Welcome to Bude

Bude (Cornish: Bud) is a small seaside resort town in North Cornwall, at the mouth of the River Neet. Bude is twinned with Ergué-Gabéric, France. It is suggested that the modern name is a corruption of the name Bede Haven meaning "Harbour of the holy men" suggesting Bude might have been a landing place for early Christians. Present-day Bude is a pleasant small town with character. It has two west-facing beaches, Summerleaze and Crooklets, with excellent surfing when the conditions are right. The main access road in and out of Bude is the A39, Atlantic Highway.

Bude and the surrounding area has impressive coastal scenery. Many ships have been wrecked on the jagged reefs which fringe their base. The figure-head of one of these, the "Bencoolen" lost in 1862, is preserved in the churchyard. The Carboniferous sandstone cliffs that surround Bude (and stretch down as far as Crackington Haven) were formed during the Carboniferous Era, around 300 million years ago. The folded and contorted stratification of shale and sandstone is unique in southern England, although the Gower peninsula and the Vale of Glamorgan, across the Bristol Channel in Wales, have a similar stratification. During the Variscan Orogeny, which affected the entire Cornish coast, the cliffs were pushed up from underneath the sea, creating the overlapping strata. As the sands and cliffs around Bude contain calcium carbonate (a natural fertiliser), farmers used to take sand from the beach, for spreading on their fields. The cliffs around Bude are the only ones in Cornwall that are made of carboniferous sandstone, as most of the Cornish coast is geologically formed of Devonian slate, granite and Precambrian metamorphic rocks). The stratified cliffs of Bude give their name to a geological event called the Bude Formation. Many formations can be viewed from the South West Coast Path which passes through the town.

Notable buildings include the early English parish church, St Olaf's in the village of Poughill just outside of Bude, the parish church of St Michael and All Angels, Ebbingford Manor, and the town's oldest house, Quay Cottage in the centre of town. Bude Canal, which once ran to Launceston, now runs only a few miles inland. Until the start of the twentieth century, the neighbouring town of Stratton was dominant, and a local saying is "Stratton was a market town when Bude was just a furzy down", meaning Stratton was long established when Bude was just gorse-covered downland.