Bovey Castle delivers a New Year’s Eve out of your film fantasies

New Year’s Eve often underwhelms. A lifetime of film and television suggests it should romantic and monumental, but too often it’s about overpriced restaurants, uncomfortable jostling with crowds to watch a fireworks display that lasts a tenth of the time you’ve been waiting for it, or simply falling asleep in front of the TV. After a lifetime of experience I’ve decided that the only way to guarantee a New Year’s Eve that lives up to the hype is to check in to a nice hotel that’s laying on a party. Ideally, a country house hotel like Bovey Castle.

I fell in love with this place three years ago when Covid forced the annual Girls Trip to local options. (See my earlier review here for a fuller picture of the hotel itself.) I’ve been hoping to bring my husband back ever since. Their lavish New Year’s package offered the opportunity, while giving both of us the chance to celebrate the conclusion of trying times at work and the transition to new roles for both of us in 2024.

Bovey’s two-night offer includes bed, breakfast, all the hotel’s usual included activities, plus a fantastic party on New Year’s Eve and an almost-constant spread of food that reminds you in quantity of a cruise ship, but in quality is much higher. We added an extra night at the start, arriving at lunch time on the 30th and heading for home late morning on the 2nd. Throughout, Bovey lived up to the country house ideal, offering pampered lounging in beautiful interiors that made you feel like you were more an invitee to a house party than a paying guest. The in-house experience was particularly important since the weather outside was dire.

The party at our escape’s heart lived up to all those New Year expectations. We started with a champagne and canapés reception sprawling across the castle’s impressive suite of drawing rooms. Even at maximum capacity, Bovey is big enough to not feel crowded, so there were plenty of comfortable seats for those who wanted them, space between groups of guests and no waiting for nibbles or top ups. The dress code was black tie and there was plenty of old-style glamour. While all ages were represented, including plenty of mult-generational family groups gathered for the holiday, the look and feel was solidly old school. One assumes the kind of people who like the idea of isolation in a Victorian castle on the edge of Dartmoor are more Downton Abbey than modern bougie bling. Best of all … and solidly Downton style … dogs are allowed in hotel bedrooms and the drawing rooms, so we enjoyed our cocktails with our spaniel at our feet in the soaring “cathedral room” 

before a highlander piped us into dinner.

The six course dinner rolled out in the elegant Great Western dining room (named after the train line that’s been bringing guests here since it became a hotel in the ‘30s). It was transformed for the holiday with lavender and silver balloons, silver party hats and Christmas crackers at each place. Either ice crystals, diamonds, or bits of plastic … depending on your imagination … scattered across the crisp white linens to catch the light.

The festive dinner started with a large shot glass of Cullen skink soup, followed by a ballotine of duck and a fish course of smoked salmon in champagne sauce. The main course was also the highlight of the show, a peppered loin of estate venison in a rich, silky sauce. Unfortunately, despite having two month’s notice of my husband’s tomato allergy, there was no sauce alternative for him. While the atmosphere was elegant and the menu lavish, we were definitely in banqueting territory on service and selection, with no alternatives for his non-standard allergy offered up. More delicate dishes (scallops, eggs) were often slightly overcooked, and many served slightly cooler than the ideal. The food service … particularly at breakfast … was a lot slower than I’d expect from this price point. Aside from the lack of allergy substitutes, there was nothing I’d escalate to a proper complaint, but the food overall didn’t reach the levels I reported when at the hotel over an October weekend.  All kitchens, including this one, struggle in banquet mode, and nobody seems to be able to get holiday staffing to full levels any more.

Dessert was an individual baked Alaska, followed by coffee and petit fours. I’m always a bit sceptical when the latter gets considered a course, but we were stuffed and had lingered at the table until 11:30, so that wasn’t an issue.

 Back in the cathedral room, so called because of its soaring ceiling and majestic proportions, sofas had been moved away from the fireplace to make room for an eight-man band. The three-piece horn section gave them a full, rich Big Band sound but the musical selection was solidly comprised of the kind of pop “floor fillers” that get everyone dancing at big events. The champagne was already being pressed into guests’ hands as we climbed up into the minstrel’s gallery to get an overhead view of the fun.

Just before midnight all the guests poured out onto the terrace behind the house to watch a short but impressive fireworks display set to music. This is the way to do NYE fireworks. No waiting, standing in an Italianate loggia protected from the drizzle, champagne being topped up by the waiters and a pile of hotel blankets on offer to ward off the chill for the 15 minutes you’ve ventured outside. 

The hotel was generous with the included champagne, topping up glasses well after midnight. We were relaxing in front of a roaring fire in the library, near enough to enjoy the band but far enough away for conversation. 

While this was the biggest event, it was far from the only activity included in the package. There were lavish teas laid out on the afternoons of both the 31st and the 1st, with piles of sandwiches, scones, pastries and savoury treats. Sadly the weather was so awful it was hard to do enough activity to work up an appetite, much less to work off your calories. 

I ventured out on New Year’s Eve, when the occasional pocket of sun peaked through scudding clouds and sudden rain bursts, but the wind was so intense that the dog and I only survived about half an hour. we made it to the foot of Hound Tor, a monumental pile of glacial boulders that appears like the ruins of some mythical castle from another age. I’ve taken glorious hikes here with Bruno’s predecessors on more clement days, but going any higher seemed to risk having our skins flayed off by the gale. The spaniel was so traumatised he wasn’t keen on going outside the rest of the break.

Fortunately Bovey boasts an indoor pool, steam room and sauna with glass walls at one end looking over the moors. This was a much a better form of exercise, though one the dog couldn’t participate in. 

You could also attend sessions to meet the estate’s falconer and one of his hawks, investigate the chickens or witness ferret racing. Given years of listening to The Archers I had high hopes for the ferrets. While adorable, they’re not natural racers and needed to be coaxed to meander down a track comprised of cages and tubes to a bowl of food waiting at the end. Not a patch on the piglet races you’ll find at a Midwestern state fair.

Outside there was a boules court, a putting green and rambles around lovely gardens, but only idiots and dog walkers were braving the weather. It had rained so much, in fact, that the boules court looked like a water feature rather than the pristine rectangle of sand it’s meant to be. 

The range of country activities included in the price of the hotel is one of Bovey’s draws, however, and in that way it reminded me of Missouri’s Big Cedar Lodge. And like the lodge, there are additional activities you can layer on for additional fees: archery, air rifle or clay pigeon shooting, an excursion to one of the estate barns to see how they make cider and gin. Having risked the great outdoors the day before, however, I spent New Year’s Day in an enormous wingback with my dog at my feet and my husband on the sofa next to me, alternating between reading a good book 

and drawing the landscape that I wasn’t able to spend long within the day before. 

While a range of activities is great, more important to me on a luxury break … particularly in the winter … is a variety of places to lounge in quiet, cozy, and architecturally impressive comfort. With fires. Bovey has these in abundance.

New Year’s Day brought another lavish banquet preceded by champagne, this time turned into kir royal to mix things up a bit. This time we started with a watercress veloute with a smoked salmon foam on top (I would have happily drunk more than the amuse bouche-sized shot glass), followed by another terrine, this time of chicken, duck liver and pistachio. The fish course brought scallops and young leeks in a vermouth sauce, just a touch overcooked as mentioned above. The cooking of the beef fillet, happily, was spot on, and they managed a sauce without tomato. The chocolate and malt tart that followed was the best of an impressive array of sweets that tempted me across the three days. In flavours and variety the New Year’s Day feast probably had a slight edge over the night before, but as the pinnacle of holiday indulgence it pushed me to that Mister Creosote moment, when a “whaffer thin mint” might have caused me to spontaneously explode. I figure this is exactly what you want out of your Christmas/New Year’s holidays: a climactic finish that makes you push back from the table and believe you are ready and eager to return to the austerity of January. 

The fly in all this lovely ointment, as you might expect, is cost. The two-night New Year’s package at Bovey Castle starts at around £2,000 per couple, with variations in cost depending on the level of room and whether you’re bringing your dog. (Or children!) Additional nights are a snip at £270; you are REALLY paying for the holiday festivity. I made a foolish assumption that for that cost, the wine would be included at the dinners. It was not. Add in a suitably celebratory number of bottles from a wine list where few choices are under £50, a cocktail or two, two meals not included, and a flat £25 fee for charging the car once (far pricier than a home charge), and the incidentals bill was an eye-watering 25%+ addition to what we’d already paid. 

Was the total cost worth it? Given the unique circumstances of our year, we’re glad we did it. We loved every minute and the three days felt more like a week of deep R&R. Would we do it again? Bovey Castle’s kind thank you upon leaving offers you a free additional night’s stay if you book next year’s package before the end of January. I’m not rushing to do it. I can’t help thinking that I’d enjoy the whole Bovey Castle experience more at none-holiday price. I’m certain the food would be even better if it was a la carte rather than part of a massive banquet. I adore the idea of a New Year’s Eve break spent in a luxury hotel with a magnificent party laid on for the guests … but could I find an option that offers something similar for a more reasonable cost? The hunt is on. As is the parallel hunt for new business. Because luxury like that isn’t even a remote possibility unless my new freelancing venture thrives. 

The focus shifts to luxury hotels as the annual Girls’ Trip stays home

 I should have been reporting from Krakow.

Over the years my annual girls’ trip, now in its 19th year with the original trio of Northwestern University friends at its core, has brought this blog to some of Europe’s most intriguing vineyards, historic townscapes and magnificent dining experiences. We’ve even stretched to the beaches of Florida and the vast drama of Iceland. Not this year.

Once our flights to Poland cancelled, we decided that the combination of shifting COVID-19 regulations with the scheduling pressures of (now) four intensely busy professional women made foreign travel impractical. It was time for a staycation. Devon and Cornwall beckoned. Fortunately, though diagnosed illnesses were rising across the UK and much of the country was heightening restrictions as the trip approached, the infection rate in the West Country remained low. And with the money we’d save on that cancelled travel, we could splash out on some properly luxurious hotels.

Our destinations: two nights at the Bovey Castle Hotel in the windswept drama of Dartmoor National Park and three at British hotelier and designer Olga Polizzi’s famed Tresanton in the achingly charming Cornish fishing village of St. Mawes. The first was a triumph on every front, including an unexpectedly lavish seven-course tasting menu. The second, though a tour de force of location and exquisite interior design, fell down on enough basic service points to leave me questioning the value I got for my money. I’d happily return to Bovey Castle, but another trip to St. Mawes would see me trying other options in the village.

BOVEY CASTLE

Arts and Crafts designer Detmar Blow created the neo-Jacobean pile for the W. H. Smith family in 1907. Though it looks a thoroughly aristocratic establishment, the architecture doth protest too much. Blow’s traditional designs were countering the very new money that came from the owner’s stationery business. The property’s old-world scale quickly proved impractical and by 1930 it was already being run as a hotel, a status the castle has retained ever since through a procession of owners. 

The original country house is still very much at the heart of the experience. Guests have the run of a variety of aristocratic settings for genteel relaxation, from a dark-panelled bar that could be a Shakespearean stage set to a towering great hall with minstrels gallery and enormous oriel window taking in the moor. 

There’s a whole sitting room’s worth of overstuffed sofas beneath the grand staircase with its hunting lodge-style chandelier of stag’s antlers, a library that feels like Jeeves and Wooster just popped out, and a brighter, more delicate Georgian-inspired drawing room no doubt designed for the ladies to withdraw into after dinner. We lounged in front of at least three live fires across our two-night stay, with tweed-clad staff members regularly nipping by to add logs and see if we needed more drinks. 

Our rooms were all on the first floor of the main house with high ceilings and atmospheric leaded window frames, but the lower key decor that went for a more modern elegance. Extensions and subsidiary buildings bring the number of rooms to 60. There are also self-catering lodges in the grounds, which include beautiful gardens and an award-winning golf course. Even though the place seemed to be operating at or near full capacity, we never felt crowded by others and could always make enough space not to hear other group’s conversations. That’s always a bonus but feels particularly relevant when trying to holiday during a pandemic.

Dartmoor is one of the few places that feel like real wilderness in England. The landscape is vast, rugged and sparsely inhabited. This is Hound of the Baskervilles country. Storms crash across the moors with little to stop them and the few roads that traverse the national park are either lonely ribbons disappearing into miles of fern- and heather-covered grazing land, or narrow tracks sunk between hedgerows with limited visibility. In short: it’s not the kind of place you want to go driving around in at night. We ate both dinners in.  

There’s a modern brasserie at one end of the main building and a warren of more formal, inter-connected dining rooms forming the Great Western restaurant at the other. Limited pandemic options mean pre-booking is essential and fine dining is only available Friday and Saturday nights, limited to a seven-course tasting menu. This was no sacrifice, dear reader. We could have easily grazed across the brasserie’s menu multiple nights, and the culinary extravaganza on Friday was on par with any of the fancy nights out we’ve enjoyed over years of Girls’ Trip culinary excess. The hotel had only recently re-opened the Great Western so the staff was positively giddy with enthusiasm. By the end of the evening we were on first-name terms with our sommelier Richard, whose wine flights were well judged and inventive, and our lead server Emma. We were delighted by the local sourcing of the food and the time the team took to tell us about it. Autumnal liver and mushroom pate, a creamy artichoke veloute, and the estate’s own venison in a velvety red wine sauce are, frankly, exactly the kinds of things you should be eating in a firelit castle while the wind howls outside.

The weather isn’t always frightening on Dartmoor and there’s a wealth of things to do here, including hiking across dramatic views, villages with a high proportion of interesting gift shops and galleries and a vast number of tourist attractions from worthy National Trust houses to child-pleasers like Pixieland and the House of Marbles. We ventured out briefly but spent most of our visit simply enjoying the facilities. This includes a beautiful Art Deco-style pool with deep blue tiles, a built-in jacuzzi and a glass wall taking in more of that sweep of moorland. Access to that and the gym is included with your room, though these days must be pre-booked. The castle also has a range of country activities including shooting, archery, fishing and carriage rides that can be booked for an additional fee.

We were all sorry to leave, but the promise of an even more lavish experience lay ahead.

TRESANTON

Hotel Tresanton is one of those places that’s acquired the status of legend amongst affluent London executives. Spoken of with the same reverence people lavish on the Soho House properties, the members’ club at Skibo or the Ivy’s private dining room back when there was only one “The Ivy” in the UK, designer and hotelier Olga Polizzi’s laid-back beach club in Cornwall has been a go-to choice for the great and the good’s seaside holidays since it opened in the late ‘90s. Its exquisite interiors have probably featured in every British design magazine and it regularly turns up in the luxury escapes features of publications like the Financial Times’ “How to Spend It” or Country Life’s travel supplements. 

We were expecting a lot. 

We were disappointed.

Tresanton is nearly 40% more expensive than Bovey Castle and yet the Dartmoor hotel beat it on every front; most particularly on service and on pandemic management that made us feel safe. Tresanton has the feeling of a place resting on its laurels, so sure of the adulation of fashionable London that it doesn’t have to try very hard. That may be the case at the moment, when pandemic-constrained people are dying to get back to familiar places, foreign travel is curtailed and executive home workers are flush with the cash they haven’t spent on commuting and foreign holidays. But it’s a dangerous strategy for a travel industry in crisis. All four of us left with the same conclusion: we’d return to St. Mawes but not to Tresanton, and we’d warn people away from repeating our mistake.

Let me start with the positives. Location. Location. Location. St. Mawes is the kind of adorable fishing village that feels like it’s been cooked up to stage an Agatha Christie detective story or charming little film scripted by Richard Curtis. It snakes around a small, peaceful inlet like an inverted question mark near the entrance to the Fal estuary. A Tudor castle guards one side of the inlet, a lighthouse the other. A jumble of houses ring the harbour and run up the hills behind it, almost all of architectural merit and as pristine as a Disney park. Pastel walls are freshly painted, thatch roofs fairly new, pristine pots spill over with flowers and clean windows sparkle. Tresanton’s windows, balconies and terraces take all of this in. At the edge of the village by the castle, the hotel is far enough away from the centre of things to enjoy the quiet, but a 10 minute stroll will take you to the bustling little harbour with two excellent pubs, a wind-sheltered beach, gift shops and a regular ferry service to Falmouth. There’s loads to do in the surrounding area but you can easily sink into the local scene and abandon your vehicle in the hotel’s hidden car park until it’s time to leave.

Tresanton lives up to its design icon status. Polizzi won plaudits for mixing casual and formal, antique and modern, print with pattern. Most of the place feels like an eclectic and tasteful private home assembled over generations rather than a commercial establishment. There are sisal carpets, slouchy overstuffed down sofas and chairs, piles of intriguing holiday reading and eclectic mixes of art, from African tribal masks to local legend Barbara Hepworth's prints. The restaurants is a cheery blend of blues and whites with aquatic mosaics on the floor and sea shell shaped lighting giving the room a grotto feel. Polizzi arguably established what’s now the standard for high-end boutique hotels. Alnwick’s Cookie Jar, my favourite boutique hotel of recent years, is a direct descendant of what started here. 

The design ethos wasn't uniform, however. Though our twin-bedded room had a glorious bathroom with marble tub and glass shower cube, the girls in the singles reported "identikit Hilton bathrooms with cheesy plastic shower curtains." Loos off public spaces had high end toiletries to wash your hands but cheap paper towels to dry them. Rooms had toilet paper but no tissue. A wall unit in a downstairs hall offered Wellington boots to borrow for tramps along the beach, but some had been put away muddy so were hardly enticing. The longer we stayed, the more we noticed these little gaps in attention to detail.

Our biggest problem with the hotel came from the lack of indoor space, however, exacerbated by a cavalier attitude toward the pandemic. Tresanton is a complex of multiple buildings climbing a hill, with exquisite courtyard gardens and balconies framed by sub-tropical gardens. There was only one indoor sitting room available for 30 guest rooms. Bovey Castle has double the rooms but probably 10 times the indoor lounge space. Tresanton's sitting room (below) is clustered tightly with sofas and chairs and fully packed at meal times when the restaurant adds outside diners to residents. Though staff wear masks the guests can remove theirs as soon as they order drinks. None of us had been with this many strangers in such close proximity since the pandemic started, and we were distinctly uncomfortable. 

The dining room was also packed tight without any of the now-standard Perspex screens to offer some protection when tables are too close for comfort. The food is certainly not worth the sacrifice. Though pleasant, it was inferior to, and more expensive than, meals we had in the village.

The crowding sent a clear message: making money took priority over guest safety.

Even without a pandemic, at this lofty price point you expect more public space to lounge. There was an additional function room behind the lounge and a secondary bar at beach level that could have made extra room, but they were shut tight. Tresanton hadn't adapted any of the outdoor spaces to inclement weather use. No marquees, no canopies. We saw heaters and umbrellas but they weren't deployed. Excusable if we were in Greece but this is Cornwall, where changeable weather should be factored into any plan.

Service was average to indifferent, an impression exacerbated by just how exceptional it had been at Bovey Castle. Interaction was pleasant but perfunctory. There seemed to be no real interest in how we were enjoying our stay (until we checked out) and no desire to chat with us to discover our plans and suggest recommendations. An offer of drinks once settled in the only lounge could take up to an hour. There were no tea and coffee making facilities in the room and a delivery of the request took 40 minutes one morning. When assembled as a foursome we'd ask for water or coffee and it would come with a drinking vessel only for the requestor unless we specified for all of us. Little things, but things that a top boutique hotel hosting our group in the past would figure out after the first interaction. 

We were also intrigued that other than the front desk staff most of the service team seemed to have originated from either Eastern or Southern Europe. While we're used to that in London, it seemed odd in a distant county where employment is so heavily dependant on tourism. Boutique hotels usually put local staff front and centre to show off the nature of the place and provide those insider tips only the natives know. You'll get none of that here.

In reflection, I realise that what bothered me most about Tresanton was the feel it wasn't Cornish at all, but a seaside-themed bubble transported intact from Knightsbridge with all the capital's quirks. The not-quite-on-their-game-yet staff of young immigrants, the crowding, the aloof urban attitude. 

At a lower price point we could have let the irritations ... other than feeling unsafe ... slide in favour of enjoying the views. But let's lay it on the line here: our spacious double with a sea view was £370 per night.  In any circumstance I expect a flawless experience for that price. These days, I also want excessive care of my health and a feeling that the establishment isn't resting on its laurels, but finding ways to innovate and excel through changing times.