Three Mile Beach

I came to Cornwall late in life. By ‘late’, I mean towards the end of my twenties, which definitely made me late to the Cornish party. As a teenager returning to school after the summer holidays, I remember my friends referring to Rock and Booby’s Bay (no schoolgirl forgets a name like that), and hearing their coming-of-age experiences from a south-western land of vast beaches. It had an almost folkloric quality in my mind.

But then I met a man who had been one of the kids who’d gone to Cornwall every summer. He took me to stay with his family in Bodmin Moor, we walked in the woodlands of the Camel Valley, and ate peerless fish and chips in the north coast’s Seven Bays while our dog scampered on the shoreline. I got the appeal. When we had children, my husband wanted them to have the Cornish holidays, too, which, sadly, the pandemic put on hold.

Until, that is, we went to Three Mile Beach, a collection of 15 luxury beach houses (with kitchens) nestled in the dunes of Gwithian in St Ives Bay. Our kids were almost four and nearly two when we went; and as we’d been cooped up at home for much of their early years, we were as desperate for a change of scenery as we were trepidatious. Would the children sleep well in this new place? Was the beach a safe one? What about food, would it be easy to find and cook the things they liked there? And don’t get me started on the word ‘luxury’ in the hotel’s comms, which was both seductive and anxiety-inducing. What havoc would our kids wreak on this beautiful place, what damage could they do?

But Three Mile Beach was made for families like ours, because it’s made for everyone. The compound of beach houses is set back from the bay – it takes about five-to-10 minutes to walk down to the sand, past the rock pools – but the view as we approached it made us gasp. The hugeness of the sea, the sky, the sand, impossible to capture on a camera, looked like the perfect antidote to London’s restrictions.

Our three-bedroom house, Rock the Kasbah – each building has a punkish moniker – may have been surrounded by the other houses (indeed, in the neighbouring one, there was a group of surfers, who happened to be on a stag do), but each one is designed to feel private and secluded, like it’s your own. The children toddled in excitedly, thrilled by the space and the colourful design, a mix of clean lines and vibrant Berber-inspired rugs and cushions. I needn’t have worried about cooking there, either; each kitchen at Three Mile Beach is better equipped than even my own, with a saucepan for every eventuality, good sharp knives and a handsome collection of Yeti vessels to keep coffee hot and wine cool. The welcome hamper was exemplary too, including every herb and spice you could possibly need, scones with clotted cream and local jam (important: in Cornwall, the jam goes on first) and a bottle of Camel Valley sparkling wine for once the kids had gone to bed. Yes.

We visited in early November, not exactly lie-on-the-beach season, but at Three Mile Beach this doesn’t matter. There is so much else to do. If surfing’s your bag, you can hire surfboards and wetsuits. There’s Chomp, which in summer is an on-site beach bar and restaurant, and in winter does meal deliveries. The hot tub was the star of the show, though; I spent hours a day in ours with my daughter, her taking delight in endless bubbles while I immersed my body in the heat and felt the cold sea air on my face, alternating between coffee and more of that sparkling wine.

As it was winter, we had all our meals inside, where the setup is very practical for family life: a kitchen island is home to the stove, and behind that, a big table (with two Stokke high chairs, available on request, like cots), then an enormous L-shaped sofa in front of a huge television. You can cook and keep an eye on children as they vegetate after an afternoon’s crabbing or, in our case, day trips to the likes of St Ives, the Eden Project, the Lost Gardens of Heligan and various brilliant eateries. Celebrated pub the Gurnard’s Head is a must, gorse-yellow and unmissable on the horizon, where we tucked into mussels and chips while the bairns had, well, chips and chips – and excellent ones they were, too. We loved the Standard Inn as well, the new-ish pub by chef Simon Stallard, where I had a stew to end them all: cod, bean, tomato and tarragon, topped with lashings of aioli. My children loved going for ice creams at Moomaid of Zennor in St Ives, while I picked up some lovely bottles at wine and coffee spot, St Eia.

We didn’t actually need to eat out. Cornwall is such a treasure trove for produce these days, and our kitchen at Three Mile Beach was so good, that cooking at home was a joy. Nearby Trevaski’s is a farm shop where we bought local fish, meat and vegetables (and the children picked the very last of the year’s raspberries from the polytunnels). One night we fried skate, on another we had a family roast; we attempted to copy that stew from the Standard on another still. Very quickly, it felt like a home away from home. Maybe my kids will get their Cornish summers, after all. And me, well, I may have come to Cornwall late, but that’s definitely better than never.