The hotel: you may remember the maxim from the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams — if you build it, they will come. Well, Hustyns is here to tell you that ain’t necessarily so. This complex of hotel and “garden lodges” near Wadebridge, Cornwall, opened 18 months ago with minimum fanfare and, therefore, minimum occupation levels. Which is remarkable, because Cornwall, as you no doubt know, is in the grip of a feverish tourist boom, the narrow lanes full of twig-lashed BMW X5s, the B&Bs bristling with No Vacancies boards and Newquay beach as crowded as those old pictures of Coney Island. Yet on our visit in August, Hustyns, which sits in 187 acres, was blissfully, almost spookily empty. Lovely.

The hotel is divided into a modern, 37-room main building, which looks a little like an upmarket (but well- constructed) golf club, and a series of lodges, some of which are very grand self-contained houses. The gardens surrounding all this are immaculately kept; and because, unusually, all the main planting was done before the building was erected, there is none of that “It’ll be nice when it grows” feeling so common with newly opened hotels. It was a battle to stop my wife leaving with a boot full of cuttings.

It is clear from the quality of the horticulture and the general fixtures and fittings that considerable money has been lavished on the project. The owner is a man who made his fortune in the meat-supply business, has an interest in boxing (there is a ring on site, and Audley Harrison has used it as a training camp) and likes to keep fit — hence the fantastic gym, the new spa and the Alliss Golf Academy. In fact, the facilities are hard to fault.

So what are the rooms like? Bright and modern, with big, comfortable beds. But if you have children or friends, opt for the lodges, with their whirlpool baths, satellite televisions, DVD players, well-equipped kitchens and terraces. There are 16 lodges up and running now, with another 12 coming on line by next year, but there is no feeling of crowding.

And the food? Two options — a brasserie for breakfast/lunch/dinner (where kids are welcome and well catered for), and a fine-dining evening restaurant, the latter attached to a jazz/champagne bar that a friend reckons reminded him of the nightclub in Goodfellas.

The operation hasn’t quite bedded in — while we were there, they suddenly decided the brasserie would no longer open in the evening, a decision swiftly reversed when the other restaurant was swamped. I guess that until the hotel starts running at full capacity, there will still be service issues here and there.

The food, however, is very good indeed, with vegetables from the kitchen garden and much locally sourced produce. As you might expect, given the hotel’s provenance, the steak was excellent, but so were the scallops I had: plump and juicy, with a consistency that suggested they had just popped out of the shell.

Let’s suppose we want to leave the hotel: Wadebridge is just three miles away, but, even better, you can hire a bike, cycle through the pine forests and pick up the Camel Trail along the estuary into Pad-stow. No shortage of shops or restaurants there, although we spent our afternoon crabbing from the quayside. We caught just one, but it was a whopper.

What about the kids? There are plans for a crèche/playroom, but for the moment Hustyns has an outdoor playground and a tennis court, as well as in-room games and DVDs. The staff will also organise excursions for children in the school holidays, to surfing school or the adventure courses held at Lusty Glaze beach, near Newquay. Our kids were happy with the vast, intricate grounds they could wander through (and the football pitch they stumbled across).

Good for: Cornwall without the crowds. For now, at least.

Bad for: in-house history — this is a new-build, so it is low on cultural/historical/ atmospheric resonance.

Hustyns (01208 893700, www.hustyns.com ). Doubles start at £240, B&B, but check the website for the three-nights-for-two offers that have been running this year. Garden lodges (three bedrooms, sleeping six) start at £250, room-only

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