2025: The year in review, part 2 - July to December

With 2026 fast approaching, we cast our eye back over 12 months in the Duchy. Part 2: July to December 2025.

· Author Raynor Winn comes under fire as the veracity of her memoir The Salt Path was called into question by The Observer newspaper. The multi-million seller was made into a film starring Gillian Anderson, which premiered in Newquay in May.

· Two murder enquiries open in mid-Cornwall. The body of Lee Hockey, 50, is found in woodland near Probus, and a man is charged with the murder of 43-year-old Daniel Coleman, whose remains are found in woodland near Sticker.

· Cornwall’s first zero-emission electric bus goes into service in Falmouth.

· Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery in Truro celebrates its refurbishment and reopening with a Royal visit from HRH The Duke of Gloucester.

· Pulse Smart Hubs are given the green light in Newquay and Truro. The digital screens will offer free Wi-Fi, phone calls and maps, as well as built-in defibrillators and Naloxone kits for emergencies – their detractors call them “giant smartphones”.

· Ladock bells tour the parish on tractors before heading to Loughborough to be recast. They will return to be rehung and rung in time for Christmas.

· Cornwall Council passes a motion calling on the Government to formally recognise Cornwall as the fifth UK nation alongside England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

· Fowey’s all-weather lifeboat is given a spectacular send-off after nearly 30 years in the port. Replaced by a smaller vessel, the Maurice and Joyce Hardy leaves Fowey for the final time in a flotilla of colourful boats.

· Students around Cornwall open their A level and GCSE results.

· Victory over Japan (VJ) Day is marked by a special ceremony Portscatho’s Burma Memorial, erected by veteran James Allan to commemorate the 26,380 allied troops who died in the campaign between 1941 and 1945 and have no known grave.

· Cornwall’s second lifesaving AW169 air ambulance goes into official operation following an 18-month-long, £2.85-million fundraising appeal.

· Punk-rap duo Bob Vylan appears at the Boardmasters festival, months after courting controversy at Glastonbury with anti-Israel chants.

· Her Majesty Queen Camilla visits Cornwall, naming the new Cornwall Air Ambulance in Newquay and touring the Truro headquarters of the international disaster charity Shelterbox on its 25th anniversary.

· Neil Hopper, formerly an NHS vascular surgeon at the Royal Cornwall Hospital who had his own legs amputated, is jailed for two years and eight months for insurance fraud and possessing extreme pornography.

· Liskeard Unlocked allows residents to peek behind the scenes of beautiful houses and gardens usually closed to the public, witness the winding the Guildhall Clock and sit alongside the driver of the Looe Valley Line.

· A major new sculpture of a leaping fox is unveiled at The Lost Gardens of Heligan. Lowarnes –Cornish for “vixen” – is a 6m-tall sculpture made from vivid russet rhododendron wood grown on site.

· The Diocese of Truro approves the future demolition of Truro landmark St Paul’s Church, which has been empty for 17 years due to structural problems.

· Penzance Cricket Club becomes the first Cornish side ever to contest the National Club Championship final at Lord’s. They face Lancashire giants Ormskirk, who win by 217 runs to 192.

· Visit Cornwall goes into voluntary liquidation, citing “insurmountable financial problems in the short-term”. The Community Interest Company had represented tourism and hospitality businesses since 2015.

· The Saltash Studios 65-seater community cinema sells its 1,000th ticket since opening the previous March.

· A new pharmacy opens in St Austell after a year-long battle. The Randhawa Pharmacy eases the load on neighbouring chemists following the closure of a Boots branch last year.

· Camelford GP Elsey Davis, 36, sets the Fastest Known Time to runs 384.1 miles around the full circumference of Cornwall, taking six days and eight hours to complete her challenge.

· CoastCraft – a customised version of Minecraft based on the landscape of Bude - is launched to teach students aged nine to 14 about coastal erosion and flood resilience.

· The former band hall on Castle Street, Liskeard goes under the hammer with planning permission to convert into four apartments, felling for £88,000.

· In transport news, a second platform opens at Newquay railway station as part of the Mid Cornwall Metro project, enabling hourly services between Newquay and Par – but First Bus announces it will withdraw all bus services in Cornwall by mid-February 2026.

· The Duke of Cornwall visits Mousehole AFC to open a new access road he helped fund. Upon hearing about the football club’s pothole-ridden access lane, the Duke brought together a range of industry partners to develop a long-term solution.

· West Carclaze Garden Village near St Austell partners with Samsung in its bid to build the UK's first carbon-positive homes using AI technology, with appliances learning resident habits to optimise energy usage.

· Gas maintenance workers expose a granite marker stone buried beneath the road surface in Penzance’s Greenmarket. It’s believed to be the Borough Cross, marking the historic centre of the town from the 1800s.

· The National Trust garden team at Cotehele in the Tamar Valley, unveil their 60-foot festive garland, constructed from 38,000 dried flowers - the highest total on record.

· Malcolm McKenzie's Mini Cooper is stuck in a sink hole in Redruth for nearly a month while officials try to work out who owns the unregistered land.

· The government recommends Part III status - the highest level of protection under European treaty - for the Cornish language, Kernewek.

· A house in St Piran Close, Bodmin has made a bid to be Britain’s most festive home. Daniel Goodyear has been illuminating his mother’s house since 2016, and spends two months setting it up, using hundreds of plugs and miles of cables.

· MPs on both sides of the River Tamar sign a letter urging the Tamar Bridge and Torpoint Ferry Joint Committee to reconsider the decision to increase TAG account charges from 80p a month to £2.

· Budehaven School closes in the midst of a flu outbreak, with more than 270 pupils and 32 members of staff off sick.

· Charlestown Harbour’s new lockgate is finally winched into position at high tide, the latest step in a £2 million refurbishment following storm damage in 2024.

· The owner of the most visited wildlife attraction in the Netherlands buys Newquay Zoo and promises to invest millions of pounds.

· The government scraps plans for a new secondary school in Perranporth, on the grounds "there is not sufficient need for additional places to justify building a whole new school".