Favourite View
Choosing a favourite view is easy. It’s the view from the closest bit of coast to my home on the Lizard in West Cornwall. Church Cove at Gunwalloe, just a few hundred yards across Mullion Golf Course, is the quintessential Cornish cove but also has a tiny church backed into the headland flanking the beach.
It is a beautiful place but we have another link with this special part of Cornwall going back more than 30 years. In our family, the headland into which the church cowers is called ‘Decision Point’, because that is where my parents made the decision to move our life down here. So it was really where Classic Cottages was born. They started with just four fisherman’s cottages and we now have a portfolio of some 680 holiday homes spread across Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset. As we celebrate our 30th year in business, I am very grateful that, standing on the cliffs looking across to Land’s End, my parents decided to make that bold step.
It is easy to get complacent about the place we live in, but I walk or run that piece of coast almost every day and, whatever the weather, it always reminds me how lucky I am.
My South West Speciality
Fresh mussels from the Helford River, plucked from their host rocks with my own hands, cleaned and potted that day; how could it get better than that?
We have come a long way in the south west over the last 20 years. Touring the food tents at both the Devon and Cornwall County Shows bears testament to the incredible energy, imagination and enthusiasm of the local food producers. Back in the ‘old days’ we could not have shone a light on the standard of food in the south west, it simply would not have passed the ’credibility test’ with our guests. But now we promote local produce and gastronomy as another great reason to come to the south west and book a Classic Cottage. The likes of Messrs Stein, Caines and Oliver have been enormously influential in shining the spotlight on our part of the country, but the real progress has been made in the village shops, local pubs and restaurants where the high profile hype is backed with consistently high quality food and produce wherever you go.
My Own Personal Haven
A recent episode of ’Coast’ covering Cornwall included a scientific study of the quality of the light in St Ives. A sample of air from London was pumped through a piece of filter paper and compared with the air from St Ives. Unsurprisingly the London filter was filthy and the St Ives one pristine. But it did highlight one of the things I like best about living in the south west. It is the sense of open space, big skies and fresh air. The same applies whether I am on the cliffs or trudging across Dartmoor. This sense of freshness and vitality is at its strongest when I am on the sea or, even better, in it. As a mid-life-crisis surfer, there is nothing I like better than sitting in the still water beyond the breaking waves on an autumn evening following the setting sun as it drops behind Land’s End – closely followed a rude wake-up call from ‘Mother Ocean’ as she shakes me out of my reverie and refreshes me with a well targeted wave.
Sum up the South west
There is no doubt that, down here in the south west, we are all shaped in some way by the special nature of our environment. But there is an implicit assumption that, because we live in such a great ‘playground’ all we ever do is play. There is so much more to the area than chocolate box villages and rural idyll. Scratch the surface and everywhere you look you will find pockets of enterprise and innovation.
We do not have a core business, so we each have to find our own niche. It is that bit harder, but I also think that the variety of activity means that it is healthier. Looking at my own business, it would be easy to classify us as just another tourist business, but we have a collection of more than 25 people who are all specialists in a range of roles including marketing, building web sites, programming, inspecting properties, and customer relations. Classic Cottages is not unique, there are many businesses like us throughout the region, all with their own expertise, competing on national and international stages. So it is not all play, our surrounding also gives us the energy and inspiration to be quite good at work too.
Simon Tregoning is managing director of Classic Cottages, a specialist letting agency based in Helston in Cornwall. The agency markets more than 600 high quality self catering holiday homes across the south west and this year the family run business is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Go to Classic.co.uk and you will find a great selection of quality holiday cottages, country cottages and pet friendly cottages.
TIP: Check out the Classic Holiday Guide for things to do in the South West: Holiday Guide Cornwall, Holiday Guide Devon, Holiday Guide Somerset & Holiday Guide Dorset
