Spring in Cornwall means the Cornwall Garden Society's Spring Flower Shower held annually in the beautiful grounds of Boconnoc House, just a few minutes drive from The Old Chapel. The show takes place on April 6 & 7 and more information can be found at http://cornwallgardensociety.org.uk/spring-flower-show-2013.

Cornwall has been voted the greatest holiday destination in the UK and the Eden Project the nation's best attraction, beating the likes of Madame Tussaud's, Alton Towers and Longleat. We have once again held our fabulous Eden Break price to £125 per person, including three nights B&B, ticket to Eden (now £23.50pp on the door), transport to Eden from The Old Chapel and a wonderful guided tour with a guide who really makes the place come alive and is a wealth of humour, information and knowledge.


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We have two great new shops in Lostwithiel; First there is Country Flowers and Confectionery which has moved from the edge of town right into the centre. This is where we get our flowers for the guest rooms and as well as being a florist, the new shop has an excellent coffee area and also sells chocolates, ice cream and other goodies. It's a fabulous shop and a brave and exciting new venture for Natalie, the florist, and we wish her all the best with it!  Also new in town is the Palace Vintage Tea Room and Antiques Centre. As the name suggests this very pretty tea room is in an early to mid 20th century style, serving old fashioned cakes and other delicacies in a retro style. Take a step back in time to an age where having tea was a real part of the good life!

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Have you had a look at our lovely self catering option? Poppy Lodge is situated on the peaceful and attractive Eden Valley Holiday Park at Lanlivery, just outside Lostwithiel. And now we can even offer our superb Eden Break package here, with four nights' accommodation for the same low price of £125pp. And if there are four of you, then the price is just £100pp, including tickets and the great guided tour of the Eden Project. Take a look at the website www.poppylodgecornwall.co.uk for all the information!

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We have lovely guests here at The Old Chapel and lots of positive comments. Here is one email we recently received which says more than anything we could about what we try to achieve.

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Here at The Old Chapel we love breakfast time. And we sometimes like to surprise our guests, such as on the morning after Usain Bolt's magnificent win in the Olympics 200m. To mark the achievement in our own way we added a traditional Jamaican breakfast of deep fried bananas and salted fried egg to our already extensive menu! And believe it or not, it tasted delicious with the sweetness of the banana blending really well with the saltiness of the egg. Not to everyone's tastes and guests are always welcome to keep to more familiar ground but it went down really well with Ted & Jane, two of our more adventurous guests!

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  Lostwithiel continues to cement its position as the antiques capital of Cornwall, with two new shops in town which complement the other attributes, including an excellent antiques market on the second Sunday of each month and the local auctioneers, Jefferys, who  hold a sale once a fortnight on a Wednesday.

We also have some exciting news of places to eat and drink in Lostwithiel. The Royal Oak recently re-opened after a major refurbishment and this olde-worlde pub is already proving popular with guests in its new guise. Also Prince Charles was in town to open the new shop and cafe at the Duchy Nursery, which he owns as Duke of Cornwall and is just a few minutes' drive from The Old Chapel. It has recently been voted the best cafe in the South-West and has been done to a very high standard with a great menu as well as some of the finest views in the area. Another fairly new eatery in town is Asquith's, a high class restaurant to further enhance our local town's growing reputation as a great location for dining. A mention also for Terra Nova, a bistro style restaurant, where the new proprietor/chef has re-invigorated the establishment and brought in an exciting and high quality new menu without upping prices.
 

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New at The Old Chapel is a "Wild food foraging" experience, with a superb half day out with Marcus Harrison of the Wild Food School in Lostwithiel. He will guide you through the countryside, revealing what is safe to eat, where to find it and how to cook or prepare it so you can spend some happy days hunting through the hedgerows back at home. The course can be booked as an add-on to a stay at The Old Chapel for £30 per person and rather than confine it to a specific date when this is available, just ask us for some more details and we can book you in with Marcus for one of his days out! Full day courses are also available at £70 per person.

For those who have eaten earlier in the day and just fancy settling down in front of the TV or with a book, we have a "snacks menu" which can be served in the room or in the summer house with such things as Westcounty seafood chowder, soup, sandwiches, Welsh rarebit and Cornish pilchards on toast. A new and very popular addition is home-made Cornish pasties; these are prepared by our local butcher and then baked in our kitchen to produce what we reckon to be among the finest pasties in the county (and believe me, the proprietor has tried most of them....!) All can be served with delicious  home-made chips made from real potatoes, not from the freezer!

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Your hostess Babs is always on the lookout for ways to improve the guests' stay and she has hunted out a lady down at Hayle who produces the loveliest hand made soap. These are now provided for guests and are just another of the little "extras" to make your visit more special and, like just about everything we provide, it is supporting another small local enterprise. We now have a lending library for guests and if you have not finished a book before it's time to leave you are free to leave another in its place and take it home with you. Further improvements are quality flat screen LCD digital televisions for the bedrooms and Babs spent a lot of time over the winter upgrading the soft furnishings in both rooms with her friend Kath. Also, all our mattresses and pillows are now equipped with anti-allergy covers to further enhance your stay.

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Please feel free to check what other guests have said on Trip Advisor by going to www.tripadvisor.com and entering Old Chapel Lostwithiel in the search box.