How I wound up making coffee on the Camel Trail in Padstow

2025 was a fantastic year for me. It was a big year because I was able to pitch up and trade from a brilliant spot in Padstow.

I applied for a few of the pop-up sites on Cornwall council’s website. Most of the pop-up sites are available to rent for a year, from April to April. Fortunately, the council loved my tender application and agreed to grant me a trader license for a spot in Padstow.

I started off at the Link Road car park, just above Padstow town centre. I thought it would be a winner, however, after two or so weeks in this position, I soon realised it really wasn’t to be the winner winner, chicken dinner that I had hoped. Although Padstow is an unbelievably picturesque place, this particular car park was not so much. It’s located at the top of Padstow, kind of above it, and my exact trading pitch was directly positioned next door to the public toilets and bin store, two things that I’m pretty sure weren’t helping me sell my coffee and cake. The public toilets were permanently shut so every other person that attempted to access the loos would ask me whether they were open. In the first few days, I was glad to relay the information to them at the start, that alas, the loos were indeed permanently closed, but after about the 100th time of being asked, it soon grew a tad tiresome, being perfectly honest.

I decided to reach out to my contact at the council and inform them of my predicament. I had agreed to pay a lot of money for the Link Road car park trading position, however, I was currently barely scraping £50 a day and some days I didn’t even sell one coffee. It was frustrating as it takes quite a bit of work to load up the car with milk, cakes, coffee, kit etc. and drive from my home in Newquay, across to Padstow.

Luckily, the person in the estates team for Cornwall council couldn’t have been more helpful. They said there was a another site available on the Camel Trail. I sussed it out and was then filled with abundant hope. Located in a delightful spot beyond the lobster hatchery and overlooking the Camel Estuary, I immediately felt excited about the idea of serving coffee there. I got back to my contact in the council and said I’d be super keen to move positions from the Link Road car park, to the beautiful Camel Trail entrance.

I tested the waters on the Camel Trail in what must have been the end of May 2025, and the new position was so much better. There was good footfall and my Landy looked fantastic in that particular position beside the estuary. Not only did I sell more coffee and cake but it was also a much nicer place to work, day-in day-out. It’s a really peaceful and tranquil spot. Some days I even packed my trunks and popped in for a dip after I had stopped serving. Crikey it was cold, sometimes it did the trick though, and also made me feel as Cornish as they come.

The Camel Trail not only gets a lot of cyclists riding from Padstow to Wadebridge, and even Bodmin (for the serious cyclists), or vice versa in the opposite direction,, but it also gets a lot of hikers and walkers. A lot of the trail users also tend to be in great spirits and very approachable. It’s hard not to be in that corner of the world. Must be something to do with the salty air and unbeatable views. So I soon realised a lot of people were in a good mood to talk about anything and everything, while they waited for me to make their coffee. Not such a bad life hey?

I managed ok working alone on the Camel Trail but when the school holidays started, that was when I stated to feel it. Singlehandedly, I’d be making about sixty or seventy coffees a day as well as selling lots of cold drinks and cakes. When I got home, after unpacking everything, I’d get straight on with the baking, ready for cake sales the next day. It was hard graft and pretty relentless; some days I wouldn’t really stop working, from 5:30am through to 10pm, but I genuinely loved it and kept having to mentally pinch myself. Finally it was starting to feel like I was getting somewhere with my dream of becoming a self-employed mobile coffee vendor in Cornwall.

While I was trading on the Camel Trail, in quiet moments I started to get flashbacks from when I first started trading beside the Landy in December and January of 2024, when I began my mobile coffee van journey by pitching up at gyms and industrial estates in Newquay, literally at the crack of dawn and in pitch black. I had memories of standing beside the Landy outside the Newquay Screwfix, making about £20 a day and battling all sorts of rough and wintery Cornish weather. One day my awning almost below off it’s hinges due to strong wind.

Fast forward two years and I was serving coffee during the summer holidays in Padstow, beside the famous Camel Trail, a place that draws in some of the highest numbers of visitors in the whole of Cornwall, as well as lots of tourists from Europe and beyond.

Just goes to show what can happen when you dig deep, grit your teeth and persevere.