To a tea

Tregothnan is famously the home of the UK's first tea gardens, but as Mark Hedges discovers, Camellia sinensis isn't the only thing that flourishes in this charming corner of Cornwall

- Mark Hedges

IN Cornish, tre means place or farmstead and vast numbers of villages are prefixed by these three letters in the county of my birth. It’s a naming convention almost exclusive to the west bank of the Tamar River.

We stayed at Tregothnan cottages, a tre of particular beauty set on the banks of the River Fal, inland from St Mawes and the Roseland Peninsula. The eight dog-friendly cottages—which once formed a small trading port—are dotted around the inlet offering views of the creek’s twinkling water and the estate's tea plantations, of which more later.

Penjerrick Cottage is simple, beautiful and homely, but bring your own pillows unless you like a boulder to sleep on. The quiet was punctuated by calls from curlew and shove-ler ducks and hoots of tawny owls at dusk. At one point, we became so relaxed that we had to force ourselves to venture out.