“A delightful, whitewashed, English 16th-century-style inn set on one of the most beautiful stretches of coast in America, just north of San Francisco. It’s a slice of England but with the California sunshine. 

Wisteria and vines embrace the walls of the Pelican Inn, a quaint Tudor building with a slate roof and bright window boxes. Although only built in the 1970s it looks like it has been transported out of a Thomas Hardy novel into a stretch of Californian coastline. Inside it feels like a lovely old-fashioned English country pub, all nooks and crannies and wiggly walls: low beamed ceilings, wood panelling, walls hung with country tools like pitchforks, stuffed animal heads and birds, hunting prints and a wall of royal memorabilia.

Service is exceptionally friendly – the manager Noel is a delight: charming, solicitous and very well informed about the local area with lots of recommendations for local walks. No swimming pool or tennis court but there is a dart board.

And there are multiple different rooms for drinking and eating, including a large restaurant with rough hewn beams and a large inglenook fireplace; a tiny bar, a covered garden patio and a ‘snug’ – which is reserved for overnight guests: a small drawing room with roaring fire, comfortable wingback chairs, Norfolk brick flooring and lots of books and boardgames, including Scrabble and Monopoly.

Up a narrow dogleg staircase, there are seven atmospheric bedrooms, all with heavily draped canopy beds, beamed ceilings, wooden floors and rugs. Most rooms are cosy with queen beds – although Room 7 is larger with a king-sized bed and a private staircase. Décor is determinedly English: hunting scenes and portraits of English luminaries: I woke up to find Queen Elizabeth 1 staring at me from the wall. Latticed windows overlook the pretty garden. A window seat and sofa encourage lingering.

Most bathrooms have just showers, although Room 7 has a small tub. Bathrobes are provided and amenities are old-fashioned: no television or Nespresso machines – think 16th-century pub, add electricity and plumbing and you have it.   

There is an excellent restaurant which serves English pub classics such as Guinness beef stew or bangers and mash but with Californian touches like the half dozen Miyagi oysters. There are also more exotic items like Roasted Stuffed quail.

There is a huge selection of beers and lagers, many on tap and several from England, Scotland and Ireland, including Old Speckled Hen and Guinness Stout. A continental breakfast is included for overnight guests.

Only 20 minutes from Golden Gate Bridge by car but seemingly a whole world – and era – away from high-tech San Francisco. The inn is a three-minute walk from lovely Muir beach; several hiking trails lead directly from the inn along the coast or to Muir Woods, a magnificent redwood forest two miles away set in a ravine on the edge of Mount Tamalpais.” 

“Pelican Inn, my favorite place in the world.” Paolo Lucchesi, food editor at SF Chronicle.

“Favorite Hotels in Northern California”
“No. 1 in Marin County”

“Perfectly nestled between Muir Beach and Muir Woods, the unabashedly English Pelican Inn offers an intimate respite during the holidays and year-round. Amid the winter green hills of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, this surely is a setting as fair as Camelot. The lodge’s Tudor architecture and traditional details are enough to send even the stodgiest English visitor into a dewy-eyed reverie and never more so than during the holiday season. Now, wreaths and mistletoe adorn the scene; Yule logs burn bright; and merry gentlemen and ladies come a-wassailing. Good cheer flows like ale at this gracious hostelry.”

“What does a 16th century-style English inn have to do with California’s Marin coast? A lot, it turns out. Sir Francis Drake beached his ship, the Pelican, nearby 400 years ago. If this inn had been around back then, Drake would have enjoyed the seven atmospheric bedrooms, all with canopy beds and Oriental carpets.”

By Harriott Manley

“A few days later, I went for a run along the road to Muir Woods, continuing past the park toward the sea. About three miles ahead, just before I reached secluded Muir Beach, I pulled up at the Pelican Inn. This charming lodge, an ivy-clad and whitewashed reproduction of a 16th-century Tudor country inn, has always been special to me: it’s where I spent my honeymoon night a dozen years ago. Today, my husband and I—like a lot of residents of the area—still covet weekend getaways there in one of its seven antique-filled rooms, enjoying a game of darts in the pub, roast-beef-and-Yorkshire-pudding dinners by an enormous fireplace in the dining rooom,then a cozy night in a canopy bed.”

“If your idea of a good time is to watch the sunset on a driftwood-strewn cove with your black Lab and a bottle of the region’s fine chardonnay, then seek out Muir Beach (and good luck, since the tiny seaside community is just a blip on some maps and not even listed on others). The best place to stay in town, the seven-room Pelican Inn, is modeled after an English country inn; pub dishes like bangers-and-mash are big hits on the California-British menu. Innkeeper Katrinka McKay cheerily directs guests to her favorite spot, the mediation garden at the Green Gulf Farm & Zen Center, a short walk from the Pelican.”

“This slate-roofed hideaway tucked in a valley at the center of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area is so saturated in British hostelry tradition that in each of the seven guest rooms a tiny stone with a hole hangs over the bed to ward off witches and rickets. By day, guests can explore nearby hiking trails, catch some sea mist at rugged Muir Beach, and then refuel on prime rib, Yorkshire pudding, and cottage pie in front of the fireplace. At night–after a round of pilsners and darts in the paneled Tudor bar–they retire to snug rooms filled with English antiques, heavily draped canopy beds, and worn Persian rugs.”

By Eileen Hanse

‘I was ready to get off the bike and into the cozy pub of the Pelican Inn. Inside, a young Irish couple and their visiting mother sat close by, conversing in a thick brogue. ‘You know,’ said the daughter to her mother, ‘most so-called pubs here are just a lot of old furniture, but this is authentic.

And it is.

With whitewashed walls, leaded windows and period furnishings, the Pelican Inn is more 16th century England than modern-day Marin. Our spacious room was furnished with a queen bed flanked by tapestries, English country prints on the walls and windows that overlooked stables across the street. With its waterfall of a shower and a one-night price of about $205 plus tax, it was a far cry from our rustic cabin the night before–but without being too polished. Worn Persian runners, low ceilings and slightly off-kilter floors kept it charmingly authentic.

That night we ate near a roaring fire in the inn’s dining room. Breakfast was hearty. I felt like I had swallowed a Buick. But later, as we climbed back over the mountain on a steep trail above Green Gulch, a Buddhist center and organic farm east of Muir Beach, it served me well.”