I can distinctly remember when I became an Anglophobic traveller.

It was August 1992 – Britain’s wettest summer in more than 40 years – and our family spent a whole fortnight cooped up in a caravan in Bournemouth playing 642 games of Scrabble (most of which were hastily aborted by a shower of tiles or fists being thrown at an opponent).

However, a combination of a Spanish girlfriend and a woefully weak sterling has somewhat cured my reluctance to holiday in Blighty.

And any lingering fears were swiftly erased when, at the end of a four-hour drive from Oxford, I was rewarded with my first glimpse of St Ives’s cobbled harbour front basking in the glow of sunset.

Not that we needed to cherish the view as our holiday cottage, Pier House, was situated in the sort of beachfront location that would make portly property pundit Kirstie Allsop salivate with pleasure.

And if pebbledash cladding might seem more Pontefract than Penzance, Pier House belies its 1970s exterior and resembles a modern, bright, breezy Cape Cod beach hut once inside.

With sumptuous sheepskin rugs, quaint wood panel doors, decadent full length mirrors and white sandblasted floorboards, the cottage is the perfect place to spring a surprise romantic getaway or as a family base to explore this quaint and trendy seaside town.

Blessed by no less than six sandy beaches, it is not difficult to discover why St Ives is a popular summer destination.

However, even when it’s too chilly for a swim, there are some first rate places to take a stroll to just to drink in that scenery.

The picturesque chapel of St Nicholas, for instance, perched on top of the craggy rockface of St Ives Island, is a particularly stunning treat, and it’s easy to see why the town has been home to dozens of artists over the years – all inspired by the sweeping views of the Atlantic from Porthgwidden and Porthminster beaches.

St Ives’s narrow cobbled streets might be reminiscent of Toledo or York. But it beats them both for offering up less tourist tat and more independent shops, pubs, restaurants.

The town is also home to its very own Tate Gallery – one of only two outside London – which is encased in the kind of curvaceous art deco frontage that would make Portmeirion architect Clough Williams-Ellis green with envy.

St Ives also has seagulls – hundreds of them. And at times a walk along the harbourfront can feel like you are being sized up for pecking practice in Hitchcock’s Bodega Bay; for in St Ives it’s not simply good enough to pay for food, you also have to fight for the right to keep it from hoardes of aggressive birds.

As a native northerner I had never had the chance to sample a genuine Cornish pasty before and my experiences at a variety of Greggs outlets had left me rather bemused at our country’s enthusiasm for these seemingly dry and bland culinary Frankensteins.

However, a quick visit to my first St Ives bakery made me realise that it isn’t obligatory for an “oggy’s” crimped edge to stick in your throat and that, when made correctly, its melt-in-the-mouth pastry can easily match anything available in a fancy French patisserie.

The fact that it could be snatched out of your hand at any moment by a gigantic, swooping seagull only seemed to heighten the mouth-watering taste.

Fans of fine food are certainly well catered for in St Ives too and, once we’d made short work of our rather delectable complimentary bottle of red wine, it was high time to let our taste buds off the leash.

As you might expect in a seaside resort, St Ives is positively teaming with a school of well-respected seafood restaurants and we stumbled on one of the best, located in the town’s Old Lifeboat House.

Sporting smart white suede covered furniture the Alba restaurant (a former AA seafood restaurant of the year) offers a feast for the eyes with fantastic views across the bay from a giant second-floor window.

Unfortunately, I have never quite bought into the Spanish translation of seafood being the fruit of the sea so I opted for the fruits of the local cattle market instead.

My reward was a rather exquisite Cornish fillet of beef, which came with a tasty modern take on a steak and kidney pudding as well as roasted carrots and parsnips and was well worth the £20 price tag.

Disappointingly, our choice made us miss out on the chance to dine at another local restaurant the Hobblers House, which looks like someone has relocated Oxford’s brilliantly cosy Bear Inn to a new home on St Ives harbour front.

But what of our second day in Cornwall? Well, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to explore a little further afield and see more of the county.

The great thing about Cornwall is that it almost feels like you are travelling on another planet never mind in another country when you are faced with a flurry of road signs flagging up unpronounceable villages and hamlets – Zeal Monachorum, Marazanvose, Reskadinnick all sound more like moons of Jupiter than towns in England.

However, we did enjoy a day exploring Cornwall’s southern coast from the small village of Marazion, where the tiny rock island of St Michael’s Mount provides a rather stunning backdrop to its long, sandy beaches. And a trip on the King Harry chain ferry which is the highlight of a very pleasurable driving route east to St Mawes (a quieter, more refined sibling of St Ives).

But it seems no matter where you go in Cornwall, the one thing you can’t escape is those damn seagulls.

Yet, as we sat slurping Cornish ice cream in the sun – my face the colour of a triple-word score – I couldn’t help but feel that seagull dodging beat Scrabble hands down.