Millpool at Railholiday

Holiday Cottages & Self Catering

Contact Information

Suitable For

  • Wheelchair users and people with limited mobility
  • Single people
  • Couples
  • Dog owners
  • Walkers and cyclists
  • Bird watchers
  • Rail Enthusiasts
  • People without a car
  • LGBTQIA+
  • Anyone looking for a low-carbon holiday with a difference.

Full information

Award winning Railholiday offer four beautifully converted Victorian railway carriages as self catering holiday accommodation beside the railway station in the pretty village of St Germans.

Our environmentally friendly conversions are carried out to offer the greatest degree of comfort while maintaining the fun character of the carriage. Each carriage offers something slightly different.

Millpool is perfect for single guests and couples. It is designed to be accessible for all, so is suited for both able bodied guests and those in wheelchairs. With wide doors and and an open plan design it has stunning views over the hills of South East Cornwall. Millpool is usually set up with a double bed, but a single profiling bed is available on request, and there is a single sofa bed in the lounge.

St Germans train station is only a few metres away. This offers excellent public transport access to stations and scenic branch lines throughout Cornwall and Devon, plus connections to onward connecting buses. There are over 50 stopping trains a day.

There is a £50 low-carbon discount to anyone arriving by train, or who lives in Cornwall or Devon. There are direct services to and from London, Bristol and Cardiff.

Pets are welcome in Millpool, the Old Luggage Van and the Travelling Post Office. The Travelling Post Office has a ramp and we can provide a deaf alarm, wheelchair and mobility aids on request to all carriages. Unlimited wood for the stoves is provided free of charge from our ten acres of woodland.

Railholiday has won wildlife friendly and sustainable tourism awards, winning the highest accolade of all in 2016 with a gold from Visit England for their national Sustainable Tourism Award, Winner of Winners at the Cornwall Tourism Awards in 2018, Cornwall Sustainability Awards Most Sustainable Small Business in 2023 and iTraveller Staycation of the Year in 2021.

Guests have access to ten acres of woodland with snowdrops, wild garlic, bluebells and wild flowers. (Due to rough terrain unfortunately this is not accessible for those in wheelchairs).

St Germans is on the banks of the river Lynher, in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Special Scientific Interest. Home to Port Eliot House and Gardens, which is open between March and late June, St Germans also boasts a community shop and post office, a pub, a wine bar, and an excellent cafe and gift shop (as featured on Beyond Paradise).

We are four miles from the nearest beach, with good public transport links to the fishing villages of Looe and Polperro.

Guests have the option to offset carbon with our plant-a-tree scheme.

Short breaks are available. We are open all year.
For more information please visit our website at www.railholiday.co.co.co.uk or like @Railholiday on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X.

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Information for Groups

Railholiday have four carriages, which when rented together can offer accommodation for up to 13 people.

Sustainability

Railholiday have always been committed to being as sustainable as we possibly can be. Here are a few things that we do:

We are currently working towards achieving net zero, with regular carbon audits to monitor our progress

We offer a local carbon savers discount of £50 off for all guests arriving by train, or who live locally in Cornwall or Devon.

All our energy is sourced from renewables, and has been since green tariffs were first introduced in the late 1990s. (We use Good Energy and Octopus Energy). We also have solar panels that part-power the office and Old Luggage Van.

Mevy and Millpool are centrally heated by a biomass boiler, fuelled from wood from our own woodland. The Luggage Van and Travelling Post Office have wood-burning stoves (again fuelled by our own wood) and the Travelling Post Office has an air-source heat pump.

We recycle on a grand scale! All our carriages are derelict wrecks that are bought back to life using secondhand materials wherever possible. Every purchase is carefully considered for its sustainability value, from fabrics to white goods. Reuse is very important to us.

We produce our own home grown apple juice, for our welcome packs, reusing our bottles and tops so there is no waste.

Our gardens and woods are managed for optimum wildlife benefit. We make sure pollinators have flowers all year round. We never buy in flowers, but use fresh flowers from our gardens for our vases.

We plant trees! Over the years we have planted thousands of trees and hedges in our own woodland and a small holding near Landrake that we have access to. In addition we have a guest plant-a-tree scheme of £25 a tree. This is used for special trees and community planting. We double the value of the fund at the end of the year. So far the fund has paid for a community orchard at St Germans and Loveland in Penryn, and for trees for a re-wilding project on Dartmoor, as well as several specimen memorial trees.

We compost and recycle. We chose our waste contractors because they had the greenest credentials.

We support our local community, setting up a community shop and now volunteering in it, restoring a traditional May festival that we now fund the toilet hire for, involvement in the local Public Transport Users Group (six years as chair and seventeen years on the committee and counting). We have also bought a community defibrillator for use at the station and future plans include installing a community use drinking water tap.

All white goods, lights etc are low energy wherever possible. We work on the basis that all new items have a high carbon cost, so buy second hand whenever possible, and keep things going for as long as we can.

We save water; we have water buts, water storage tanks, a grey water system and a policy of not watering the garden (with the exception of targeted watering in times of extreme drought).

We write a fortnightly article in the local paper on environment issues and ways people can help, and a monthly article for our parish newsletter.

We take part in campaigns, fighting global warming and campaigning for social justice. We do this in many ways, from taking part in processions and banner making to letter writing.

We have a Green Acorn for Sustainability. This is a local and good value scheme, which is why chose it. In the past we have scored Gold for Green Tourism, and also score very highly in the BCorp self assessment

We are business members of Cornwall Wildlife Trust and support many other local and national charities, including the local youth group, the Railway Children, and Livewire Youth Music (where Lizzy volunteers each week as a music teacher).

Location

Facilities

  • Accessible throughout, including a wet room
  • Centrally heated (with our biomass boiler, using wood from our woodland)
  • Option of a double bed or a single profiling bed
  • Single sofa bed in the lounge
  • Riser recliner chair
  • Dedicated car parking
  • Fabulous views
  • Easy access to St Germans railway station
  • EV charger
  • Mobility aids (eg. toilet riser, RNID alarm, easy to use cutlery) on request
  • Laundry and games room
  • Outdoor brazier

Awards

  • Cornwall Sustainability Awards 2023 – Most Sustainable Small Business
  • Green Acorn Award 2024
  • Quality in Tourism Award 2024
  • Cornwall Tourism Awards 2022/3 – Silver Award for Accessibility , Bronze for Wildlife Friendly
  • Winner of the iTravel Staycation Award 2021 Self-Catering Holiday Category
  • South West Tourism Awards 2019 – Gold for Glamping
  • South West Tourism Awards 2019 – Silver for Responsible and Ethical Tourism
  • Cornwall Tourism Awards 2018 – Winner of Winners
  • Cornwall Tourism Awards 2018 – Gold for Responsible, Ethical and Sustainable Tourism, Gold for Glamping, Bronze for Accessibility and a Highly Commended for Wildlife Friendly Tourism.
  • South East Cornwall in Bloom 2018, 2017 and 2016 – Most Wildlife Friendly Garden
  • Visit England National Awards 2016 – Gold for Sustainable Tourism
  • We have also won several other awards prior to this in the Cornwall and South West Tourism Awards, and also the Cornwall Sustainability Award for Best Managed Small Business in 2013

Video

Special Offers

£50 low-carbon discount

£50 off for anyone arriving by train

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£50 locals discount

£50 off for residents of Cornwall or Devon

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SOCIAL MEDIA

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