In the know

House style

Luxury stone barn conversion, sympathetic to its surroundings.

Grounds

On a hilltop with 180-degree views of North Cornish coastline, surrounded by 50 acres of rolling farmland.

Sleeps

16 (eight in the main house, four in each of the two cottages).

Ideal for

Everyone from family groups wanting a catch-up to gangs of friends looking for a surf-and cream-tea break in the southwest would love Fentafriddle.

Rates

Fentafriddle (main house): £2,000–£4,500 a week. Little Fentafriddle and Tremanon: £1,500–£2,500 a week.

Minimum hire

Three nights. Check-in from 4pm, check-out at 10am.

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Interior

Bedrooms 

Fentafriddle

Bedroom 1: the best bedroom in the house. This floral-themed chamber, adorned with botanical prints that complement its red toile de jouy curtains and cushions, comes with an enormous sleigh bed. A well as an en-suite bathroom with shower, there’s also a freestanding roll-top bath and antique French wooden screen in one corner. The original pigeon holes (this was a working barn, remember?) now have glass in them, but make for a stylish design feature.

Bedroom 2: a twin room, though the two beds can be zipped together to make a double. A large, south-facing window gives the room a lovely, airy feel – but, as this is often used as a children’s room, there are removable bars over its lower half – and there’s an en-suite bathroom with shower.

Bedroom 3: another room with twin beds that can be zipped together to make a wonderfully comfortable double. It has a characterful under-the-eaves feel, with exposed beams framing the bed, and there’s plenty of well-chosen antiques dotted about. It comes with an en-suite bathroom containing a bath.

Bedroom 4: just off the living area, this downstairs room with twin beds (that can easily become a double) is small but cosy. It leads onto a wet room containing a shower with a dinner-plate-sized head.

Little Fentafriddle

Bedroom 1: Double room with en-suite bathroom and shower.

Bedroom 2: Double room with en-suite bathroom and bath.

Tremanon

Bedroom 1: Double room with en-suite bathroom and shower.

Bedroom 2: Double room with en-suite bathroom and bath.

Kitchen Managing to look both modern and rustic at the same time, the large kitchen in the main house includes plenty of work surfaces – including a breakfast bar in the middle of the room, which contains the dishwasher and sink. Other facilities include an oven, microwave and Dualit toaster, and there’s a washing machine and dryer in the adjacent utility room. There’s a dining table for eight, overlooked by a well-stocked Cornish dresser, and the whole room is hung with colourful wooden images of farmyard animals. There are also French windows leading out onto the lawn, and overlooking the sea beyond. The well-equipped kitchens in Little Fentafriddle and Tremanon are both part of an open-plan living area.

Living room There are two living areas in the main house. The first – smaller one – is immediately off the kitchen, and contains a huge kilim sofa, leather chair, a wood-burning stove and plenty of games and books. There’s also a flatscreen TV with Sky and a DVD player. In the roundhouse (where flour used to be ground in Fentafriddle’s working-farm days), leading off the other living room, you’ll find a large corner sofa, several comfy chairs, and plenty of effortlessly blended antique and modern furniture – all beneath atmospheric exposed beams and brickwork. There’s also a TV with Sky and a DVD player in here, too. French windows on two sides lead out to different sections of the terrace. The living areas in Little Fentafriddle and Tremanon are both equally well-stocked, and come with wood-burning stoves. Both are warmed by an ingenious, very ‘green’ natural-heating system, in which heat is drawn from beneath the soil in the surrounding fields.

Dining room The dining areas in all three properties are incorporated into the kitchen space.

Other Toilets don’t come much better than the one at Fentafriddle. As well as being painted in a deep, decadent red, and being stocked with every toilet book you can imagine – from Giles cartoons to the Little Book of Calm – it’s door has been taken from a local hospital. Peer closely, and you can see the words ‘Operating Room’ seared into the wood.

Outdoor

Gardens Each of the houses has its own terrace – either decked or laid with Cornish slate. The main house has a terrace with a gas barbecue and dining table for eight; this also wraps around the front of the property, and is dotted with wooden outdoor furniture and sculptures by the owners’ son. The main house has its own small lawn directly in front of it. But, as all of the properties are surrounded by 50 acres of fields, there’s plenty of grass to lie on.

Parking There’s ample room for plenty of cars.

Other There’s a field of donkeys in front of the properties. Give yourself a treat – take them a sugar lump.

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Planes Air Southwest (+44 (0)870 241 8202; www.airsouthwest.com) and Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) fly to Newquay.

Trains The nearest railway station is the not-particularly-convenient Bodmin Parkway, about 30 minutes’ drive away. The good news, however, is that it’s on the main London to Penzance line.

Local taxi service Local taxi service Rob’s Travel (seats up to 16 people) +44 (0)7771 824 141. Voddens Taxis +44 (0)1288 354 411. Hookways Jennings Coaches will collect from train stations and airports and can seat up to 49 people (+44 (0)1288 352 359). For car hire, click on our Travel Offers page. Smithcard holders get a 10 per cent discount with Hertz.

Directions by road Enter Cornwall on the A30 (leave the M5 just after Exeter). After Launceston, get onto the A395 at Kennards House, following the signs to North Cornwall. Continue along this road for about 10 miles then, at a T-junction, turn left onto the A39. After about one mile, turn right onto the B3314 and pass through Slaughterbridge – you will come to a crossroads, where you should continue straight on, following the sign to Delabole. Take the first right towards Tintagel. Carry on downhill along this winding road for around two and a half miles, passing a Garden Gnome factory, then turn left when you see a signpost to Trebarwith Strand. After about 300 yards, you will see a concrete driveway on the left that slopes sharply upwards. This is the entrance to Fentafriddle.

Review

If I were to be reincarnated, I’d like to come back as one of the donkeys living at Fentafriddle. What’s not to like? You’d spend your days in a paddock filled with the sort of lush grass that looks as though you could bounce on it, stopping between mouthfuls to gaze contemplatively at a 180-degree view of spume-topped waves pounding the craggy Cornish coastline. When the sun glints on the water and makes the meadows as green as a bottle, it’s beautiful. When dark, silver-fringed clouds loom down over torrid sea, and shafts of light pierce through like fingers pointing at the clifftops, it’s beautiful. Those donkeys have got a good deal. And we call them asses.

If I don’t come back as a donkey, I’d at least like to be reborn as someone with enough spare time to come and spend weeks and weeks at this gorgeous barn conversion on the rocky North Cornish coast. Fentafriddle has got it just right. Owners James and Lucy, who have turned what was a tumbledown working farm into a collection of impeccably restored upmarket holiday lets, have gone out of their way to ensure the main house and its two smaller sister cottages have lost none of their original character.

Walk into the main building and, alongside the gleaming modern kitchen, flatscreen TVs, Bose iPod docks and other luxurious trappings of 21st-century living, you’ll see an antique Cornish dresser loaded with the county’s signature blue-and-white pottery. And that’s just the start. Walk in further and you’ll see a wood-burning stove, scuffed leather chairs and a door, reclaimed from Bodmin Hospital, upon which you can still see outlines of the words ‘Operating room’. All the amenities any group could possibly want are there, but James and Lucy have thrown in their own possessions – paintings, bureaux, cabinets – to cleverly create an atmosphere that is homelike and comfortable.

It’s the views that make Fentafriddle extra-special, though. And west-facing French windows in both the kitchen and the roundhouse – which serves as an extra, sofa-filled living room – look out directly onto the vista. On a clear day, says James, you can see as far as Lundy Island in one direction, and to Padstow and Rock in the other. But it’s the sunsets – big, fat, cloud-illuminating ones that send spears of orange light through the glassed-over pigeon holes in the main bedroom – that will most impress. Relax on the wooden furniture on your terrace, steaks hissing on the gas barbecue, and watch a real bona fide star sink into the Atlantic Ocean.

Little Fentafriddle and Tremanon, the two smaller cottages that both sleep four, are equally well-situated. Designed so that no one’s outside space overlooks anyone else’s, each cottage retains an air of privacy while still sharing the same beautiful view with its neighbours. They may be more intimate than the main house, but they still exude character. Each comes with an open-plan kitchen and living area, leading onto two atmospheric bedrooms filled with the owners’ winning combination of characterful antiques and high-spec modern amenities. The showers and baths alone would put many a boutique hotel to shame.

Fentafriddle’s setting also means that, despite being able to see other farms and villages dotted around, you feel wonderfully isolated in your hilltop idyll. Though gorgeous Trebarwith Strand – and its pubs and cafés – is just a matter of minutes away down the hill (it’s a steep climb back, though), the tourists who head to the beach for rock pools and rambling will pass the end of your drive and never know you’re there. Though Fentafriddle is ideally placed for Padstow, Rock, Port Isaac, Newquay and all those places we sit at our desks dreaming about, it’s enticing enough to keep you within its grounds for weeks at a time. Take a book and sink into the enormous kilim sofa in the lounge, fire up the coals on the terrace and throw some fresh sardines on the grill or just lie on the lawn listening to the seagulls caw overhead. Either that or walk across the field to pet the donkeys. Be nice to them. With a bit of luck, one day it could be you.

Reviewed by Rufus Purdy

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