Cubert: The Saint, Holywell Bay and Getting There from Newquay

Cubert is a village and civil parish inland from the coast south-southwest of Newquay — Egloskubert in Cornish, the parish Pluw Gubert. It is a church village and little else, dominated by the spire of St Cubert’s, a 13th-century church largely renovated in the 15th. The hamlets of Tresean, Treveal, Trevemper, Treworgans and Ellenglaze share the parish.

The straight-line distance from Newquay is 4.8 km. Most people who make the trip are not going to the village but to Holywell Bay, the beach on the parish coast, which takes its name from a well dedicated to the same saint.

Sort one thing out before you set off: there are two wells here, only one is the one the bay is named after, and the one everybody photographs sits in a sea cave that the tide shuts for most of the day.

The beach, the stream and the walk in

Holywell Bay carries 4.8 from 1,107 Google reviews; a separate beach-pavilion listing at 4.9 from 91 is too small a sample to weigh against it. Reviewers describe a wide, shallow beach that changes underfoot as you cross it: a visitor in July 2026 wrote, “Lovely beach. Mix of dry sand and short grass, changing to wet sand as you reach the sea.” A visitor in June 2026 described towering dunes and twin rocks offshore known as Gull Rocks.

The walk in is part of it. A visitor in August 2025 set it out: “A short walk to the beach, past a lovely pub and over a small bridge. A stream runs along the side of the beach down to the sea.” The same visitor added the detail that matters with children: “Toilets are the other side of the road from the pub, so a bit of a walk if you need them from the beach.”

Low tide opens the place up: a visitor in August 2026 called it a “Lovely place to go for an evening stroll whilst the tide is out”. At high water there is less of everything.

Parking, and the two car parks that are not the same

This is the warning reviewers repeat. A visitor in July 2026 wrote, “Just be careful when parking, choose the National Trust car park if you can, the Gull Rocks Inn car park has a strict automated camera enforcement for parking.” That visitor paid, mistyped a registration at the machine and was fined anyway, taking the blame for it — but the two car parks plainly run on different terms, and that one enforces automatically. Space is finite as well: reviewers report the car park filling through the early afternoon in summer, so an early or a late arrival beats the middle of the day.

The well in the cave and the well inland

The bay is named for a medieval holy well dedicated to St Cubert, and that well is not on the beach: it sits halfway between the village and the coast. A visitor in April 2026 noted that “There is a proper Holy Well at the golf course further inland.”

The one people go to see is different: a natural well in the rock inside a cave at the north end of the beach, which 19th-century romanticists liked to think was the origin of the name Holywell. Access is two hours before and two hours after low tide, and no more — reviewers put it plainly. A visitor in August 2025 wrote, “Nice. Accessible only during low tide.” A visitor in April 2026 was more exact: “the well is not accessible unless the tide is far out.” The listing carries 4.8 from 152 Google reviews.

The name on the map is wrong, too: Google lists the site as St. Cuthbert’s Cave. A visitor in November 2025, rating it three stars for that reason alone, wrote, “Should in fact be St. Cubert’s cave (not Cuthbert) but for some reason Google does not allow editing of this site,” adding that “Cuthbert was a Northumbrian saint.” Village, church and well are named for Cubert, a Welsh missionary. That reviewer still called it a beautiful cave.

Inland, Cubert Commons is listed as a park at 4.8 from 26 Google reviews, too few to mean much.

A Welsh missionary, a whitewashed wall and a wrestler

Saint Cubert came to this part of Cornwall as a companion of Saint Carannog, one of a band of Welsh missionaries. Gilbert H. Doble, reading the “Vita Carantoci” and the “Léon Breviary”, concluded that Carannog led the group and Cubert was among his followers. Carannog went on to Brittany, where the district around Léon still carries dedications from these missionaries; Cubert returned to Wales as abbot of his monastery, dying in 775 according to the Welsh chronicles. His feast is kept on the Sunday following 4 October.

The village was once called St Cubert. It lost the prefix in the 16th or 17th century, at the same time as the churchwardens whitewashed over the figure of St Cubert, dressed as an abbot, on the inside wall of the church. On early maps the name appears as St Kibberd, which may be what a visiting cartographer heard when he asked a local what the place was called.

A mile east of the village, near the Newquay crossroads, the four parishes of St Cubert, Crantock, St Newlyn East and Perranzabuloe meet. The chapel of St Nectan stood there, and on certain feasts the relics of the four parishes’ patron saints were carried to it in procession; its foundations came to light when the road was widened in 1970. The parish also produced a champion Cornish wrestler, Thomas Hosken, who beat the champion of England, Lyttelton Weynorth, in the 1600s and was called “the strongest man in the county.”

Getting there from Newquay

This is a road journey. The pack behind this page establishes no bus service between Newquay and either Cubert or Holywell, so plan on driving, and plan on the parking above rather than on finding a space when you arrive.

Two large holiday parks sit on this stretch of coast: Trevornick Holiday Park at Holywell, 4.8 km from the Newquay centre and rated 4.5 from 1,024 Google reviews, and Parkdean Resorts Holywell Bay Holiday Park at 5.5 km, 4.3 from 1,580.

However you come, check the tide table first. Four hours around low water is the whole window for the cave; outside it there is sand, a stream and a pub, and no well.