Hotel Tresanton

Tresanton was once a yacht club, and it has kept a yacht. Pinuccia is a Baglietto design of 1939, built to race for Italy, and the hotel's account of her is candid: she no longer has to prove something for a dictator. Ashore are five houses of the 1940s, scattered up the hill above St Mawes harbour and plain from the road, and inside, 30 rooms done differently in antiques and Cornish art. Every room looks at the sea. On one windowsill two fossil ammonites stand before an open leaded casement, with St Anthony's lighthouse out on its headland. The restaurant has a mosaic floor and a terrace of pelargoniums facing south over the harbour, and there is no piped music anywhere, only the waves and, the hotel admits, the occasional sea shanty.

Recommended for couples who want oysters and lobster with the lighthouse in view, and for families who would rather have a beach than a pool. Three suites are for families, and in the Larorran a bedroom is a tongue-and-groove ship's cabin with two built-in bunks and a television set into the wall. There is a playroom kept away from the grown-ups and a 50-seat cinema, though dinner in the restaurant is for over-sixes. Across the road the Beach Club steps down in three terraces, under blue and white striped umbrellas, to Tavern Beach. Pinuccia sails from May to the end of September, and her Golden Hour trip leaves at 6am with coffee and Bucks Fizz aboard. Or walk past Henry VIII's castle to St Just in Roseland, about an hour, where the 13th-century church has its churchyard on the water. The Dogs' Bar has an open fire and board games, and lets in the guests it is named after.