Why I ditched travelmaxxing and went freestyle in Cornwall

It was as though we were being rewarded, the way we stumbled across our favourite scene of the holiday yet — a rocky outcrop filled with snorkellers, and the sun going down behind Penzance in the background — almost the minute we resisted our usual urge to squeeze in an extra item from the bucket list and asked ourselves what we actually felt like doing.No one was making us race to that cocktail bar we’d saved on Google Maps. No one would know we hadn’t ticked off the hidden-gem beach we’d seen on Instagram. If we wanted, we could stay watching swimmers dive off the rocks into the silky water until dinner — and cancel that, too, if we didn’t fancy it, because we hadn’t actually booked. This was supposed to be a holiday, remember? Wasn’t the whole point that we could do exactly what we liked?If this sounds embarrassingly obvious, it should have been when my fiancé and I sat in our living room one Sunday trying to work out what we wanted from our week-long summer trip. My feed was a mosaic of TikTok itineraries and travelmaxxing content: friends following must-see hiking routes in the Dolomites; setting alarms for 5am sunrises in Santorini; kayaking along the Norwegian fjords. It was tempting to follow suit, but after a summer of heatwaves we were burnt out. What we didn’t need was a jam-packed break where we optimised every hour and returned to work more exhausted than when we left. We needed an anti-optimisation holiday, to borrow a phrase from the Steven Bartlett dictionary — why did that feel so radical? And what did that actually mean for two active people famously bad at doing nothing?I just want to get in the car and sit by the sea and read books and plan nothingIt was only when I outsourced the problem to ChatGPT like any other tech-dependent millennial that I articulated the embarrassingly simple answer: I just want to get in the car and sit by the sea and read books and plan nothing.Three weeks later and we’re speeding past Stonehenge on the A303 to Cornwall, the car embarrassingly overpacked — because, for the first holiday in a long time, there are no baggage allowances to worry about. The brief, after all: minimise stress, maximise chill.I find this terribly difficult at first. Isn’t it wasteful to go all the way to Cornwall and not see all of it? But this is precisely why we chose somewhere we’d been before. We knew we loved Cornwall and, crucially, had ticked off many of its highlights — surfing at Newquay and Polzeath, stays at the Carbis Bay Hotel, shows at the Minack Theatre — so there was no need to race around every viewpoint. Instead we settle into Ennys, a small collection of cottages set in subtropical gardens run by former Londoners Karen and Nick down a country lane between St Ives and Penzance, where a self-catering cottage means our timings are entirely our own. I spend the first afternoon reading beside the pool under a chic yellow umbrella imported from India. My fiancé is so entranced by a copy of Atonement he found on the mezzanine next to the bed that he hasn’t left the cottage. I find him curled up beside the woodburner and we tuck into the homemade scones left out on the side. St. Ives, CornwallAndrew - stock.adobe.comOur first few days follow a similar pattern of lounging, dipping and eating whenever we feel like it. On day one we walk from Newlyn to Mousehole before stumbling across a cute little seafood tapas spot, Barbican Bistro. Day two is more risky: we bundle a couple of outfits into the car and set out without a plan. We might come back for dinner, we might try to hunt down a post-hike shower somewhere out and about and see where the night takes us. By day three we do something wilder still. We’d enjoyed our little rockpool dip in Penzance so much the previous afternoon that we drive back and do exactly the same thing. We wave at a swimmer we recognise from yesterday. Repetition had never really existed in my travel lexicon before.Cornwall turns out to be perfect for this anti-optimisation experiment: it’s difficult to feel you’ve wasted a day when almost every country lane seems to end in a fishing village, a beach or somewhere serving exceptionally good seafood. Read MoreWe still walk and swim and eat extremely well — we just don’t treat those things like appointmentsNone of which is to say we wasted our days away doing nothing. This, I realise, is where I’d misunderstood the assignment. We still walk and swim and eat extremely well — we just don’t treat those things like appointments. In Newlyn, we wander into Mackerel Sky and sit down to crab nachos and squid-ink G&Ts within seconds. The next day, we stop at Porthleven for a leg stretch and like it so much we stay until dark. When we fancy St Ives, we leave the car at St Erth and take the tiny train along the coast, with no greater plan than to wander around the Tate, swim and see what happens.There is always enough newness in Cornwall to keep things exciting. Kiln, a wood-fired sauna, has recently opened above Porthmeor Beach in St Ives; Great British Menu champ Jude Kereama just launched his new BBQ seafood pop-up Kota Kuki in Porthleven; and two Michelin-star chef Tom Sellers opened MOR at Carbis Bay Hotel last month featuring “one breath” scallops caught by their resident freediver. We plan to roll into dinner straight from the train but end up ditching the Barbara Hepworth Museum in favour of reading on the beach. It’s what we feel like doing, after all. Ennys cottages in CornwallThen we leave Cornwall and drive east towards Dorset with our paddleboards and camping kit, stopping when we fancy it (Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove, naturally) before meeting friends for a last-minute camping trip overlooking Brownsea Island. On our second morning I unzip the tent to the sort of grey sky we’ve barely seen since April. Ordinarily bad weather on holiday sends me into a sulk. But this time I am genuinely unfussed. There is no beautiful-weather itinerary for the clouds to ruin. We’re camping with two of our closest friends; we have coffee and a pack of cards. At some point that afternoon, I realise I haven’t checked the forecast for days.Which, I suppose, was exactly the point of this funny little experiment we set ourselves. When we arrive home for our post-holiday debrief, the main learning is how full and varied the week still felt. I still had the occasional pang of “but what if we miss x or y?”, but whenever I stopped and checked myself, I realised I was too busy enjoying whatever I was doing to actually care.Will we book mad, jam-packed holidays again? Indeed. But one week without a spreadsheet was a happy reminder that not every holiday has to be treated like a challenge or a limited resource. We optimise our sleep, workouts, morning routines, productivity and now apparently our annual leave. Perhaps occasionally the most useful thing we can do with a week off is refuse to optimise it at all.The irony is that I slept better, ate better and felt better in my body than I have on a holiday in a long time. So perhaps I did end up maxxing something after all — it just wasn’t the itinerary for once.