HotelChatter

The open-air swimming pool, for example is filtered by a reed bed, rather than doused in chlorine, and warmed up by solar panels. The behind the scenes stuff is just as worthy – electricity comes from wind farms, the bogs are flushed with waste water and the roof has been insulated with sea thrift.

All this means the building eats up a quarter of the carbon it would otherwise be expected to, which means we can feel much less guilty about going there. And last weekend it had a rave review in the Sunday Times, which called it “the best new-build hotel Britain has seen in years, a modern classic.”

Your happy green conscience doesn’t come cheap – rooms start at £180 ($285), although they have a half price offer on selected midweek nights until March 2010, which makes it fairly affordable for massively-overpriced Cornwall. Either way, a blowout that doesn’t kill the planet sounds good to us.