Planning a day out? Fancy a change from the beach? Or maybe the weather has taken a turn for the worse and you're looking for something under cover to keep the kids entertained. Here you'll find some ideas for inspiring days out whatever the weather.

Things to do, places to see

Cornwall's mild year-round climate makes it the ideal location for Gardens. Exotic trees and plants from around the world found their way into Cornish country estate gardens like Heligan, Trevarno and Trebah, where you can see them today. And, with more than a million species of plants, Cornwall's most famous visitor attraction, the Eden Project, is hard to beat.

You can find out more about Cornwall's history and culture at the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro, or see where the world's first undersea cables were laid at Porthcurno, a pivotal wartime communications centre and forerunner of today's Internet.

Perhaps because of its remoteness, communications technology figures large in Cornwall's recent history; at Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station you can see the massive dish that received the first live transatlantic TV broadcast from the US.

In 2007 Cornwall's mining landscape was awarded World Heritage site status. Examples of Cornwall's mining heritage can be found virtually everywhere you look, but some gems, like Wheal Bassett, are less obvious. You can find the exact location of all the sites on Lookaround Cornwall on the Cornwall Map