Liberty London Girl – Sasha Wilkins

25 November 2016

I have had the pleasure and privilege of meeting some amazing people throughout the years that I have been marketing St Mawes Retreats.
Sasha Wilkins Liberty London Girl has become a dear and loyal friend. Sasha and the lovely Lettice her adorable sausage dog have provided me with so much kindness, support, love and inspiration over the years that I have known them and I cannot thank them enough.

Sasha has stayed at Dreamcatchers on several occasions and I am delighted and very proud to share a Blog that she very kindly wrote for me.

I’m not one of those people who went to Cornwall as a child and who holds memories
of warm pasties eaten on sea walls, long walks on coastal paths, melting ice creams
and cricket on the beach close to their hearts.

No, I discovered Cornwall as an adult, first in my early twenties, on the Conde Nast
Traveller staff conference, held at the then newly opened Tresanton Hotel in St
Mawes. I remember very little about St Mawes from that first trip, save that I was
somewhat overawed by the boutique heaven of The Tresanton, so different from the
chintz and G&T formality of the country houses hotels I had visited with my family.
So when I received a very last minute email back in 2012 from a friendly PR offering
me a cancellation stay in a beautiful house in St Mawes on the South Coast, I was
more than enthusiastic. I had recently visited The Scarlet hotel in Mawgan Porth on
Cornwall’s North Coast, and my burgeoning Cornwall addiction was becoming a very
real thing.

That house was Dreamcatchers, perched high on the cliff overlooking the harbour,
with its beautiful terraced gardens, and sun-drenched rooms. I had no idea back then
– almost four years ago, that that would be the beginning of my now fervent love
affair with St Mawes.

My friends Hannah and Mark joined me for the long Bank Holiday weekend, and we
couldn’t quite believe how lovely Dreamcatchers actually was. To any veteran of selfcatering
houses used to rusty roasting tins, blunt knives, saucepans with wonky
handles, and a curious absence of salt and pepper mills, the St Mawes Retreats policy
of stocking their kitchens with absolutely everything you could possibly need,
doubling it, and then adding on a bit extra was like a holiday dream come true. This
wasn’t just a holiday home, it was a better than home-away-from-home
Over several stays, I tested a raft of recipes for my first cookbook in the kitchen at
Dreamcatchers. delighting not just in the fact that there was all the equipment a pro
cook could need, but in the quality of the produce available in St Mawes, the local
lamb from the butcher, the organic eggs with their bright yellow yolks, and all the
vegetables a vegetarian like me could possibly desire.

Add on to that a bakery just down the road selling fresh from the oven pasties each
morning, and Amanda’s belief that all kitchens should be supplied with scones, cream,
jam, and Champagne, along with fresh milk, tea and coffee, and you can imagine our
elevated state of holiday bliss. (And that’s before we discovered the Egyptian cotton-covered
Hypnos beds.)

When people are kind and generous it shows in their surroundings and in the
environments that they create. Some of my happiest holiday memories of the past four
years have been made at Dreamcatchers and, as I and my friends have discovered,
that’s partly because the interiors of the houses of St Mawes Retreats are the ultimate
expressions of their owners’ character.

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