Qualla: Carnewas and Bedruthan Steps

Carnewas and Bedruthan Steps: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trevor Rickard, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is a Cornish folk tradition that a giant named Bedruthan used the rock stacks below the cliffs here as stepping stones to wade north across the bay. It is almost certainly nineteenth-century invention - a piece of romantic naming for Victorian tourists - but the stacks themselves look the part. Five great pinnacles of Middle Devonian slate stand offshore at low tide, sea-cut and weather-rounded, in a line that draws the eye north along the cliff toward Park Head. Carnewas, the Cornish name for the headland, means 'rock-pile of the summer dwelling'. The combined name has been on Ordnance Survey maps since the nineteenth century. The thing itself has been there for tens of millions of years.

Image: Trevor Rickard | CC BY-SA 2.0

Carnewas and Bedruthan Steps: Born of Slow Slates

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kernow Skies, CC BY-SA 3.0. The bedrock at Bedruthan is Middle Devonian slate, roughly 386 to 377 million years old, laid down as fine mud on the floor of a tropical sea that no longer exists. The slate beds run more than 2,000 metres thick here. Marine erosion has eaten away the weaker rock - softer mudsto...

Image: Kernow Skies | CC BY-SA 3.0

Carnewas and Bedruthan Steps: Three Forts and a Longstone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. People were watching this coast long before tourism. Bronze Age burial mounds sit on the headlands north of Bedruthan. Three Iron Age promontory forts crown the surrounding cliffs - Redcliff Castle directly overlooking the steps, another at Park Head a mile north, and a third at ...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Carnewas and Bedruthan Steps: Samaritan Island

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Worm That Turned, CC BY-SA 3.0. The stack closest to the southern end of the beach is called Samaritan Island. It is named for the Good Samaritan, a ship wrecked there in October 1846 with the loss of nine lives. One source dates the wreck to 1850, but the name and the dead are real either way. The signs at the...

Image: Worm That Turned | CC BY-SA 3.0

Carnewas and Bedruthan Steps: Dark Sky, Painter's Sky

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit allen watkin from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 2014 the area was granted Dark Sky discovery site status by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, an organisation that requires darkness, accessibility and a good unobstructed view of the Milky Way before it hands the title out. The clifftops here meet all three. Twen...

Image: allen watkin from London, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Carnewas and Bedruthan Steps: Closed Stairs, Open Cliffs

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Hawgood, CC BY-SA 2.0. A rockfall in February 2020 damaged the lower steps that allow access to the beach at low tide, and the stairway has been closed since. The Trust manages the cliffs above; the beach below is no longer reachable from the steps. For most visitors this does not matter - the view fro...

Image: David Hawgood | CC BY-SA 2.0