"This is how the Queen must feel wherever she goes," says the missus as we walk into our spanking new Village apartment. When we pulled up, two hours early, workmen were still crawling all over the site. So we wander down to the beach and by the time we return, bang on check-in time, it is the departing cleaners who hand us the keys. The place still has a whiff of show home to it, but any fears this job has been rushed to get it ready for the start of the summer holidays melt away the moment we enter the huge, airy living space and take in the dreamy view of Watergate Bay through the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows.
A cedarwood balcony the size of a second living room, furnished with wicker sofas and sun-loungers, runs the length of the apartment. This is the ultimate in inside/outside living.
The Village is the latest outpost of the Watergate Bay Hotel's mini-empire on a beach north of Newquay. This includes the family-friendly, refurbished Victorian hotel itself, the Extreme Academy Surf School and two of Cornwall's most popular restaurants: the Beach Hut and Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Cornwall.
Everything is well-thought out and downright sexy, from the gel fire to the well-equipped diner-kitchen and the iPod dock under the flatscreen TV.
Downstairs are two large bedrooms, a double and a twin, both with small balconies and big en suite bathrooms with pale honey stone floors and walk-in showers; the larger one has a deep free-standing bath, too.
The property's eco-credentials are equally impressive, but not in a shouty way. The apartments are built into the cliff side, minutes from the beach; sedum roofs help them blend in and maintain a constant temperature year-round. Other energy savers include air-source heat pumps and high-efficiency lighting. According to the marketing blurb, this means the apartments require "no more energy to heat in winter than it takes to boil a kettle".
The reason these two-bedroom apartments are so well executed is that some of the 29 (there are just four at present, the rest will be built over the next few years) are for sale. For an eye-watering half a million quid + VAT, I imagine you'd expect nothing less. Thankfully, rental rates are affordable to the rest of us, particularly off-season when they come down to £670 a week for four people. A fraction of the cost of a hotel of comparable quality.
In summer, Fifteen is fully booked every day for lunch and dinner – so we go for breakfast. The views down to the enormous beach are magnificent, the decor bright funky. "This is the best fry-up I've ever had," says the missus, "but then it should be, for a tenner, and it isn't big enough to set you up for a day's surfing." Ditto my delicious £9.25 croissant stuffed with smoked salmon and creamy scrambled eggs.
The Beach Hut, directly below Fifteen, is more low-key. In fact, it feels just like a simple beach hut – surprising given the sophisticated food. My starter of Cornish crab, seaweed and cucumber salad with ponzu and wasabi dressing is fresh and spicy, but mysteriously there is no avocado in the prawn and avocado salad. The mains – whole grilled bream and Black Angus rib-eye steak with melt-in-the-mouth stuffed mushroom – are both superb.
But, good as the food was down on the beach, most of the time we cooked in and ate on the terrace. We felt so relaxed in our gorgeous apartment we weren't fussed about going out. Short of being able to walk straight out onto the sand, this is just about the perfect beach pad.
