Crackington Haven

50°44′40″N 4°38′16″W / 50.74454°N 4.63774°W / 50.74454; -4.63774

Crackington Haven (Cornish: Porthkragen, meaning "sandstone cove") is a coastal village in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is in the civil parish of St Gennys at grid reference SX140972 at the head of a cove on the Atlantic coast. The village is seven miles (11 km) south-southwest of Bude and four miles (6.4 km) north-northeast of Boscastle.

Middle Crackington and Higher Crackington are associated settlements. They are situated on the hill southeast of Crackington Haven, half-a-mile and one mile distant respectively.

Crackington Haven is popular with tourists, walkers, and geology students. The surrounding cliffs are well known for their visible folded sedimentary rock formations. The village gives its name to the Crackington Formation, a sequence of Carboniferous sandstones and grey shales.

The village has two café-style tea rooms, and a pub called the Coombe Barton Inn in a building that was originally the house of a local slate quarry manager.

Crackington Haven has a stony foreshore but a sandy beach is revealed at low water. The local parish council has put up signs asking that people do not remove stones, and saying that people who do will be prosecuted under the 1949 Coastal Protection Act. There are toilet facilities near the beach and lifeguard cover in the summer.

Immediately north of the beach is Pencarrow Point and a few hundred yards south is Cambeak headland (between Tremoutha Haven and Cam Strand); the clifftop here is 328 ft. Cambeak is derived from Old Cornish and means "crooked point". One mile south of Crackington Haven, High Cliff rises to 735 feet (224 m). It is Cornwall's highest cliff, (Great Hangman in Devon has a cliff face of 820 feet (250 m).

Crackington Haven lies within the Cornwall National Landscape (AONB). Almost a third of Cornwall has AONB designation, with the same status and protection as a National Park.