Kate Winslet's Cornish retreat

If you like sun, sea and fresh air, Cornwall is a great place for a holiday. With its mild climate, dramatic coastline and great surfing beaches, it can seem like paradise. But what is it like as a place to live?

Film star Kate Winslet, who lives in Cornwall, thinks it is a good place to relax and get away from it all. Her first house in Cornwall, where she lived for two years, was near St Ives. The house, which was Japanese-style and built on stilts, was quite remote. To get to it, you had to walk across a ten metre bridge. 'I like living apart from the rest of the world,' says Kate.

Kate now has a house on the north Cornish coast just outside Tintagel. It's on top of a cliff with dramatic views of the Atlantic Ocean. The village where she does her shopping has only a few shops. 'That's fine,' says Kate. 'I didn't come here to go shopping.'

For some people, this may seem a boring sort of life. But Kate disagrees. 'I'm never bored here in Cornwall. Yesterday my friends and I went to see the Eden Project. It's a group of huge, space age "biodomes", where flowers and trees from all over the world grow in different climate zones. It's fascinating. Where else can you see that?'

However, for Kate, the main attraction of Cornwall is the scenery. 'A view which always excites me is the coastline round Tintagel,' says Kate. 'I love the rocks and the empty beaches and hays. It's so wild. It's my idea of paradise.'