Hotel Tresanton St Mawes: Our Favourite Cornish Hotel & Pinuccia the Yacht That Sealed It

Getting to The Hotel Tresanton

The drive from Falmouth to St Mawes is a joy in itself. You cross the Fal on the King Harry, a chain ferry that hauls itself across the water with the unhurried confidence of something that has been doing this since long before anyone thought to invent the bypass, and you arrive on the Roseland peninsula feeling as though you have been quietly upgraded to a better version of the afternoon.

The route along the coast is exquisite. In thirty degrees of sunshine, roof down, it is close to heavenly. The lanes narrow, the hedgerows rise, the sea appears and disappears between them like a rumour, and the views are magnificent enough that I twice forgot I was supposedly driving.

Our only delay was a hare. Not a nervous one either. He had established himself in the middle of the lane, considered the Cornish countryside on either side of him, and concluded that neither option improved on the tarmac. We slowed. He loped. We slowed further. He continued, with the loose-limbed insolence of an animal who knows perfectly well that no one in an open-topped car in July is in any real hurry. Eventually he peeled off into the verge without so much as a glance. Chacun son chemin.

The Welcome at The Hotel Tresanton

Then the Hotel Tresanton greeting, which is where the trouble starts, because warm and welcoming does not quite cover it. It is closer to being met by old friends who have been mildly worried about your journey and are now visibly relieved to see you. There is no ceremony, no clipboard, no theatrical hovering. Just genuine pleasure that you have arrived.

They even took my keys and parked the car themselves, a considerable boon given that the streets of St Mawes were laid out with pilchards rather than Porsches in mind.

The Suite, and the Pearl

Our suite is exquisite. A large bathroom with a wide bath and a big shower, the kind of bathroom that encourages lingering rather than efficiency. A triple wide king size bed large enough for three, which is a statement of fact rather than of intent, though a man may dream.

And then la crème de la crème. A massive private terrace overlooking the sea, with sun loungers, a table and chairs, and a view that does all the work of an entire holiday on its own. It is beautiful. Though it hardly encourages you to go out. Because here is the difficulty with a terrace big enough to hold a small party: you will not want to leave it, and you really should see the area, and yet the terrace is so relaxing, and such a sun trap, that the area begins to feel like something other people can visit on your behalf. Voltaire told us to cultivate our garden. He did not specify how much of the day this should occupy. I choose to read that as licence. But out we went.

We wandered along the beach, through St Mawes, and back up for dinner. The kitchen deserves a paragraph of its own. Dinner is Cornish produce treated with restraint, which is much harder than treating it with ambition. Porthilly oysters with shallot vinegar to begin, then St Mawes scallops with tenderstem, lemon and capers, or a crab tian with quail's egg and confit tomato that arrives looking far too pretty to disturb. I had the whole lemon sole with chips, broccoli and brown shrimps, and it was faultless. Emily's linguine came loaded with John Dory, scallop, prawn and clams in a lobster jus, and required a certain amount of negotiation across the table. The portions are exactly right, generous without being punitive, so you finish pleased rather than defeated, and dessert remains a live possibility rather than a theoretical one. The frangipane with peach and vanilla ice cream settled that question. The West Country cheeses are worth the detour on their own.

The rosé, taken on our private terrace as the sun went down over the water, was better still. Somewhere between the second glass and the last of the light, the argument for ever leaving that terrace began to look considerably weaker.

Breakfast is equally sinful and delightful. Wing of St Mawes kippers with butter and lemon, precisely the sort of thing hotels have quietly stopped serving and absolutely should not have. Chesil Smokery smoked salmon with scrambled eggs. Crêpes with Cornish strawberries, white chocolate and pistachio. There is even a ginger shot on the menu for anyone who overdid the rosé, and I mention it purely in the abstract.

Pinuccia: Six in the Morning, and Worth Every Minute

Then a six o'clock start, which is not a phrase I use often on holiday, and which permanently forfeits any hope of faire la grasse matinée. I would do it again tomorrow.

Pinuccia was built in 1938 by Vincenzo Vittorio Baglietto at his Varazze yard, constructed to carry Italian honour into the 1939 international championship. Italy had lost the Coppa d'Italia to the Swedes, and Pinuccia was the answer to that indignity, commissioned, so the story runs, with Mussolini's interest attached to her. The war came before she could settle the matter. She raced with a Swedish syndicate in the 1960s, then vanished from view entirely, and was eventually discovered decades later lying neglected in a shed near the Dutch border. Olga Polizzi and William Shawcross found her, had her restored, and brought her to Cornwall, where she now lies in St Mawes harbour below the hotel that owns her. A yacht built to prove a point for a dictator has ended up spending her retirement giving people the best morning of their year. Le hasard fait bien les choses.

George and Vicky, her skipper and crew, collected us in the RIB, which is fitted with jockey seats, which I love. That short transfer out to her is a proper riding experience in its own right, and it wakes you up more effectively than any amount of coffee. We set sail in St Mawes harbour as the sun came up.

When racing she carries six to eight crew, some of them, as George cheerfully explained, purely rail meat, positioned on the windward side to keep her balanced and otherwise required to do very little except exist heavily in the correct place. I have held less dignified positions.

We got going at seven knots with Pinuccia leaning hard into the wind, and touched eight at her best. We passed Viscount Falmouth's boat on the way. We sailed into Falmouth past the Pendennis shipyards and Gylly beach, under the castle, then out towards the lighthouse at St Anthony Head, a sector light first lit in 1835, its red sector still warning shipping off the Manacles. Then back, tacking, heeled at forty five degrees.

And this is the thing about her. Pinuccia leans like the finest sailing vessel ever built, low down into the water, gliding through the sea like a dolphin. She is so slim and so long that the heel does not feel like effort, it feels like a dolphin flipping onto its side to accelerate. There is no engine noise, no compromise, no modern anything. All wood, all sail, pure.

Calling this a sailing experience undersells it. It is the chance to sail on one of the finest and purest classic yachts of all time, and it is absolutely unmissable. She is the finest yacht I have ever sailed on, and I did not expect to write that sentence about a boat older than my father.

eorge and Vicky are charming and great fun, a couple who genuinely love the sea. Both hold the Yachtmaster Offshore qualification, and they sail her through the summer and keep her shipshape through the winter. Sailing with them is a delight entirely worthy of the boat. They also recommended the sea shanty festival in mid June, which falls on the same weekend as Falmouth Classics, and which is now firmly in the diary.

The Tresanton Beach Club, and the Slow Afternoon

Afterwards, the Tresanton's own Beach Club, which sits on two terraces cut into the cliff below the hotel, directly over the water, with a small snack bar to keep you supplied without ever obliging you to climb back up. From there, a swim out to the raft. The sea is clear, greens and browns shifting beneath you, turning blue as the sun burns down into the water. It is magnificently peaceful.

I swam out towards the point, in the direction of Falmouth, admiring the imposing luxury mansions along the way. Some in grey stone, solid and Edwardian and slightly disapproving. Others in modern steel and glass, with infinity pools poised above the water, presumably so their owners can swim in the sea without the inconvenience of the sea. L'embarras du choix, if one is buying. I made my selections silently, at length, and entirely without funds.

Leaving, Reluctantly

When we finally left, having been dragged out of the hotel by our feet, they took our luggage down to the car and brought it round via the terrace where we had been sunning ourselves until the very last minute. Not a hint of impatience. Not a glance at a watch. C'est le rêve.

The Tresanton is the hotel where your cares and worries are removed along with your bags at the door. You know they will look after you, and that everything will be as perfect as it can possibly be. Le meilleur des mondes possibles, though happily without the Voltairean parody, since here the claim actually holds. The food and wine are superb and they will hit your tastes on the nail. The service is genuinely friendly and charming. The relaxation arrives effortlessly, which of course means somebody upstairs is working extremely hard to make it look that way.

Pinuccia is an experience of a lifetime. St Mawes is a Cornish petit paradis, and the Tresanton has quietly perfected the douceur de vivre that so many larger and grander hotels spend fortunes failing to buy.

Very few hotels achieve that blend of absolute quality, warmth and quirkiness. The Polizzis have clearly mastered it. The Tresanton is exquisite, it takes our award for the best hotel in Falmouth, and it wins simply by being such an incredible place to be, and an unforgettable experience. We will be back, and probably rather more often than is sensible. It is an unbeatable spoiling of oneself, and you leave feeling infinitely better and happier than when you arrived.

Hotel Tresanton, St Mawes, Cornwall. thepolizzicollection.com/hotel-tresanton