The Relais Cooden Beach

On the Sussex coast, equidistant between the South Downs National Park and the High Weald.

The Sussex coast is having something of a renaissance. The Relais Cooden Beach Hotel, Bexhill-on-sea, has thrown open its handsome doors. Sporting freshly sewn maritime stripes and a soft pastel palette to match the sherbet sunsets and cerulean blues of the English Channel, it’s guest-ready. Al fresco dining, breezily beautiful bedrooms and treatments by Aromatherapy Associates all recommend it.

Originally the home of the De La Warr family, who built a private train station linking them to London, this Hamptonesque haven (New Yorkers escape to the Hamptons, Londoners to the Sussex coast) is more than a restorative retreat. It’s a lifestyle choice.

The 9th Earl De La Warr (“Buck”) certainly thought so in the mid-1930s. The De La Warr Pavilion – a Grade I-listed Modernist masterpiece and now a centre for contemporary arts – stands as evidence of Buck’s influence on this English seaside town; it attracts over 400,000 visitors a year.

Back in the hotel, the Rally Restaurant celebrates East Sussex’s larder with its emphasis on seafood. A fresh of-the-day catch is supplied by local fishermen and served up by the talented kitchen team. The restaurant (aptly) takes it name from Bexhill’s place in history as host to Britain’s first automobile races, on the 19th May 1902. Indeed, Buck’s father, the 8th Earl De La Warr, is responsible for the town’s official designation as the ‘Birthplace of British Motor Racing’.

So walk alongside the English Channel, or the ancient chalky undulations of the South Downs, amble through parkland and castle estates, and experience a more deliberate style of life, one that does not yield to clocks, but holds ever so still in the natural world.