Hotel review: South Sands, Salcombe, Devon

This Devon beachfront beauty is the epitome of good taste ? with clean lines, muted blues and greys, and a two-bath wetroomIs it just that I haven't noticed them or do we, an island nation, have virtually no hotels on the beach? I mean right on the beach ? like in the Caribbean? It is only as I descend the hill to South Sands bay, passing one hotel on my right, that I realise mine, the only other one here, beside an old lifeboat house, really is beachfront.This 24-room newly built boutique hotel opened last year. Everything about it looks glossy and expensive ? from its website to the brochures ? yet it has no star grading. It is one of the modern wave (inevitable pun) of hotels which thumb their noses at both the AA's and Visit Britain's star-rating schemes. Perhaps it can afford to, with such a position ? not only is the hotel on a wonderful sandy bay but the population of the nearest town, Salcombe, swells from 2,000 in winter to almost 10 times that in summer.Salcombe is to Devon what Rock is to Cornwall. It is no accident that this was where the first Jack Wills shop opened, in 1999. In summer a ferry takes passengers from South Sands to the pretty town, which hugs a harbour further up the Kingsbridge estuary.I'm spiralling up a modern cantilevered staircase of wood and steel, then heading along a coconut matting-covered corridor to my sea-facing room with balcony. Clean lines, tasteful blues and greys, seascapes on the wall. Peachy beachy.In the wetroom, Molton Brown lip balm, bath salts, even a washing line to string up wet bathing things. Two baths seems excessive, but since they are right in front of double windows this is clearly a room for show-offs. This room isn't cheap, but there are smaller versions and, more affordable still, others on the landward side.If I lean over my balcony I can see people coming in from their bucket-and-spade day, pulling on faded rugby shirts and deck shoes, settling on the hotel veranda for a snifter before putting the kids to bed or changing for dinner. I join the throng, first on the terrace and later in the bar, which serves as the sitting room but is, in truth, a corridor between reception and restaurant, then eat an early dinner, among families, couples and even a wedding party. Young, efficient staff in skinny jeans ferry home-cured salmon gravadlax with beetroot and pot-roasted venison."Ooh, let's take one more photo for luck," booms a voice from the next-door balcony as I study the night sky from the depths of my right-hand bath. I struggle to find a convenient power point for the kettle, and no amount of unplugging turns off a relentless blue light on the wall-mounted TV (so I drape the bedspread over it). Windows thrown open, I drift off, and wake to the shoosh of waves. Isn't that what everyone wants on holiday?Lots of kids and gallons of fruit juice at the breakfast buffet table, plus delicious spiced cake and honey on the comb, and people like me munching behind the newspaper.South Sands is proof that "family friendly" need not mean "style bypass". The only minus is its lack of a sitting room. Having turned its back (with no discernible detriment) on the rating system, though, couldn't it, in a continued spirit of anarchy, take another risk or two? The occasional injection of character ? perhaps less predictable paintings in the rooms? ? to set against a ubiquitous backdrop of pale, measured perfection.sally.shalam@guardian.co.ukHotelsDevonFamily holidaysBeach holidaysShort breaksUnited KingdomSally Shalamguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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