Hotel Tresanton

About Hotel Tresanton

Hotel Tresanton occupies a run of whitewashed houses stepped into the hillside above St Mawes harbour, on the sheltered eastern side of the Roseland Peninsula. The buildings started life as a yacht club in the 1940s and were bought and reworked by Olga Polizzi, who still oversees the look of the place. The result is a hotel that feels more like a private house that has grown sideways: terraces, courtyards and short flights of steps link the different sections, and every one of the 30 bedrooms looks out over the Percuil River and the water towards St Anthony's Lighthouse.

Rooms are all different. Some are large enough for a sitting area and a private terrace, others are simpler doubles under the eaves, but the same approach runs through them all: painted furniture, antique pieces mixed with contemporary ones, and paintings by Cornish artists rather than hotel-issue prints. Bathrooms are generously sized and several rooms open directly onto their own patch of outside space. Family rooms and adjoining arrangements are available, and dogs are accepted in some categories.

The restaurant sits behind a mosaic floor and full-height windows, with a terrace that gets used for lunch whenever the weather allows. Cooking leans Mediterranean and seasonal, with local seafood central to the menu. Beyond the dining room there is a beach club open through the warmer months and Pinuccia, a 1930s Italian racing yacht the hotel sails out of the harbour for guests between May and October. A small cinema room and a snug with an open fire cover the wetter days.

Tresanton suits couples and small groups after a comfortable, unshowy base for exploring the Roseland, the Fal estuary and the coast path. It is not a spa hotel and does not pretend to be; the appeal is the setting, the food and the sense of being somewhere well looked after.