Special Places to Stay - More than a bed for the night

Down a Cornish farm track with high hedges, a big surprise: a secluded Queen Anne house in five acres of land. It's the sort of place that could turn up in a Daphne du Maurier novel; indeed it has. Great Treverran's finely proportioned and much-loved rooms are homely with paintings and pottery and a gentle background of taupe, teal, lilac and blue. Furnishings are an engaging mix of family pieces; floors are covered in seagrass or are planked and rugged. The house is heaven for families, what with its big comfortable rooms and old stone fireplace fuelled by logs from the cellar, its playroom in the eaves and its kitchen with two ovens. From window seats see the gardens, awash with big trees for climbing and hedges to keep small children safe. (Watch the well.) First-floor bedrooms are spacious and inviting, children's rooms are spartan and sweet and mattresses have been hand-made to fit antique beds. You're ten minutes' drive from the chic shops of Fowey, four miles from the Eden Project. A sandy beach is two miles away, and Cornwall and its subtropical coastline lies at your feet.