Clocks go back: when the sun sets in Cornwall this winter

You got your extra hour in bed. The bill arrives at teatime.

When the sun drops over Penzance this evening it will be at around 5.13pm, a full hour earlier on the clock than last night. But if you live in Cornwall, you are getting a better deal than almost anyone else in the country.

Why Cornwall keeps the light a little longer

The clocks went back an hour at 2am today (Sunday 25 October), ending British Summer Time and returning the UK to Greenwich Mean Time. Every clock in the country now shows the same time. The sun doesn’t follow suit.

It sets later the further west you go, by roughly four minutes for every degree of longitude. Penzance sits about five and a half degrees west of Greenwich, so the sun sets there around 20 minutes after it does in London.

Tonight that means sunset at about 4.48pm in London and about 5.13pm in Penzance. Truro and Newquay follow close behind at around 5.10pm, with Bude at about 5.07pm.

The mornings swing the other way. Sunrise in Penzance comes at about 7am today, an hour earlier on the clock than yesterday.

Cornwall sunset times through the winter

These are approximate sunset times in GMT, worked out for each town’s position. Allow a minute or two either way, and more if there’s a hill or a building between you and the horizon. Whether you actually see it is down to the cloud, and our daily Cornwall weather forecast will tell you about that.

Date	Penzance	Truro	Newquay	Bude
Sunday 25 October	5.13pm	5.10pm	5.10pm	5.07pm
Sunday 1 November	5.00pm	4.58pm	4.57pm	4.54pm
Sunday 15 November	4.39pm	4.37pm	4.36pm	4.33pm
Tuesday 1 December	4.24pm	4.21pm	4.21pm	4.17pm
Sunday 13 December	4.20pm	4.18pm	4.17pm	4.13pm
Monday 21 December	4.22pm	4.19pm	4.19pm	4.14pm
Friday 1 January	4.30pm	4.27pm	4.26pm	4.22pm

For comparison, London’s earliest sunsets in mid-December come at around 3.52pm. Penzance doesn’t go below about 4.20pm.

The shortest day isn’t the darkest evening

The winter solstice falls on Monday 21 December, when Penzance gets about eight hours of daylight. But the earliest sunsets arrive about a week before that, around 13 December.

The latest sunrises come later still, around New Year, when the sun doesn’t clear the horizon in Penzance until about 8.20am. So the evenings start drawing out before Christmas, even while the mornings stay dark well into January.

Darker evenings, and a busy week to start

Cornwall’s schools break up for half term from tomorrow (Monday 26 October to Friday 30 October), and Halloween falls on Saturday 31 October. So plenty of children will be out after dark this week, many for the first time since spring.

If you’re driving, expect pedestrians, cyclists and trick-or-treaters to be harder to spot in the early evening, especially on unlit country lanes. Putting your dipped headlights on a little earlier helps other people see you, too.

If you’re cycling, you need a white front light and a red rear light after dark, plus a red rear reflector. Walkers and horse riders are easier to see in something bright or reflective. For children, a torch or a reflective band on a costume goes a long way.

The clocks that won’t change themselves

Phones, computers, smart speakers and most modern cars will have updated on their own overnight. Plenty of things in your house won’t have:

• the oven and the microwave
• central heating and hot water timers
• older car dashboards
• wall clocks, alarm clocks and watches
• plug-in timers on lamps

The heating timer is the one to check first. If it still thinks it’s summer, it will fire up an hour earlier than you planned, every morning and every evening.

When the clocks go forward again

British Summer Time returns on Sunday 28 March 2027, when the clocks go forward an hour at 1am. Overnight, sunset in Penzance will jump from about 6.45pm to about 7.47pm.

Britain first changed its clocks in 1916, during the First World War. The Royal Observatory Greenwich has the story of why we still do it.