Hotel Hit Squad: South Devon gets a dose of hipster cool with the new Gara Rock hotel
I think I’ve found the best spa view in England. The hot tub looks on to a foaming sea, flanked by hills braided with 3,500-year-old banks of earth, once tilled by Bronze Age farmers. As you are doing laps in the pool at dusk, you can watch the ocean slowly turn golden, and yachts twinkle sleepily in the sun.
The place in question is Gara Rock, Devon’s hippest hotel opening of the year. Cocked high in hills opposite Decklers Cliff, the grey-and-glass cube hideaway pokes out between succulent coastal bushes and gleaming white abandoned shepherds’ huts. The Scandi-chic bolthole opened a couple of months ago, but its Elemis spa, which aims to put Gara Rock on the map with winter wellness weekend breakers, is but a few weeks old.
The latter addition to the hotel is small but striking, with weathered wooden walls you could buff your nails on, a blue mosaic pool, sauna and steam room. Do things properly and go for a quad-pumping walk along the sheep-speckled cliffs surrounding the hotel before you hit the new spa.
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I took the 45-minute coastal path to Salcombe, where bottles of local-made gin wink in the shop fronts and the salted caramel ice cream comes impaled with fudge flakes. There is a bracing 30-minute “shortcut” back through the holly bush-studded inland forests (you might want to bring a walking stick for the slopes). It made that well-deserved moment when I finally sank into the steaming hot pebbled whirlpool even more special. It was also rather rewarding to trace all the miles I’d walked, peering out at the landscape over my copy of The Lady, from my glass-wall-fronted relaxation bed.
I recommend the hot stones massage to ease tired hiker’s muscles, followed by the Superfoods facial with a vitamin army of magnesium, potassium and zinc. If I walked in with a wind-battered, London-bruised complexion, I walked out with the dewy glow of a yoga teacher, blogger-meets-model or similar.
Gara Rock is like walking through the pictures of an Instagram profile, but clever details prevent the design from collapsing into a cliché: yes there are dangling light bulbs, a white butcher-tiled bar and more burnt orange velvet than a 1976 episode of Top of the Pops, but nautical rope screens, lighthouse sconces and coastal potted plants have a sea-roughened authenticity. The colours in the lobby – seaweed and bottle greens, glowering silvers and powdery blues – bring the outside in.
And from the shaggy faux sheepskin throws on the sofas to the scratchy sisal carpets and unpolished wooden bannisters, it is comfortably rough around the edges.
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That makes it all the more easy to feel at home, particularly when sprawled on one of the sofas in the open-plan lobby. Millennials on girlie spa breaks play Trivial Pursuit, while huddled around the wood-burning fire. Recovering hikers sip Salcombe Gin cocktails garnished with gooseberries foraged from the garden. Couples flick through the hotel’s intriguing collection of books (Yoga For Men, anyone?)
Gara Rock has big plans in the food stakes; the management dream that it will, one day, be a restaurant with rooms (alongside its spa), rather than just a hotel with a place to eat.
It’s got some way to go before it becomes a culinary destination, but the early signs are encouraging. On sunny days, lunch can be taken outside with views tumbling over the cliffs – Porthilly oysters served on tree trunk slabs and chips slathered in cheese and rosemary, washed down with local cider and home-made ginger beer. Dinner in the restaurant is a limited, but lively menu: think glistening Dartmouth sardines with lemon aioli, and taste-bud twisters of contrasting flavours, like black pudding with squid and bitter leaf picked from the chef’s garden.
Breakfasts pass the hipster test, with home-made refried baked beans and poached eggs confettied with capers and courgette – though traditionalists will be happy to know the locally sourced bacon and sausages are also excellent.
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But perhaps the biggest draw of Gara Rock is the range of gorgeous suites. The best have antique bath tubs in the bedroom, perfectly positioned facing the French windows for watching the stars sparkling over the sea during one’s soak. Beds are decorated with retro velvet and pom-pom-fringed throws. Rough timber feature walls, vintage dial phones and geometric-tiled bathrooms stuffed with argan oil toiletries complete the look. But try and bag a balcony for the best views of sheep listlessly grazing those utterly striking ancient farming cliffs.
Double rooms from ￡200, including breakfast.