Hotel reviews Cornwall: Lugger Hotel Portloe

There is a hotel in Cornwall where the waves seem to come right up to the door. I'd seen the photos, but was it just some clever angle-work by the photographer? And finally, when curiosity got the better of me, I headed for Portloe on the south Cornish coast to find out.

The Lugger hotel is a 17th century inn, reputed to have been the haunt of local smugglers for years; one of its landlords, Black Dunstan, was hanged for smuggling in the 1890s. And the building has changed little in the intervening time - with just 22 bedrooms, downstairs is cosy nooks and crannies, a big open fireplace, low doorways and a dolls-house-sized dining room.

Upstairs I walk into my bedroom and feel like I've stepped through an opening directly onto the cliff, the waves crash onto the rocks just a few feet below. The deep windowsill is dressed with cushions, the room is low-ceilinged and cosy, there's a huge bed and next door a bright bathroom with more sea views. I make tea in my room, eat shortbread biscuits that taste deliciously of clotted cream and crunch on a few humbugs from a jar of boiled sweets on the desk.

At night, treats of hot chocolate and marshmallows magically appear in my room while I'm downstairs, along with a thoughtfully printed-out weather forecast which predicts showers. I doubt my namby-pamby London umbrella will be up to the job, but I don't care, I've brought hiking boots and I'm feeling hard core.

A walk across the clifftop

The next morning I wake before eight, get into my hotel-provided robe, make hot chocolate, open the window and sit looking out to sea. It's windy this morning, suddenly the weather's turned very wintry, the wind howls around the cliffs and thunders the waves against the rocks. The sun is rising behind the hills, the sky is low and cloudy but with patches of blue. And suddenly I'm impatient to be out in it so it's time to eat breakfast and head for the cliffs.

The hotel is on the Cornish Coastal Walk, it's a wonderful hike across stunning cliff-edge landscape to Carne beach, which the signpost tells me is three and a quarter miles from Portloe - in winds this strong I feel I've walked about 10! The Nare hotel, perched at the edge of the beach, looks nice and unassuming and I trot up happily in my hiking boots, rolling my jeans up to hide the mud streaks, then step inside to country-house grandeur with thick tartan carpets, Regency-striped wallpaper and a drawing room. Luckily lunch is served in the rather more everyday Quarterdeck with nautical decor, wraparound sea views and a coir carpet that I thankfully don't tread dirt all over. I eat carrot, honey and ginger soup and dressed crab while re-arranging my hair into less of a windswept disaster. Then I drink cappuccino in the sun lounge next door and watch the wind whipping waves in the swimming pool and bending the palm trees low.

Back in Portloe that afternoon, dark clouds are scurrying over the cliffs and the sea is black-green in reply. I keep thinking of a few lines from a WB Yeats poem I know about Sligo - 'The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knocknarea/ And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say' - and can only imagine he wrote it on a day like this.

The only pub in the village

Later that night I'm blown up the hill to the 'only pub in the village', the Ship Inn. It's a fairly standard bar, apart from the carved ship's figurehead protruding from the wall above my head, and the lovely open fire. There's a full bar menu including some appealing local mussels in cider cream (£12.95) and Cornish plaice (£13.95). But I'm having dinner in the hotel so half an hour later I'm blown back down the hill in almost pitch darkness - I've forgotten what it's like not to have street lights. It feels good to be back in nature.

I eat Falmouth Bay scallops with roasted hogs pudding, which tastes like black pudding but not as dense; the scallops are delicious and livened up with a balsamic glaze. Poached fillet of St Ives hake is cooked in a thin vegetable broth, flavoured with saffron, and served with mussels on the shell and new potatoes. I take my coffee and petits fours into the small bar next door and snuggle up on a couch beside a tableful of my favourite magazines and read Vanity Fair's take on why Johnny Depp is the most successful actor on the planet.

The wind is still howling with a vengeance as I settle down below the eaves for my last night. I wonder what my room has been used for in this building's colourful past - a lookout point for smugglers maybe? And though I'm up early again the next morning, I'm still not early enough to catch the fishermen leaving the slipway to bring in their dawn catch. The hotel can organise early-morning lobster-catching expeditions - and will cook the catch for your dinner that night.

And I stand on the slipway for one last time before I leave, the waves lapping just a few feet away from me - right beside the wall of the Lugger!

What does it cost?

Rooms cost from £130 per night. For more information and to book visit www.luggerhotel.com, phone 01872 501322, or email reservations.lugger@ohiml.com. Lugger Hotel, Portloe, Cornwall TR2 5RD.

Getting there

I travelled from London Paddington to St Austell with First Great Western trains. For train times and booking phone 0845 700 0125 or visit www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk. It's a half-hour drive from St Austell to Portloe, Roseland Taxis offer preferential rates to hotel guests; phone 01872 501001 to book.

What's nearby?

The hotel is well placed for some of Cornwall's key attractions - the Eden Project, Lost Gardens of Heligan, Trewithen Gardens, National Maritime Museum Cornwall and Tate St Ives are all within driving distance. That is of course if you can drag yourself away from the beautiful village of Portloe and its windswept cliffs.