Hound of love | Cornwall, Padstein and Cyril

And then there were three. We got Cyril in August of 2014, having driven to Leicester and a huge, rambling townhouse pulsating with the frenetic energy of a recent whippet litter. I’d found the breeder after hours of obsessive internet stalking, phoned up on a whim and heard about the one parti-coloured boy that was left after all the pure blues had been reserved. Once the blurry photo of a closed-eyed, pink-mouthed yawning pup hit my iPhone I was completely smitten. He was our dog.

There was simply no way we could leave this bounding, whinging, pooping, needy pupster with anyone while we swanned off on our much-belated “summer holiday”, the one we’d never managed to have because I was writing a book. Cornwall was the answer. Thank God for Cornwall.

There probably isn’t a more dog-friendly place than Cornwall out of season

We were done with long haul, I told my partner – we’d exhausted our North American wanderlust the year before by actually bloody living there, and we’d practically drunk Mexico dry of margaritas. Now was the time for the magic of the old world, to gawp at all that architecture we’d missed living in shiny new cities, and, until we got Cyril his passport, it was time to staycation. As someone whose main motivation for travelling anywhere is to eat, it had to be somewhere that we could do that well and in abundance, alongside rambling with the dog.

Cyril, by Rosie Birkett

There probably isn’t a more dog-friendly place than Cornwall out of season, when dogs can run free on the beaches, exhausting themselves so that their owners can enjoy lunch uninterrupted. But being dog-friendly and puppy-friendly are two different things. When you’ve got a little one who has a tendency to “do things” in the middle of the night, you need a special, pup-proofed kinda place.

We found ours on Perfect Stays (like Airbnb, but super-swish) in the form of Rosemain in Rock, North Cornwall. From the moment we pulled into the drive, it was obvious that we were going to have to refrain from barricading ourselves in and claiming squatters’ rights. There was a whippet-shaped sign above the door, for Pete’s sake!

Inside, a massive, immaculate kitchen of the sort that’s practically pornographic to a foodie like me (double oven, sleek induction hobs and slate floor complete with under-floor heating) was just begging to be messed up. In the giant American-style fridge awaited a bottle of local sparkling Brut from Camel Valley, a renowned sparkling wine producer just down the road, some Cornish butter, milk, eggs, bacon and jam. There were fresh scones and two loaves of local bread in the pantry, and, crucially, tea bags for that much-needed post-drive cup.

The house itself is an old cottage that’s been extended and converted, and the main living room was a lovely confluence of old and new – a wood-burning stove sitting snugly in the huge fireplace, and floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors that flood the place with natural light and lead out to the securely fenced-in garden. Brilliantly, there was also a playroom/den with bean bags and wooden flooring that immediately made sense as Cyril’s domain.

We took the bedroom overlooking the garden and promised ourselves that for the most part, this would be a puppy-free zone. No-one tells you beforehand that having a puppy is actually quite a lot like having kids, and does similar things for your privacy, or lack of. Happily, here we had enough space to be able to leave Cyril safely to his own devices, while we got up to our own.

Rock is a small village opposite Padstow on the northeast bank of the River Camel estuary, and getting over to “the Stow” is best done on the little ferry which takes about 10 minutes and runs every 20 minutes from the harbour (weather allowing). You can also get a cab to Padstow from Rock, but it takes longer and can cost anything up to £40 one way. The ferry, by contrast, costs £4 return per adult, dogs travel for £1 at the skipper’s discretion, and the whole experience just adds to the exhilaration of it all – especially when the skipper has a tendency to blast Pink Floyd out of the boat’s speakers.

The rugged nature of this lunch was at complete odds with our Rick Stein experience that night – a seafood lover’s dream meal

As someone who grew up avidly watching Rick Stein and his shows, the prospect of visiting “Padstein” had me almost as excited as our whippet was about having his own garden. The first thing we did after catching the ferry across was suss out Stein’s mini-empire on the South Quay, where he has a fishmonger, fish and chip shop and a deli. After perusing the glistening local seafood over ice, I was tempted next door into Stein’s Fish & Chips restaurant and picked up some deep-fried oysters and plump, sweet grilled scallops in their shells. We ate al fresco, braving the winds so we could almost feel the sea spray us.

Scallops at Stein’s Fish & Chips, by Rosie Birkett

The rugged nature of this lunch was at complete odds with our Rick Stein experience that night – a seafood lover’s dream meal in his glamorous and iconic Seafood Restaurant, with its sweeping design and gorgeous art – though both offered a very Cornish kind of romance. It can be difficult getting a table at The Seafood Restaurant, so if you’re thinking of going to Padstow, book in as soon as you possibly can. Get the hot seafood platter, laden with oysters, scallops, crab claws, langoustine, whelks, cockles and razor clams – all slathered in a punchy, addictive parsley, garlic and chilli oil.

Stein’s son Jack is now at the helm as executive chef across his restaurants, and while my perfect Dover Sole meunière was a lesson in classic fish cookery, there was a youthful exuberance to our experience that came through in everything from our smooth, sharp preprandial gin sour cocktails to the sides of buttered kale, garlic confit fries and delightful seaweed butter for the bread.

Evening meals like that make for lie-ins, and the following day we wound our way down the coast to St Ives for lunch. Having heard from my mother that St Ives was the place to be in the summers of the 1960s, I was intrigued to see how its artistic reputation had translated to the present day. The answer is rather well. We found that the stormy weather added to the magic of the little town, which felt alive with cafes and galleries after a blustery walk on the dramatic headland.

We ate gorgeous cider-bathed mussels and smoked salmon with smashed avocado on toast at on the open-air terrace of the dog-friendly Porthmeor Beach Café, then wandered up to Tate St Ives for an afternoon art fix. A turn around the world-famous Leach Pottery resulted in me spending more that I should have on some beautiful ceramic bowls that reminded me of quails’ eggs.

That night we returned to Padstow to run another gastronomic gauntlet, this time at the Michelin-starred Paul Ainsworth at Number 6. Set in a cosy former 18th century townhouse, its tables twinkling with candles, the feeling you get when you walk into this restaurant is almost like you’re dining at someone’s house (if that someone just happened to be one of Britain’s most exciting contemporary chefs). Glasses of vintage Ruinart seemed like the only way to ease us into what went on to be one of the meals of the year, each course a beautiful, inventive expression of Cornish produce, executed through a prism of skilful classic technique.

A bit more Cyril… on the beach, by Rosie Birkett

With Cornish head chef John Walton by his side, Ainsworth has created a menu which revels in local spoils and delights from the outset. A whole sourdough loaf came with a creamy, zingy pot of house-made taramasalata topped with crystal flecks of crunchy pork skin, followed by tangy Porthilly oysters with cured pork and green apple. Flaking, meaty cod came veiled with shards of salted skin, along with a pile of crab mayonnaise seasoned with fenugreek and cloaked in a nutty slick of crab emulsion. A serious chocolate dessert was given a playful drink of “Caramac” sauce – a buttery, gorgeously evil flourish.

When we emerged from our food coma the following day, it was time to kiss goodbye to Rosemain and move on to our final leg of the journey – two nights at the Watergate Bay Hotel on the North Cornwall coast, just up from Newquay. The hotel takes pride of place overlooking stunning Watergate Bay, a haven for surfers, beach bods, dog walkers, and, thanks to its close proximity to Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Cornwall, foodie folk like us.

The other deciding factor in booking in was the fact it has dog-friendly rooms. A place that welcomes both children and canine companions, the Watergate Bay is that rare thing: a hotel that eschews stuffiness and favours fun, whilst simultaneously managing to pamper and please. Depending on your energy, you can have a really active holiday here – arranging a morning surf lesson, enjoying a social sundown barbecue on the beach – or you can opt for utter relaxation by booking yourself in for a spa treatment (something I can heartily endorse) or taking a few leisurely laps of the heated indoor pool, which has amazing views of the bay.

The massive, steaming pan of mussels had me dipping hunks of bread in the heady, creamy juices

We just loved the relaxed, almost North American vibe of this place – not just the sand on the carpet that reminded us of the Surfsand Resort in Oregon (the one overlooking “the Goonies beach”), but also the excellent level of service and attention to detail here. One of our meals of the holiday was a super informal lunch in The Beach Hut, the hotel’s casual dining restaurant on the beach. The massive, steaming pan of mussels had me dipping hunks of bread in the heady, creamy juices, and grilled scallops on the half shell came sizzling and sloshing in lemon and parsley butter. They do a mean margarita here too.

The great thing about the hotel’s location right on the beach meant that there was some serious coastal walks to be done with Cyril, which in turn meant that we felt rather less guilty about leaving him in our room for the evening and eating all the food. And what better crescendo to this domestic culinary pilgrimage than to dining at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen on our final night?

Aside from being a brilliant scheme aimed at tackling unemployment – something that’s a very real problem in Cornwall – Fifteen is destination restaurant through and through. The striking Helen Blake design offers space and light during the day, with panoramic views out over the bay, while in the evening it’s sparkly and romantic, with the focus on the action of the open kitchen. We had to go for the chef’s tasting menu, and a flurry of faultless courses included a gorgeously crunchy mint and ricotta-stuffed courgette flower, crab-filled squid ink tortellini with a powerful umami hit of bottarga, and crispy, fatty duck breast with creamy parmesan polenta and meaty, buttery wild mushrooms.

After sharing some warm cinnamon donuts coated with powdered sugar and doused in Frangelico hazelnut liqueur, we popped back to our room to pick up our pointy-faced friend, and ended our last evening in Cornwall with a midnight stroll on the beach, Cyril baiting the gentle waves and then racing away from them as soon as they moistened his grey fur. Last time we’d fallen in love with a place this hard was at the Wickanninish Inn on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Cornwall is a darn sight closer, and there, under a blanket of stars we never get to see in London, we promised ourselves that this little family would be back before we knew it. C

Rosie Birkett is the author of A Lot on Her Plate, published April 2015 by Hardie Gran