cornish pubs with a view
of the sea from their bedrooms
Compared to hotels, they’re usually cheaper, friendlier and housed in historic buildings.
Trouble is, choosing to stay in a pub conjures up images of nylon sheets, all-night noise and waking up next morning with a view of the car park and nothing to do except go home.
Pubs have got the hang of food in the last decade - but often accommodation lags behind. It’s hard to find the few with good locations, food and rooms.
So we asked the former Editor of a group of Cornish newspapers to find six great pubs in the county with sea-view rooms.
Bay View Inn
Widemouth Bay,
near Bude
best beach pub
On one side of the road are the dunes, sands and surf - on the other is a seaside command-and-control centre.
This freehouse supplies everything you’ll need for a salty escape - from the latest weather, tide and surf forecasts pinned in the porch to seared tuna salads for a tenner.
Seven ensuite bedrooms have views right into the winds, waves and sunsets. Choose rooms 5 and 6 - they’ve big balconies for memorable breakfasts and nightcaps.
You’ll shuffle round the small rooms one at a time but décor is thoughtful: roll-top baths, decent fabrics and fresh flowers. The UPVC double-glazing is ugly but handy when storms blow in.
The Bay View was taken over by six members of the Keene family. Their food is better than you’d expect for a busy beach pub - they’ve kept it simple, local and fresh. Even burgers are from herds grazing down the road, topped with cheese from the farm next door.
When I visited, surfer-types played backgammon on sofas in the back bar with piped Paul Weller. Couples and families chose heated decking outside or the sunny conservatory restaurant. Tear your eyes from the view and there’s a daily specials board, local real ales, kids’ playground (and bouncy castle in summer) and some decent local art.
www.bayviewinn.co.uk
01288 361273
B&B from £38pppn.
Bar snacks or restaurant
(three-courses around £24).
The Gurnard’s Head Hotel, Zennor
Best food
Far down in rugged west Cornwall, I’d remembered stumbling into a bar full of silent locals with funny shaped heads and vowed never to return. But a new owner, fresh colour scheme and serious investment in food have transformed it to a highly-rated gastro-pub with rooms.
Gurnards still stands on the winding coast road amid granite and heather National Trust moorland, 15-minutes’ drive from St Ives. And the sea still glistens beyond patchwork fields and farm buildings - it’s a ten-minute walk down to a rocky shore and dramatic coastpath. But now the pub is washed with ochre paint, surrounded by pot plants and expensive parked cars.
Inside, it’s more like a mini country house hotel. Bedrooms have old wooden furniture and slate-floored bathrooms. There are no TVs but a Roberts radio, bottled water and fresh wild flowers. Only two rooms have distant sea views - you wake, not to the sound of waves and gulls, but mooing cows and a kitchen extractor fan.
The food is good enough to make Gurnard’s ‘best Cornish newcomer’ in this year’s Good Food Guide. Dishes like grilled mackerel with anchovy and rosemary butter or roast brill with carrot purée show it’s up with the best of the new wave of Cornish cuisine.
The bar still manages to be very pubby though. I chatted to 73-year-old regular Richard in tweeds and cravat. He told me he’d been to the pub “approximately 2,000 times” and was soon reciting his Betjamen-like poems to me. Later I sat at a wonky old table by an open fire while Jan and Vaughan from the next village arrived with guitars and folk songs about ploughing and fishing.
Gurnardshead.co.uk or 01736 796928
B&B from £72.50 for double room (two sharing). Three-course dinner around £24.
The Sloop Inn, St Ives
Best for things to do
With ancient whitewashed walls, black paintwork and a cobbled courtyard, this 14th-century pub could have been designed by an American tourist. Best of all, it’s right on the harbour wall in the heart of St Ives. Inside you’ll duck under low beams, sit on wobbly wooden benches and walk on slate slab floors.
Most of the 18 B&B rooms scattered around the pub and adjoining buildings have a stirring view of harbour, beach and open sea beyond. Some have balconies. But cheap shiny pine furniture, magnolia woodchip wallpaper and orange bedspreads don’t encourage you to hang around your room for long.
The Tate is a two-minute walk and the pub has unexpected charms - from free wi-fi broadband to a collection of drawings of local fishermen lining the snug front bar. There’s a beach volleyball tournament every Friday, regular private viewings for local painters… and a pile of board games.
Food is classic pub grub with plenty of fish, like cod from Newlyn, mackerel from St Ives and Cornish crab. The location is enough to draw minor celebrities: the landlord’s second-cousin, Rosamunde Pilcher, features the Sloop in some of her novels and sometimes visits. You may also see former goalie Peter Shilton or the member of Keane recently ticked off for smoking in the restaurant.
Parking in St Ives is tricky - it’s best to take owner Maurice’s offer to park at his house on the other side of town.
www.sloop-inn.co.uk or tel 01736 796584
B&B from £42 pppn. Bar snacks from £3.95, two-course dinner around £14.
Godolphin Arms, Marazion
Best view
The Godolphin’s grand façade mirrors its aristocratic heritage as part of the St Aubyn estate. It’s still owned by Lord St Leven’s son, James St Aubyn, who lives just across the tidal sands on top of St Michael’s Mount.
The pub stands on the sea wall with one of Britain’s great sea views - across Mount’s Bay from the Lizard in the east to Penzance and Mousehole in the west. Stone steps lead onto the Blue Flag beach. At low tide you can cross a causeway to the National Trust Mount, at high tide a small ferry sails from in front of the Godolphin’s open terraces.
Inside it’s a mix of styles: the restaurant is all crisp white linen and napkins stuffed in glasses, the pine balustrades of a huge open plan café-pub are reminiscent of motorway services, while the rugged wood décor of the Gig Bar downstairs - with regular live bands - is a youthful beach bar.
Most of the ten bedrooms have THE view, some through floor-to-ceiling bay windows. There’s a scattering of balconies, four-posters, bunk-beds for kids, and massive bathrooms. Décor is unexpectedly funky - with paint effects and jazzy seaside colours. The manageress claims that on a high spring tide you can lean from one bedroom window to touch the water.
www.godolphinarms.co.uk or 01736 710202
B&B from £80 per double room per night (two sharing). Bar snacks, kids menu and restaurant (three courses around £25).
Cadgwith Cove Inn, Cadgwith
Best Cornish experience
You have to park in a pay-and-display (only £1.60 a day) at the head of a steep lush valley, deep on the Lizard peninsular. Then walk down through woods into a hamlet of thatched cottages and tumbling gardens around a pebble and sand slot mostly occupied by fishing boats. Turn to look inland and there’s the 300-year-old cream-painted pub.
It’s as quirky as you’d expect in this remote spot. If you’ve booked you’ll probably find a note from landlord Dave pinned to the door saying: “let yourself in”.
Down in the bar there are log fires, dark beams, impromptu singing sessions, sea murals, dangling rope knots, a specials board and a warning to visitors “against the dangers of seasickness whilst listening to nautical tales in this bar.” You may accidentally sit in “Dead Man’s Corner”, hung with photos and paintings of regulars who’ve died.
Upstairs are seven bedrooms, only three ensuite. Their floral bedspreads, fire doors, rattly old sash windows and tiny bathrooms, are reminders of how bad pub accommodation used to be - but here they’re saved by the view into the mouth of the cove.
www.cadgwithcoveinn.com or 01326 290513
B&B from £27.50 pppn. Bar snacks, kids menu or three-course dinner around £22.
The Galleon Inn, Fowey
Liveliest pub with a view
In Fowey’s main street between the restaurants, galleries and boutiques, there’s an alley leading down to the Galleon pub. Previously a fearsome haven for the wildest fishermen, it has been modernised and, like the rest of this pretty harbour town, isn’t scary at all.
Apart from the B&Q showroom décor in the bedrooms that is. But guests in two of the rooms are rescued from their cheap pine furniture, shiny gold plugs and maroon bathrooms by the jaw-dropping view directly over the harbour and steep wooded estuary.
Luxury yachts glide by the window and the busy yellow water-taxi service runs from the pub’s own mooring below. Breakfasts are served in a back room along with jars of HP sauce and individual cereal boxes - at least fresh local kippers and haddock are specialities.
Downstairs there’s little of the 400-year history on view. There’s a waterside terrace where four resident ducks scrabble for crumbs under picnic tables and dark green parasols, while inside is a long modern bar with slate floor, pool table and piped music. ‘Imagine’ was playing when I visited.
Alongside is the high-ceilinged restaurant in an impressive wooden conservatory - on a busy day they’ll serve 500 meals.
The bar is a lively venue in the centre of an up-market boating and tourism town. A live jazz band from Lanlivery play Sunday lunchtimes, rock bands on Fridays out-of-season and there are often themed nights - like ‘Hawaiian costumes’ or ‘beach parties’.
www.galleon-inn.co.uk or 01726 833014
Sea-view rooms: £40 pppn. Bar snacks, kids menu and main courses like steak and chips or salmon hollandaise (£5.75 - £12.95).
