German tourists are flocking to Cornwall in record numbers, drawn by the landscape featured in a popular German TV series based on Rosamunde Pilcher's novels. Marketing executive Shane Davison, who has been hiking the Cornish coast with his friend Marc Lamour, noticed a significant increase in German visitors this year.
“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.”
The German TV Phenomenon
A local taxi driver told Davison that the influx is down to a popular German TV programme set in Cornwall. The show 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 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 15 million books in the country, once told a German newspaper: “Reading should be like a holiday.” Despite her death in 2019, aged 94, she still attracts more than 350,000 German visitors to Cornwall every year.
Cornwall as a 'Billboard'
Malcolm Bell, former CEO of Visit Cornwall, says 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.”
Key Filming Locations
Marco Serafini, one of the directors on the movies, said in 2016 that the landscape was a big part of the appeal. “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.”
Top filming locations include Bedruthan Steps, known for its rock stacks and dramatic cliff-top views, and Prideaux Place, a 16th-century house in Padstow where 16 Pilcher films have been shot. Of the 25,000 people who visit each year, 40% are said to be German tourists. Other locations include St Michael’s Mount, Land’s End, Bodmin, Pencarrow House, Lanhydrock House, and the village of Lamorna.
