall: 4 out of 5
Fair warning, a lot of the usual boxes are N/A here. No electric hook up, no toilet or water disposal, no pitches. It's a car park with brilliant facilities attached. But if you're coming from anywhere north of Birmingham and heading to Cornwall, it's the perfect halfway break, and it was spotless despite being heaving.
Godrevy Park Caravan and Motorhome Club, Hayle
- Amenities: 3
- Facilities: 3
- Location: 3
- Water pressure: 3
- Cleanliness: 5
- Access: 2
- Staff: 5
- Toilets: 3
- Showers: 4
- Overall: 3 out of 5
What's there is good. There just isn't a lot there. You can't walk to a shop or a pub, and filling up with water took ages. The saving grace is a bus stop directly outside the site, which we used a lot.
Would we go back? Honestly, no. There are better sites in that area and we'd try one of those next. That's not a slating, it's just that we've stayed at Club sites like Scarborough that were a genuine five out of five, and the gap between the best and the average is bigger than you'd expect for the same membership fee.
Top tip: download CityMapper
If you're heading to a rural site and you're nervous about public transport, get CityMapper on your phone. Keiran used it for years commuting into London, but it came into its own down here. It planned the route, told us exactly which stop to use, and tracked the actual bus live on the map so we knew when to walk down. The Cornish buses were on time, modern, clean and air conditioned, which was a very pleasant surprise.
Hayle and St Ives
Hayle is lovely for a wander, a couple of nice shops and a great little bar down by the beach, but we wouldn't build a full day around it. Do half a day and move on. The one thing you should do is join the enormous queue at Philp's Famous Pasties. We didn't, and we regretted it the second we walked past and smelled it.
St Ives, though. St Ives is a ten out of ten.
We walked out along the harbour wall past St Leonard's Chapel, the old fishermen's chapel, towards the lighthouse. The sea was crystal clear, the sort of water you'd expect in the Med and absolutely not in Britain. And then, between two boats in the harbour, a seal. First one either of us has ever seen in the wild. Made the entire trip.
Two practical notes for St Ives:
- Motorhomes are prohibited in the town. Honestly, you wouldn't want to take one down there anyway. Park up and get the bus.
- No dogs on the harbour wall or the pier. It's a working fishing port, so we think it's a hygiene and safety rule rather than an anti dog one, but it does mean one of you waits with the dog if you want to walk to the lighthouse.
We finished up in the Golden Lion, which is a proper pub, old world but sensibly refurbished.
Keiran's fun fact: why the pasty crust exists
The Cornish pasty was made for the tin miners. They'd be underground for hours on end and they missed a proper hearty home cooked meal, so meat, potato, onion and swede went into pastry so it could go down the mine with them. The thick crimped crust wasn't for eating. It was a handle, so a miner could hold his food with filthy hands, eat the middle, and then throw the crust away with all the grime on it. These days we eat the crust, which the miners would probably find hilarious.
The big news: a new van, and a licence problem
Back in October 2025 we went to the NEC show for the first time ever, saw one particular motorhome and immediately knew. Fixed bed, air conditioning, eight metres long instead of VANessa's six. We're not telling you the model yet, but have a guess in the comments.
There's nothing wrong with VANessa, by the way. Nothing at all. She's just a starter van, and we've now started. If you like putting the bed up and down every night and converting the lounge back and forth, she's brilliant. We've decided we'd rather not.
Here's the bit that might actually save you a headache, because it caught us completely off guard.
A standard motorhome is 3,500kg and anyone with a normal category B driving licence can drive it. Our new one has been up-plated to 4,100kg because of everything the previous owner had fitted to it, air conditioning included. That means it needs a C1 licence - which we don't yet have.
We looked at down-plating it back to 3.5 tonnes to get round the problem. We rang the DVSA and the guy there was genuinely excellent about it. He explained they can down-plate it easily, but then we'd have to go through the whole up-plating process again later, and his advice was to just put it in storage until the C1 is sorted.
He was right, because down-plating would have been a disaster anyway. At 3.5 tonnes that van has roughly 100kg of payload once you account for all the extras. Two of us and a quarter tank of diesel and we're already overweight. Up-plated, it works. So it's going into storage while we get the C1 done.
Three things to check before you buy
- Check the plate, not the brochure or expectations. Factory extras and previous owner modifications can push a van over 3,500kg. The V5 and the manufacturer's plate tell you the truth.
- Work out the real payload. A 4.1 tonne van down-plated to 3.5 might leave you with almost nothing to load. Weigh yourselves, your water, your gear and your fuel honestly.
- Ring the DVSA. There's a lot of contradictory information online about C1 versus full HGV entitlement. Ten minutes on the phone cleared it up for us far quicker than an evening of forum reading.
We're going to do a separate video and post on getting the C1, theory test and practical, once we've been through it. If there's something specific you want covering, tell us and we'll make sure it's in there.
Part 2 of this trip is coming
This is the longest trip we've ever done, and there was no way to cram it into one video without boring everyone senseless. So for the first time ever we're splitting it. Part 2 picks up at Wooda Farm Holiday Park in Bude, where Andy's mum and sister were waiting for us, along with our dog Jimmy's mate Harvey. It's a family tradition to go to Bude every year, and the site is stunning, so there's plenty to show you.
Jimmy, meanwhile, has spent this entire trip flat out next to the fan. It's the first time we've ever been away in weather like this (If you don't know, the UK has had repeated heatwaves for the last few weeks). Normally our videos are grey, drizzly and cold. Three and a half months without proper rain has been a novelty for us and absolutely not for the dog.
Watch Part 1 on YouTube: Our Cornwall Motorhome Adventure - Part 1 | Godrevy Park Camc Review + St Ives Day Out
Been to Godrevy Park or got a better Cornwall site to recommend? Log it in MAMM and leave us a review, we're always after somewhere new to try.