With stripped beams, friendly staff and homemade butterscotch ice-cream, this affordable hotel is exactly what you want after a day on the beach
This summer, Cornwall has been dubbed a playground for the super-rich, in part because Aston Martin chairman David Richards, has acquired the Idle Rocks hotel in St Mawes. (It needed a revamp: I slept in a dingy broom cupboard of a room there once.)
Everyone loves Cornwall in summer, though, so I hope that the Queen's, a pub-with-rooms in the tourist hotspot of St Ives, will turn out to be the affordable antithesis of current hype.
Incontinent seagulls wreak havoc on vehicles in the station car park. I leave mine and hope for the best.
The pub is plain and unassuming outside, with matching interior – scrubbed tables, chilled music, a panelled corner snug. Proper job.
Framed posters of previous exhibitions at Penlee House in Penzance punctuate the stairway to 10 guest rooms. Mine is at the top. Stripped beams, painted bedside tables, water in a carafe, sockets a-go-go, free Wi-Fi – and mobile reception to boot.
Recessed hanging space with shelves has room enough for a couple's luggage. Thank goodness that annoying trend for hangers on wall-mounted pegs hasn't reached this far. Shower room has a window, but a notice stuck on the wall with Blu-Tack is, um, tacky.
I lean out of the window to look across rooftops to the sea and admire the courtyard gardens below. A clock chimes.
Families and two lone females are dining downstairs. Staff are friendly. Nice vibe. I urge you to come for the homemade butterscotch and sea salt ice cream alone. Preceding this, best end of Cornish lamb is soft and pink, dauphinoise potatoes and carrot puree creamy and not too heavy. Just the gravy lacks a little oomph.
Early morning. No neighbourly noise in my eyrie, only the joyful seasidey shriek of seagulls. At eight, an aircon unit strikes up. Now I could be in Greece.
I just make it back from a harbour stroll before breakfast packs up at 9.30am. Buffet's a bit ho-hum. Maybe other guests have scooped all the exciting fruit out of the salad, but cereals look unenticing, too, in Tupperware. The scrambled eggs defeat me with their richness – has something more than butter been added? "What's that?" I ask, pointing at a dish of dark sauce. Homemade marmalade, comes the answer.
Shafts of sunlight glance across my table beneath a blackboard thoughtfully chalked up with tide times. The Queen's has way more character than a budget chain hotel. It is exactly what you want after a day on the beach, as one family attests at check-out, saying, unprompted, how much they have enjoyed their stay. It scores a direct hit with me, too, but the real bonus is that when I return to my car, the seagulls haven't.