A holiday guide to CornwallHotelsReviewThis small hotel in St Ives has a terrific spa – and you'll need a relaxing treatment there after the terrifying drive to its front door

Driving to the Primrose Valley Hotel takes nerve. "If a vehicle is coming up [the steep hill] it has to give way to you," says the "getting here" bit on the website. I poke the car around a turning above Porthminster Beach, and the road beneath disappears. Here goes … Thank God nothing is coming up. I turn beneath a railway bridge and into a parking slot at the hotel.

Ooh, that's nice: guests are sitting in the window having tea. It's open-plan here – clever. Sitting room on my right, breakfast room opposite, all beneath the gaze of Tamara de Lempicka's Young Lady with Gloves. A doorway to reception is also the way to the bar (slate-floored with black sofas to match), which is where I need to be right now – I'm still shaking slightly from my descent.

A chalkboard offers Cornish platters for guests who are peckish but don't want to go out. Salamis, cheeses, smoked salmon, for £8. Cream tea is £5.50, and a nibbles list includes fair-trade olives and nuts from a workers' co-operative. There is also a REN product list (this really is my kind of bar) since the nine-bedroom three-star also happens to be a purveyor of REN spa treatments.

Rooms on the website look simple and contemporary, but I already know that the only seaview available to me is also due a bathroom upgrade. Well, at least it has all the relevant components, I think, once upstairs. The bay-windowed bedroom worries me more. Edwardian proportions, a balcony with views over the St Ives to St Erth railway line to the sea, and loads of natural light could all add up to budget heaven, but are compromised by slightly shabby and mismatched brown furnishings. Yet details – wooden hangers, REN toiletries – are good.

In the bar, asking Andrew Biss, who owns the hotel with his wife Sue, about the wine list is the right thing to do. He describes a sparkling Italian which is only 5%, then a "Pinot Noir which opens slowly".

That night, drawing the curtains, I think how the plastic rail is out of kilter with details such as beautifully stripped floors. Distant snoring stops after a bit and I drop off. As I'm brushing my teeth on the balcony next day, a train trundles quietly below, and the sea glitters.

Downstairs – thank goodness – no one is whispering at breakfast. I play spot-the-snorer while negotiating good smoked salmon with unexpectedly pale scrambled eggs – I wonder if cream has been added.

Then, in the tiny sybaritic oasis upstairs, therapist Kim sets about winter skin on legs and arms with something called Guérande salt, and delivers a facial that seems to wake my skin up while almost sending me to sleep.

Never has a hotel combined so much relaxation with so much stress, I think, when I leave. Andrew changes into first and deposits my car up on the main road, with me in the passenger seat. Eyes shut tight, I'm clinging on to every vestige of spa-induced bliss I can.

REN facials, from £33 for a half-hour, body treatments from £40

sally.shalam@theguardian.com, sallyshalamsbritain.co.uk

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