Watergate Bay Hotel

Watergate Bay Hotel was built in 1900 as the terminus hotel for a branch line from Newquay to Padstow, and the line never arrived. The hotel managed without it: an RAF officers' mess in the Second World War, in disrepair by the 1960s, reopened by John and Mary Ashworth in 1971. The original house is grey stone under a row of gables; below it the newer building steps down, glass-fronted, to the edge of the sand. The best of it is the Swim Club, a 25-metre pool walled in glass from floor to ceiling on two sides, with the Atlantic beyond and folding doors that open on sunny days. In one bedroom, panelled in teal, the freestanding bath has the window onto the bay, and the iron bed has to make do with the view past it.

Recommended for families, and for couples prepared to swim before nine in the morning or after six at night, when the pool is kept for adults. The Kids' Zone, included in the stay, takes anyone from six months to twelve years for two hours at a time, and babysitters cover the evenings until one. Surf lessons with Wavehunters start on the beach outside. The South West Coast Path runs past the entrance, and an hour north along it is Mawgan Porth, the next bay. Dinner is at Zacry's, on the sea wall, where Chris Eden's Cornish menu follows the seasons and, in the school holidays, the children eat from five. The railway never did reach Watergate Bay. Newquay's airport, about ten minutes away, has rather made up for it.