Don’t look now, but Cornwall is facing a German invasion. The home of pasties, cream teas and white sands has never been more popular with the nation’s tourists, who flock to visit in their thousands every summer.
But it’s not just the sun, sea and sand that keeps them coming back for more. They’re following the trail of the late novelist Rosamunde Pilcher, as Meg Jorsh reports…
When marketing executive Shane Davison set out on a hiking trip to Cornwall, he expected to meet a mainly British crowd. But he soon found the balmy southwest is just as popular with European visitors.
The Londoner has spent the last few years gradually walking the length of the coast with his friend Marc. This time they started in Exmoor, then headed through Barnstaple, Clovelly, Hartland and Bude towards Crackington Haven.
And wherever they went, one thing was apparent. “Over years we’re seeing more and more tourists from European countries, but this year those from Germany were most notable,” he says.
“They were just having nice holidays with their kids. Talking to one family, they said the continent was just too hot and the coastline in the UK is stunning.”
But speaking to a local taxi driver, he found there’s more to the phenomenon than just the Cornish scenery. Shane adds: “He said there’s a popular German TV programme set in Cornwall and it’s down to that.”
The show in question is a series of 177 TV movies, based on the stories of Cornish novelist Rosamunde Pilcher. The first was a version of her 1971 romance The Day of the Storm, broadcast in 1993.
The films have since covered dozens of tales from her back catalogue, becoming a Sunday night fixture, with seven million viewers on channel ZDF. They also made Rosamunde one of Germany’s most popular writers.
The author, who sold around 15million books in the country, once told a German newspaper: “Reading should be like a holiday.” And despite her death in 2019, aged 94, she still attracts more than 350,000 German visitors to Cornwall every year.
According to Malcolm Bell, former CEO of Visit Cornwall, the shows – which are shot on location – act like “a billboard” for the picturesque county.
“It’s easy viewing and not really award-winning stuff. It’s comfort TV,” he says. “But it certainly does show off Cornwall rather well. They have these great big scene setting shots with drones.
“They do film a lot of exterior scenes, rather than studio shots. What it shows is that Cornwall exists and is a real place. That’s what a lot of German visitors come to see. They want to see where it was filmed.”
Speaking back in 2016, Marco Serafini, one of the directors on the movies, said the landscape was a big part of their appeal.
He added: “We like to shoot here because we can find the sea, very charming landscape and it is what she describes in her books, in her short stories. That’s what we want to see and what people, our audience in Germany wants to see.”
Cornwall’s top Rosamunde Pilcher locations
- Bedruthan Steps. Famed for its rock stacks and dramatic cliff-top views, this stretch of coast is often seen in flyover shots on the German TV show.
- Prideaux Place. An incredible 16 Pilcher films have been shot at this 16 th century house in Padstow. Of the 25,000 people who visit each year, 40% are said to be German tourists.
- St Michael’s Mount. This iconic rocky island, crowned by a medieval church and castle, was used as a filming location in British Pilcher films The Shell Seekers (1989) and Coming Home (1998).
- Lands End. The most westerly point of mainland England was used for scenes in The Day of the Storm (1993).
- Bodmin. This historic market town was one of the settings for Cliffs of Love (1999).
- Pencarrow House. This country house in Egloshayle, north Cornwall, featured as Benson Valley Winery in the 2011 Pilcher film English Wine. It also appeared in The Weekend (2000) and The Red Dress (1998).
- Lanhydrock House. Another Cornish country pile, near Bodmin, this one featured in Cliffs of Love (1999) and In Doubt For Love (2009).
- Lamorna. This picturesque village, four miles south of Penzance, appears in many UK and German adaptations of Pilcher’s novels. Nearby Lamorna Cove, and the hamlet of Mousehole, also show up in films including The Shell Seekers.