From Vietnam to Cornwall: Audley founder's latest travel project

The rest is history. Alongside fellow LSE graduate John Brewer, he founded Asian Journeys, which later morphed into Audley, and eventually became a huge tailor-made business featuring around 90 countries – every one of which had a team of specialists focused solely on their passion for a place. Operating from a barn in Witney in Oxfordshire with offices in London and Boston, it attracted the eyes of private equity in the mid-2000s, and Burkinshaw started to make his operational exit from the business.

In 2013, he and Le Bon started creating a home for themselves in north Cornwall, a move that would gradually evolve into the idea of creating their first UK-based project.

Le Bon designed their own house and Burkinshaw says Three Mile Beach’s ones are now an advancement of her original ideas, with lots of light and an open, airy feeling, with plenty of outside space.

“We’ve tweaked the design on the houses: basically, they’re better than ours now!” says Burkinshaw. “But overall, I’d say the biggest difference is the size of the decks, which in some cases are as big as the houses and there’s loads of space to mess around in.”

Three Mile Beach’s story is one of fateful coincidence, one that would lure the couple into making an ever deeper commitment into the area. Having started to settle into life, Burkinshaw was about to play tennis with the man who built their house, when his playing partner mentioned land was coming up for sale, a very rare event in the area.

“The Hocking Trust [associated with one of the local wealthy mining families and landowners of old] were selling this land after about 130 years – they had planned to build something in the 1930s, but the war came along and they abandoned the plans.”

Just as he was mulling over the information, planning laws changed that would actually now facilitate a build project that would never previously have got permission. Then came the graft of more than two years spent buying the land and getting the relevant permissions for the ideas; six years on, and they are about to launch their dream project.

“To be honest it was an unusual situation, and just luck of the draw for us. That’s why we’ve got 17 plots right next to a beach – something virtually impossible to find, but we got the permission because they liked the kind of concept we wanted to create,” he says.

They are lucky enough to live on Cornwall’s biggest beach, Gwithian Towans, around four miles east of St Ives. But when they first moved there, it was never originally around a conscious plan to build a self-catering business.

The concept now is to provide friendly, homely living spaces with everything you need but removing some of the hassle that self-catering could usually have, such as having to get food in, cleaning up after yourself, finding equipment hire such as surfboards and wetsuits and knowing where to go – the couple are planning to ensure all this is taken care of.

“We have built it all around thinking what friends would want and need if they were coming here for a break,” he says. “For example, when you’re in a nice ski chalet, the last thing you want is to have to trek to a hire shop to be kitted out – it’s the same here for people who want to surf, we can have all that arranged and be here for you. We want people to hit the ground running and make it as easy as possible for people – as if they live here.”

Gwythian is known as for its access to that incredible, vast beach, and subsequently, for its fairly rustic “characterful” chalets, of which there are still a few about. It had been starting to look a little run down, but Burkinshaw says, it has now started to gently gentrify.

This was once the place where those from Redruth and surrounds who had made their money in copper mining came to spend their leisure time in shacks among the dunes; the area was once labelled the “richest square mile on Earth” in the 1800s because of its abundant metal deposits.

He draws parallels to the “bach” concept (pronounced batch) in New Zealand, a small, often modest holiday home at the beach, in the woods, or by a lake – deliberately quite simple and back to nature. And with New Zealand being a place the pair have spent a lot of time in, it makes sense this would also provide some inspiration for Three Mile Beach.

“I went on my own in the 1990s on one trip and drove around New Zealand in an old Morris Marina in my backpacking days,” says Burkinshaw. “We go around in a camper van now for quite a few weeks at a time, mixing it up with parking outside and staying in luxury hotels and eating in nice restaurants! It’s good to mix things up a bit – one minute you’re having beans on toast in the middle of nowhere and then you’re eating at a Michelin-starred restaurant the next. Contrast is everything.”

Three Mile Beach seems a hugely personal project for them, and one that promises to take guests to the heart of what makes this corner of the country so special by sharing everything from lesser-known coves, to insider access to galleries, or just knowing when the local cricket match is on. After I spoke with him, Burkinshaw’s next task was proofreading a book he’s creating for guests at Three Mile, covering all their in-the-know tips and ideas for making the most of the area.

“We will update and reprint every few months and send it to people who’ve booked. Again, we want everyone to feel like they’re coming to stay at a friend’s place and that they have all the best information and tips – what we’re putting in here is way more comprehensive than you would normally get, certainly more than the kind of dog-eared leaflets you associate with UK self-catering places sometimes, I guess.”

The two-, three- and four-bedroom houses are relaxed, stylish and calming, with all the luxuries you need, from huge comfortable Camerich sofas, to sophisticated Bulthaup kitchens, and warming log burners and wrap-around terraces complete with sunken cedar hot tubs, barrel saunas, and barbecues.