'I discovered a subtropical paradise in tucked-away corner of Cornwall'

Balance is an interesting word. The older you get, the more you realise just how important the idea of balance can be. In China, where I’ve been recently, they talk about yin-yang, so on the plane home I was inspired to practise a bit of balance and harmony.

For example, I’d been in the Far East, so why not counter-balance that by going to the Far West? In UK terms, that means Cornwall. So, I thought, west of the Tamar I shall go…

But, also in the search for a bit of harmony, I was feeling the need for somewhere calming, beautiful and peaceful after all those airports and vast concrete Chinese cities.

I’d heard of just the place. The Hotel Meudon is tucked away on a very special section of coast just south of Falmouth, and it seemed to tick all the required boxes.

For a start, this is subtropical garden country. There’s no other corner of Britain like it. The hotel’s near neighbours are the amazing Trebah Gardens and also the National Trust’s gorgeous garden property at Glendurgan. Which really are astonishing places.

Tens of thousands of visitors pay good money each year to walk around this duo of delectable demesnes. And here’s the really cool thing about the Hotel Meudon… It has its own subtropical gardens, tucked away in a deep valley which (as is the case with the two neighbouring properties) stretch down to the sea.

These highly sheltered and warm valleys allow them to host all manner of plants that couldn’t be grown in the country outside a greenhouse.

Where better to escape the madding crowd? What finer antidote to the teeming millions I’d walked among in those vast modern Chinese cities?

In fact, the Hotel Meudon describes itself as being… “A world unto itself. Nestled in magical, subtropical gardens, a stone’s throw from our privately owned beach, the newly refurbished hotel is a secluded Cornish paradise.”

Located near the village of Mawnan Smith, between Falmouth and the Helford River, the hotel is perched at the top of its own gardens tucked into a tree-lined valley. A ten-minute stroll down the coombe takes you to Bream Cove, the hotel’s own secluded beach.

From the moment I threw my suitcase into one of the spacious and comfortable garden rooms I knew I’d found just the right antidote to the mega-cities of China.

These seaborne valleys in southern Cornwall are among the most peaceful places in all of northern Europe. They really can exude the kind of peace and quiet that can be experienced in so few other places.

How can that be? Because coastal Cornwall can be a wild and windy place. Often, you’ll hear the boom of distant breakers pounding on the sea cliffs and the whine of the wind in trees, eaves and telegraph wires.

But step into one of these deep shelter zones, and everything changes. Silence ensues. Even the birds seem to know that these are special places. Within five minutes of checking in to the Hotel Meudon on Tuesday, I found myself strolling through a veritable world of birdsong.

As a bloke who lives in deep countryside, you wouldn’t think I’d make a big deal about a load of chirping and chirruping. But this was different to the feathered cacophony I hear in my Exmoor valley. It was far, far more intense. It struck me that there must be many thousands of birds down there in the deep and dripping vale. I barely caught a glimpse of one of our feathered friends, but there were obviously great flocks of little brown jobs flitting about somewhere in the stillness between the giant tree ferns and the bamboo plantations. We spent a couple of nights at the Hotel Meudon this week and I loved every minute of it. Having undergone an extensive refurbishment in 2021, the hotel has been transformed into what the owners like to call “a stylish home from home”.

The Meudon was originally the home to members of the well-known Fox family, local Quakers who owned several large properties in and around Falmouth, including both Glendurgan and Trebah.

At what is now the site of the Meudon, shipping agent Howard Fox joined with wealthy banker and MP, Edmund Backhouse, to transport plants from far-flung reaches of the globe.

Although much of the structure of the main building dates back to this time, Meudon also incorporates two 17th-century coastguard cottages (complete with escape tunnel – apparently the local coastguards were not averse to a little smuggling).

Strange name, Meudon. It’s said to come from a nearby farmhouse, which was built by Napoleonic prisoners of war and named after their home village near Paris. The original, Mowi do Non, became shortened to Meudon.

Anyway, as I say, I loved our brief stay at the hotel and look forward to making a return visit, perhaps in springtime when these subtropical valleys come alive with exotic blooms.

The Hotel Meudon, as its owners suggest, is one of those home-from-home establishments where you can find yourself relaxing so deeply the cares of the wicked world seem to drift away. By the time our two-night stay had come to an end, I really had regained my equanimity and life loomed gloriously in one big harmonious balance.

Find out more at https://www.meudon.co.uk/. At the moment the hotel is promoting several special offers - an autumn two-night break, for example, including a two-course dinner per person on the first night, and breakfast each morning, costs from £299 per room.

The Gardens at Trebah

I reckon a great many people would vote for Trebah if there was a competition to find England’s most popular garden. I probably would. But then, as a feature writer for the Western Morning News I’ve been fortunate enough to visit this Cornish slice of paradise on numerous occasions. I was there again this week, and was recalling the first time I visited. It was just after the Millennium and I had been invited to meet Tony Hibbert, the then owner, who’d done so much to make the garden what it is today.

Here’s just some of the article I wrote at the time….

Every now and again in the Westcountry, you come across a spot that somehow speaks of another world. You turn a corner, perhaps, and you are plunged into somewhere filled with exoticism. Our northern climes give way to the subtropical and we are immersed in some dazzling, magical demesne.

I know of at least half-a-dozen brilliant wonderlands located in this peninsula. Gardens that seem to think they’re far closer to the Equator than they are. None, however, offers quite such a geographical warp as the gardens at Trebah. To explore this south-facing coombe in southerly Cornwall, is to immerse oneself deep in some distant, far-flung subtropical land – without ever having to reach for passport or a visa.

“Look at it – just look at it,” sighed Tony Hibbert, who has spent years working morning, noon and night on his 26-acre estate. He utters this with pride as we stand in front of his house at the very top of the garden. “When I first took in this view, the intention was to sit here enjoying it with a gin-and-tonic in my hand. I might have known better. Never had much time for the G-and-T as it turned out, the place took over our lives.”

It’s easy to see why. The deep, mysterious coombe at Trebah seems to beckon, as you peer down from its brink. Perhaps it’s something to do with the waters that glimmer at end of the valley. The flashing wavelets of the Helford estuary seem to insinuate themselves throughout the demesne. Not only is the sprightly 83-year-old extremely knowledgeable about the wide diversity of flora that populates his wonderland, he’s also jolly good company.

Here’s an example of the sort of thing he told me as we strolled around the garden…

“There used to be some banana trees just here years ago. The then Prince of Wales came with Wallis Simpson and you can imagine how surprised he was to see huge yellow bananas growing in Cornwall. In fact, he was so taken aback he took the trouble to bestow some sort of medal on the head gardener. All the more surprising, then, that the gardener was sacked the next day. Not for wiring the bananas to the trees. He’d bought them in Falmouth. But for leaving a Fyffes sticker on one!”

Another amusing tale involved a huge Koi carp. “See that one with the mark on his back? Fortunately he’s the only one here who’s fallen victim to a heron. There was a statue of a heron up there on the waterfall and someone doing some work knocked it over and it injured the carp. Not bad, for a place that gets a lot of real herons!”

And so the anecdotes continued as we made our way around, down through the water garden, through the many mighty bamboos in an area called the Bamboozle, to Ninky’s Pool and Dinky’s Puddle. “Named after two beautiful Dutch girls,” explained my host.

He mentioned something about them having “very brave parents”, but it was only later that I learned that these Dutch people had helped Mr Hibbert escape after he’d been captured by Germans at Arnhem Bridge during heavy fighting in WW2.

This theme – so incongruous in this heavenly place – was repeated down at the bottom of the garden where there are memorials to the 7,500 brave men who set off from this very spot, en-route to Omaha Beach for the D-Day landings. The 29th Infantry Division suffered huge losses during the Normandy campaign.

To find out more about visit Trebah visit https://www.trebahgarden.co.uk/

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