In times past, Cornishmen made their living from enticing passers-by to their shores and robbing them blind. Little has changed, and every summer millions of us come to get wrecked on the county’s gorgeous beaches. Crowds are a serious problem here but if you avoid the hot spots - urban beaches or those closest to the car parks - you can find peace, tranquillity and your own stretch of sand.

Take Crackington Haven, recommended by reader Sally James. Admittedly, this perfect little cove, with its organic cafes, cheerful pub and entrancing freshwater stream meandering over the sand and shingle beach, can get crowded, but arrive early and you can turn your back on the traffic jam snaking down the lanes behind.

Heading south, we avoid Boscastle, a pretty tourist trap baited with fleece sellers and purveyors of cream teas, and follow the B3263 to Tintagel, where Mrs Haslam rather unfairly dissuades me from buying a 4½ft jewel-encrusted replica of Excalibur that I, along with at least one of my children, think is the most beautiful souvenir I’ve ever seen.

I want to skip Rock and roll on to Constantine Bay, where the caravans keep the toffs away, but Mrs H insists. Ruddy-faced bankers on the terrace of the Mariners are gleefully predicting David Cameron’s accession to Number 10 - this week, though, the Tory leader is much nearer, just across the water in Mother Ivey’s Bay - but to get there means indulging another of the wife’s whims and passing through teeming Padstow,where the small-town charm has long gone and all roads lead to Rick.

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• Camper van man Week 3 gallery: John O'Groats - Southport

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• Camper van man Week 2 gallery: Skegness to John O'Groats

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• Camper van man Week 1 gallery: Southend to Skegness

Beach of the week

Chris selects his favourite beaches from his camper van man tour of the British coast

Catch of the day

Chris selects his best food and drink tips from his camper van man tour of the British coast

Rooms with sea views

Chris selects his favourite places to stay on his camper van man tour of the British Coast

• Beach of the week

Camper van man week 2: Skegness to John O'Groats

On his round-Britain coastal adventure, Chris Haslam takes in England’s windswept northeast flank, then heads for Scotland

• Camper van man week 1: Southend to Skegness

• Camper van man's tour of the British coast

We have no reservations, so after a perfect picnic lunch on Trevose Head - and, yes, all our cheese, ham, bread and cider was locally sourced - the kids build castles on Constantine Bay while I paddle out on the promise that I’ll be back after one decent wave.

Two hours later, glowing like beacons, we’re back on the road, nosing the Mystery Machine through “why don’t we downsize?” villages such as Trethias, Trehemborne and Trevormacdonald, and past a sign urging “See the pigs - eat the meat” (“I bet they don’t see many Londoners,” Mrs H observes), to the family playground of Treyarnon beach, where bright yellow sands recline beside an extraordinary cluster of rock pools that form a series of natural swimming pools. Tons of fun, but bring plasters and magic kisses for the inevitable skinned knees and bumped heads.

At Bedruthan Steps - recommended by Annie Lister, from Atlanta, Georgia - only Annabella is brave enough to follow me down the vertigo-inducing flight of steep, slippery steps to the awesome beach hundreds of feet below. Once down, we wander on the empty sands like survivors in some postapocalyptic ruined city, dwarfed by giant freestanding crags that loom like half-buried skyscrapers. “I felt like a little toy in a great big box,” Annabella reports.

“And I feel like a cream tea,” retorts her big brother, so we stop for locally sourced scones and organic clotted cream in busy little Mawgan Porth before heading south, where Mrs H and I disagree about revamped Watergate Bay. Like an old curmudgeon who saw the Stones before they were famous, I preferred it when all it offered was a shabby hotel and an uncrowded beach break, long before Jamie Oliver and the Style-section crowd applied the Padstein formula. These days, there’s more wax worn on Notting Hill hair-dos than rubbed on boards here, but they say the pineapple and black pepper margarita at Fifteen is to die for.

Next stop is Newquay, a worn-out old trollop sprawling across two fine beaches like an overweight Essex bird in a too-tight Billabong T-shirt. Equally ugly is Perranporth; but beauty rarely strays in Cornwall, and just past St Agnes, down a track in a steep-sided valley splattered with purple heather, is Chapel Porth, beloved of reader Rosemary Whittington. At low water, the narrow cove expands to join up with lovely Porth Towan - but when the tide is high, it’s a secret world overlooked only by the brooding ruin of the Wheal Coates engine house.

Beyond St Ives - where tourists unnerved by Kernow’s wildness seek retail therapy - Cornwall abandons any pretence of Beryl Cook gaiety and becomes mad, violent and unpredictable. with churchyards and clifftops bearing memorial stones to those murdered by the sea.

A few miles past Zennor, however, a modicum of calm returns.

Parking the Mystery Machine at the lighthouse at Pendeen Watch, we take a 15-minute hike for a swim at the picture-perfect beach at Portheras Cove. This gentle crescent of sand, studded with starfish and swaddled in seaweed, is indicative of the joys that await.

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