It’s possible you already know that Cornwall is one of my favourite places. Last year we spent a week in St. Ives, with a break at Tintagel on our return to Bristol. That stopover was my first (memorable) experience of North Cornwall. Aside from the fact that it rained to the point of low visibility, it was an enjoyable visit, and it occurred to me that I owed this part of the world some more attention. As you can imagine, it was a welcome surprise to be invited for a long weekend in the Watergate Bay hotel, along with my favourite Bristol bloggers and Instagrammers.
On a rainy Friday in March, Porthjess, Tigerlillyquinn, Kymgrimshaw and myself bundled into my car and headed for the motorway. I love working on creative projects in solitude, but there is something especially inspiring when such experiences are shared with other creatives. Slightly overwhelmed by this fact, we nattered about all things Instagram for what did not feel like three hours, until we arrived at Watergate Bay.
My typical holiday experience is something along the lines of arrive, abandon belongings, head out to explore until legs give in, retreat, sleep, repeat. This break was not characteristic of my typical holiday. We were encouraged to stay amongst the bay unless we had longer than three days to spare. This was great advice, because we really indulged.
We were pretty much always eating. If we weren’t eating, you might have found us taking a stroll along the beach, reclining in a hot tub beside the bay or having a massage in the Swim Club.
After our arrival lunch, we had a tour of the hotel and a leisurely drink. At 8pm, it was time to head to the Beach Hut for Tapas Night. We stood beside the bonfire, slurping on Bloody Marys and tapping our feet to some upbeat acoustic guitar before heading inside for dinner. The atmosphere was great, and there wasn’t a single person who wasn’t happy to be there. By 10pm, after six sharing platters, some had left their chairs in favour of the dance floor. Others (ourselves included) had sunk deeper into their chairs in a merry, wine-induced haze.
If anyone did happen to over-indulge at Tapas Night, it was OK because the following morning meant breakfast at Zacry’s, and breakfast at Zacry’s entails eating fresh waffles to your heart’s content. If you prefer something light to start the day, there’s also plenty of fresh fruit, smoothies, cereals, or, my favourite, salmon and poached egg bagels.
After breakfast it was time for lunch. I’m not joking – as Instagrammers we spend four times longer at breakfast for the sake of taking photos. Though I am not complaining.
We had lunch in the Living Space, which conveniently also had gorgeously diffused light for taking photos. We didn’t humour the Instagram urge too much this time. Instead, we took a few snaps and enjoyed the food before swim/hot tub/massage time.
We returned to Zacry’s for our final dinner, feeling refreshed and somewhat sleepy after our treatments. I ordered fig, mozzarella and balsamic salad to start, hake and butter bean stew for mains, and a trio of sorbets in a pistachio biscotti sandwich for dessert. I’m not going to attempt to describe how good they were for fear of not doing them justice.
Once we had reluctantly checked out, we ventured onwards to Padstow for an afternoon of food and photography, what else? As we munched on some Cornish Pasties and critiqued our decision to save Rick Stein’s restaurant for another trip, we agreed that we’d had a wonderful weekend. If you’d like to see more of our long weekend in Watergate Bay, you can watch my vlog here. Thank you to Watergate Bay for having us.
2 comments
Ewa Macherowska
Beautiful photos <3
Alex@telltaleblog
lovely imagery!
Cornwall is so similar to Brittany which is one of my favorite places on earth.
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