Cornwall, United Kingdom

Driftwood Hotel

Price per night from$196.08

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (GBP154.17), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

New England yacht club

Setting

Bracing Cornish clifftop

Striking the perfect balance between accessible and remote, the main house of this boutique hotel has an incredible setting, high on a Cornish cliff with spectacular views over the bay and Driftwood Hotel's own private beach. From the outside it doesn’t look out of the ordinary, but the interior has been given a great deal of thought: the furnishings have a comfortable, homely feel, in blues and creams and natural woods – all very, very tasteful. 

Smith Extra

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Cornish cream tea

Facilities

Photos Driftwood Hotel facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Fourteen rooms.

Check–Out

11am (but flexible); earliest check-in, 2pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £185.00, including tax at 20 per cent.

More details

Rates include breakfast.

Also

The kitchen will provide a picnic hamper on request.

Hotel closed

Driftwood shuts up shop for a few weeks in January each year.

At the hotel

Private beach, terrace, seven acres of heritage coastline, TV room with DVD/video library, WiFi, parking. In rooms, DVD/video player, free broadband internet access, Ren bath products.

Our favourite rooms

In terms of both size and sea views, Room 10 wins hands-down: it’s the biggest room in the hotel, and boasts double aspect vistas and a snug little vantage spot. Room 11 (a Deck Room), has French windows opening onto a private deck overlooking the gardens and the sea beyond.

Packing tips

Frisbee, kite, binoculars.

Also

In-room beauty treatments can be booked if you need some TLC. A minimum two-night stay is required at weekends for rooms.

Children

Welcome, but babies and small children are not allowed in the restaurant. There is a £20 for children sharing their parents’ room, including breakfast. The games room has, among other amusements, a PlayStation.

Overview

Warmly welcomed. There is a £15 charge for under-12s sharing their parents’ room (£20 for over-12s), including breakfast. The games room has, among other amusements, a PlayStation.

Best for

Children of all ages are warmly welcomed.

Recommended rooms

There are rooms specifically geared towards families, and interconnecting rooms; check when you book. There is a £20 charge for children sharing their parents’ room, including breakfast.

Activities

This very child-friendly hotel has seven acres of grounds leading down to the beach to romp around in; for rainy days, there is a small games room that features a PlayStation. There's also a library with books and board games. There are beautiful coastal paths to walk; nearby family-friendly attractions include the Eden Project, the Lost Gardens of Heligan and Falmouth's Maritime Museum. You could also try surfing at Newquay.

Swimming pool

No pool, but there is a private shingle beach.

Meals

Deliciously healthy early suppers are served for children (£25 each), featuring fresh fish and seasonal produce – 'not a chicken nugget in sight' is their motto. The restaurant can also pack you hamper of tasty treats to take with you and enjoy on the beach (or wherever).

Also

There's a small TV room with a DVD and video library.

Food and Drink

Photos Driftwood Hotel food and drink

Top Table

A corner table in the new extension, or table 6 in the conservatory, overlooking the sea.

Dress Code

Chino chic: deck shoes, panama hats and cable knits.

Hotel restaurant

Chef Paul Green uses fresh, local and organic ingredients when available to produce Modern European dishes; highlights include wonderful fish and seafood. The menu changes regularly to reflect what’s in season, adding a touch of surprise to the occasion. The exceptional spread means the restaurant gets busy; we strongly recommend booking a table in advance of your stay.

Hotel bar

There’s a wee little bar next to the restaurant, serving all the usual tipples till midnight, but you could also take a glass of chilled wine onto the deck or the lawn and soak in that gorgeous view from a comfortable steamer chair.

Last orders

Food: 9.30pm. Breakfast heartily from 8am until 10am every day of the week.

Room service

Drinks and snacks only.

Location

Photos Driftwood Hotel location
Address
Driftwood Hotel
Rosevine, near Portscatho,
Rosevine
TR2 5EW
United Kingdom

Planes

Exeter aiport is two hours from the hotel. From London Gatwick, daily flights head west to Newquay in only an hour.

Trains

Train stations close to the hotel include St Austell and Truro (both under 30 minutes away).

Automobiles

From the M5, you can use the A30 to get further west right up until the B3275, when you’ll need to follow signs to Ladock. After that, use the A3078 towards Tregony/St Mawes.

Worth getting out of bed for

Make a boat trip to the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth – the journey itself is worthwhile; the foot-passenger ferry from St Mawes’ fishing harbour. Surfing is becoming the Cornish national pastime. The Extreme Academy in Newquay has the UK’s only ski resort on a beach and also organises waterskiing, windsurfing and more. Art-lovers will enjoy a nose around The Gallery Portscatho or, a little further away, Tate St Ives. The Eden Project is interesting enough to make a detour worthwhile, as are the mysterious Lost Gardens of Heligan.

Local restaurants

In Portloe, the restaurant at the Lugger Hotel serves seafood – fresh lobster and crab in particular – and has tables overlooking the picturesque harbour. Another seafood specialist, the wonderful restaurant and bar at Olga Polizzi-designed Hotel Tresanton has romantic views from the terrace over the bay of St Mawes, and delicious organic food.

Local bars

Tucked away in the hamlet of Ruan Lanihorne, The Kings Head is a proper, good old-fashioned country pub: get there before 2pm for the perfect ploughman’s or a hearty lunch of locally caught fish or pheasant (mind the shot!). In the fishing village of Portscatho on the Roseland peninsula, 17th-century pub The Plume of Feathers is ideal for fish ’n’ chips and a pint after a walk along the cliffs, or a cosy evening drink. The Roseland Inn in Philleigh does fantastic Sunday lunches, worth booking ahead for.

Reviews

Photos Driftwood Hotel reviews
Benji Wilson

Anonymous review

By Benji Wilson, Square-eyed scribbler

I’m fairly certain that a man is not supposed to have feelings for a smoked mackerel, especially when that very chap is sharing a weekend with his significant other at a picturesque and remote boutique hotel in Cornwall. But I strongly believe that we shouldn’t deny our feelings, so, with apologies to Mrs Smith, I hereby confess that a smoked mackerel fillet with celeriac and apple remoulade, beetroot and banyuls vinegar has stolen my heart. Such a shame that I had to eat it.

In case you think that these are simply the ramblings of a wistful glutton, there is a link here. The beauty of that dish was its just-caught freshness: exactly the quality that makes Driftwood, and its setting on the south Cornwall coast, so special. For those who know Cornwall’s Atlantic shore – who have surfed at Newquay, or visited Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Cornwall at Watergate Bay – the south is its more modest sibling. Facing the Channel rather than the Atlantic, there are few big breakers here; the whole experience is quietly understated. The hamlet of Rosevine is almost defiantly difficult to get to (driving from the A30 takes the best part of an hour), but when you finally do arrive, you’re confronted with a craggy, stark beauty.

If sub-tropical, sand-hemmed south Cornwall is to your taste, then there are few better ways to enjoy it than at the simple-but-stylish Driftwood Hotel. You could hardly be closer to the sea: from the decking outside our room, the beach below was a five-minute walk, cutting steeply down through terraced gardens with pairs of chairs and hidden bothies for reading and thinking. It’s only once you’re down on the beach, maybe a hundred feet below, that you can look back up and see Driftwood as a whole. Like the landscape, it’s pleasingly unostentatious: the main, extended building is a grey-blue beach house draped languidly along the hilltop that could have been shipped straight from Cape Cod. In addition, halfway down the path to the beach is ‘The Cabin’, a weather-boarded, family-size hidey-hole tucked into the hillside for that faux-castaway sense of seclusion.

Our room though, was up top. French windows opened onto our own terrace with sea views beyond the gardens. Like people, some hotel rooms demand to be looked at and others are more modest. Spending too much time with a show-off can be grating, so you won’t find hot tubs, plasma screens or robotic toilets at Driftwood. Instead, the bedrooms are cosy, stylish and uncluttered: a battleship-sized bed takes precedence, and the ensuite is bathroom, not ballroom, sized. Lamps and mirrors are adorned with – unsurprisingly – driftwood, but that was as close as things got to frippery. Presumably, the owners reasoned that anyone wanting to cocoon themselves in a room with a DVD-library selection, when Gerrans Bay, the coastal path and the Eden Project (25 minutes away) are all close to hand, is in the wrong place anyway.

Bags unpacked, bed bounced on and free toiletries assessed (L’Occitane*, since you ask), we chose the coastal path for our first excursion. From the beach, you can meander east, or west. We headed west for St Mawes, on what we thought would be a quick morning pipe-clearer. We got nowhere near, but did make it to Portscatho, a fishing village that’s home to a couple of pubs, some craft shops and Ralph’s Local Stores’ cluster-bomb pasties. Back at the hotel, we sat out on the decking and gorged on our meat-packed fishermen’s fare.

Our mistake was not to have looked at the dinner menu before we did so, because Driftwood’s restaurant is as dramatic as its setting, and head chef Chris Eden’s menu is a set three courses (or seven diet-destroying broadsides if you go for the euphemistically titled ‘tasting’ option). The dining room overlooks the garden and has views out to sea – but we barely noticed. Our eyes were focused solely on the delights laid before us: monkfish, pollack, john dory and roasted Terras Farm duck, offset with thimblefuls of frothy amuse-bouches and a cheese board that practically insisted we order a couple more glasses of wine to do it justice. It was impeccable, high-end cuisine, served by knowledgeable, unpretentious staff. The food and service all reflected Driftwood’s appeal – high-quality local fare delivered with minimum fuss. The fact that residents are advised to book tables suggests that Driftwood is a fine-dining destination in its own right, but be warned: we’d booked a massage for the next day, but when it came to tempering the effects of Driftwood’s temptations, we’d have been better off with liposuction.

Breakfast revealed our fellow guests to be a pair of families (kids are catered for with ease), some couples, and Buffy**, the owners’ Lakeland Terrier – who was soon shooed out. And then, a drive to a fine pub (the Kings Head in Ruan Lanihorne) for lunch, before returning for a cat-nap and a read. Some people turn to chakra-balancing, hot-stone rub-downs or reiki for their relaxation. We discovered that slumping in steamer chairs looking out over the sea, with the sun slipping away behind the promontory, does it for us. If only my sweet, succulent mackerel could have been there to enjoy it with me.

 

*Now Ren bath products.
**Buffy is sadly no longer a resident at the hotel.

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Price per night from $196.08