Flushing, Cornwall

Flushing is a village that spent three centuries watching Falmouth work and decided the view was the better job. Dutch engineers built the quays, packet captains built the good houses on the hill with prize money and whatever the mail boats were carrying that the paperwork missed, and the descendants of that arrangement now arrive by ferry with a Waitrose bag and a boat they use twice. It is the most tastefully smug half-mile of water in Cornwall, and it knows exactly what it looks like from the other side.