The hotel has its own Green Team, which takes staff on trips to local landfill sites and, as part of a partnership with the Marine Conservation Society, clears away washed up debris on the beach several times a year.

“What’s going on in China is important, but we are all responsible for the patch of land around us,” says Wakefield.

As well as using energy saving boilers, low-energy lighting, and solar panels for pool heating, the hotel has a £10 “opt-in” charge per car to offset carbon emissions with the planting of local trees not to be felled for 100 years and a 10 per cent discount for guests travelling by train or bus. Cleaning staff uses environmentally friendly Ecover products and each room has shampoo bars made locally by Cornwall’s Soap Box.

“It’s more expensive, but if you make a commitment to do something you have to make it work,” says Wakefield. The next film to be added to the in-house dvd channel will be An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s Oscar winning film about the environment.

Multimedia

• Slideshow: a green weekend in Cornwall

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After breakfast we took a blustery walk along the South West Coastal Trail, from Mawgan Porth, six miles to Newquay’s Tolcarne Beach. To our left the St Eval wind farms on the horizon turned efficiently in the Atlantic gusts, while to our right surging waves crashed into the rocks below. We paused at Bre-Pen farm shop for tea – in summer it’s a great place to stock up on their own lamb and sausages for BBQs and home-grown salads and fruit.

We made another pit-stop at Watergate Bay – too late for breakfast and too early for lunch at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant, which had a pink recycling buggy parked outside and a menu that capitalised on the abundance of superb local produce. Instead we went to the café below where the music made the perfect soundtrack to a lone kite surfer braving the tide. It was like watching an extreme sports channel live.

Inspired by the Bedruthan’s Green Team I collected a few items of rubbish left by litterbugs on the coastal path and deposited them in a bin when we reached the outskirts of Newquay. In contrast to heaving summer crowds, we were the only people eating lunch at the ultra-green Venus café on Tolcarne Beach. The kitchen has all the silver chutes of a fast food joint but the Venus mission is to be the greenest beach cafe and shop operator in the UK. Lunch was a heavily peppered leek and potato soup – for which you could trace its ingredients on maps of local producers posted on the walls.

The Bedruthan Steps hotel is part of the Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS), which recognises businesses who adopt sustainable practices. With 178 members, the Southwest has the largest number of GTBS awards in England. Award winners include Wiltshire based Foot Trails, which offers tailor-made walking holidays, Cedar Lodge B&B, set in a contemporary eco home overlooking farmland in Shaftesbury, Dorset, and Pennywell Farm, a visitor attraction in south Devon with real hands-on green fun for kids.

A new guide to GTBS members has been compiled by Southwest Tourism (www.visitsouthwest.co.uk/feelgood).

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