Where to stay

Broomhill Art Hotel

This quirky hotel not far from Barnstaple is set within its own sculpture garden and is decorated with works by local artists. Lovers of art and nature come here to enjoy tranquillity as well as excellent local food served in the Terra Madre Restaurant (see Where to Eat). Rooms are clean, individually and originally furnished, and reasonably priced. Doubles from £75. Muddiford Road, Barnstaple, 01271 850262, http://www.broomhillart.co.uk

Hunters Inn

Hidden off the A39 near the sea, this surprisingly large inn resembles a Swiss chalet. Open since 1824, guests have included poets, composers and prime ministers. The pub itself has own-brewed ales, while the restaurant serves homely foods, mainly from locally sourced ingredients. Doubles from £100. Heddon Valley, Exmoor, 01598 763230, http://www.thehuntersinnexmoor...

Kentisbury Grange

This beautifully restored Victorian manor on the edge of Exmoor has recently gone up a gourmet notch with the launch of The Coach House restaurant by two-Michelin-starred chef Michael Caines. The chic hotel is furnished tastefully with antiques and original artwork. Doubles from £125. Kentisbury, Barnstaple, 01271 882295, http://www.kentisburygrange.co...

Saunton Sands Hotel

This elegant art deco hotel is poised like a gleaming white ocean liner, overlooking North Devon’s best beaches. While the rooms are modern and well-equipped, service is old-fashioned in the best sense (there is a voluntary dress code for dinner, for example). This is a grand old hotel that harks back to another era, a lovely place to visit and stay. Doubles from £145. Saunton, near Braunton, 01271 890212, http://www.sauntonsands.co.uk

Stoodleigh Court Coach House B&B

A stylish and modern luxury bed & breakfast set in a remote and incredibly peaceful corner of mid-Devon. Rosey and Steve are welcoming hosts and the farmhouse breakfast, made with ingredients from neighbouring farms, is outstanding. Doubles from £90. Stoodleigh, Tiverton, 01398 351206, http://www.stoodleighcourtcoac...

Travel Information

GettIng There

First Great Western operates trains from London Paddington to Barnstaple (the furthest point accessible by train), via Exeter St David’s, with a journey time of about 4 hours. http://www.firstgreatwestern.c... National Express runs a regular coach service that departs from London’s Victoria Coach Station. Barnstaple can be reached in about 5 hours 30 minutes. http://www.nationalexpress.com

Resources

Visit Devon is the official tourist board, offering a wealth of information about the county, including what to see, where to stay, suggestions for eating and drinking and cycling routes and walks. http://www.visitdevon.co.uk

A Taste of Devon is a useful resource for food lovers, covering the best farmers’ markets, artisan producers, shops and restaurants that you must try on your trip. http://www.atasteofdevon.co.uk

Further Reading

North Devon & Exmoor (Bradt Travel Guides, £7.99). This new book lifts the lid on secret spots in Devon, with out-of-the-way places, local characters and a guide to sustainable tourism.
Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson (Puffin Modern Classics, £6.99). First published in 1927, this novel follows the life of Tarka amid his natural habitat of the Taw and Torridge rivers in North Devon.

Where to eat

NC @ EX34

Dining at Noel Corston’s restaurant is a treat. The tasting menu changes regularly to reflect what is available. This is dining of the highest order, but it remains fun. Drop in, too, for a cocktail. Tasting menu from £75. South Street, Woolacombe, 01271 871187, http://www.noelcorston.com

Tarr Farm Inn

A serious restaurant and place to stay at one of Exmoor’s most popular beauty spots. Come here for home-baked cakes, sandwiches or baguettes, afternoon cream tea, or full lunch or dinner. £35. Dulverton, 01643 851507, http://www.tarrfarm.co.uk

Terra Madre at Broomhill Art Hotel

Local meats, seafood, cheeses and homegrown vegetables are part of Terra Madre’s Slow Food philosophy. A Spanish twist comes from using Iberian ingredients for tapas and more elaborate dinner menus. £25. Muddiford Road, Barnstaple, 01271 850262, http://www.broomhillart.co.uk

The Coffee Cabin

Fabulous crab sandwiches and homemade cakes can be found in this stylish café on Appledore’s historic harbour. £10. 22 The Quay, Appledore, 01237 475843

The Exmoor Beastro

This laid-back venue brings the fun and diversity of street food to a restaurant environment. Alex and Fiona are proud to source ingredients from local farms, and much of their delicious bistro-style food is done in a small wood-fired oven in the courtyard. £35. 44 High Street, Dulverton, 01398 323712, http://www.theexmoorbeastro.co...

The Quay Restaurant

Views of Ilfracombe Harbour compete with those of Damien Hirst’s art at this stylish restaurant. The menu centres on local seafood – think seared scallops with chilli, lime, coriander and pak choi, and crispy calamari with garlic mayonnaise. Don’t miss Verity, Hirst’s bronze sculpture on the pier. £45. 11 The Quay, Ilfracombe, 01271 868090, http://www.11thequay.co.uk

The Swan

Devon Life’s Gastro Pub of the Year 2014 serves exceptional pub fare while still being a welcoming place for locals to enjoy a drink. Food is traditional: salt beef with tangy, piccalilli and soda bread; soused Brixham herrings; St Ives wild sea bass with linguine, crab and roasted tomatoes. Good selection of local ales and wines. £35. Station Road, Bampton, 01398 332248, http://www.theswan.co

Food Glossary

Food and Travel Review

North Devon is the sort of place you want to meander through, explore and discover at a slow pace, perhaps in a vintage VW Camper. Why not? Ours is bright red and dates from 1971. This classic beaut takes us on a journey along high coastal roads that look across the Bristol Channel to Wales, down lanes that are narrow, winding, sometimes outrageously steep, lined with high, overgrown hedgerows; up climbs that lead to the bare and majestic stretches of exmoor then plunge into valleys that are lush and almost sub-tropical. Along those roads and in a vehicle such as ours, it is simply impossible not to drive lightly.

‘We don’t do “hurry” here,’ says Dan the fishman, when we arrive to meet him at Appledore’s historic harbour more than an hour late. ‘I was in Plymouth last week and it felt so strange. everyone was rushing!’ An ex-lifeboatman, Dan is not only a fisherman and fishmonger, selling from his barrow at farmers’ markets and festivals, but he has also become an unofficial ambassador for North Devon’s sustainable fish. This means teaching children and adults how to understand, value and cook the harvest.

‘Many people in cities have lost the ability to taste real food. It’s all that rushing about. They have never had the chance to enjoy fish virtually straight from day boats or to savour grass-fed meat reared slowly on a farm. Coming to North Devon is an opportunity for people to reconnect with where real food comes from,’ he says.

North Devon has always been a popular destination. People have been coming here for centuries to experience the remote beauty of places like Lynmouth and Combe Martin. Indeed, the poets Coleridge and Wordsworth walked about 50km to reach the Valley of Rocks in 1797, its grandeur inspiring the 18th-century Romantic Period in art and literature. Ever since, the area has continued to attract visitors.

It is only in recent years, however, that people have come here to discover an array of outstanding food and drink. Just north of Barnstaple, we visit Broomhill Art Hotel, in a lush, wooded valley, a beautiful venue for the largest permanent collection of contemporary art and sculpture in the South West. It seems fitting that the award-winning kitchen of Terra Madre Restaurant has based itself on the philosophy of Slow Food, the Italian-born movement that celebrates food that is ‘good, clean and fair’. Sitting on the terrace overlooking the sculpture park, we enjoy a lunch of West Country tapas: delicate, home-cured salmon on a bed of salad leaves and flowers picked from the garden; honey-glazed Devon goat’s cheese on a seasonal vegetable stew; lundy crab bisque; organic pork meatballs; and local cold-smoked trout and prawn croquetas. It’s delicious and informal food that is simple and sophisticated, like the region itself.

In Barnstaple, North Devon’s main town, we discover the Pannier Market, an impressive vaulted hall built in 1855 and so named because people from surrounding farms and smallholdings used to come here to sell their vegetables from wicker panniers. The Pannier Market is still in operation every day, but no longer only for food. nearby Butchers Row once used to house more than 33 butchers selling meat from local farms. Today, just one – DA Gratton – remains. How did this small market town ever support so many butchers, I wonder? ‘Before supermarkets,’ I’m told, matter-of-factly.

Here, more than elsewhere, there is a strong sense of community where people support each other and the local economy. At Barton Farm Dairy, we meet Gary and Linda Wright, who work a dairy herd of 130 mainly Holstein and Jersey cattle.

‘There is a real interest in knowing where food comes from,’ says Gary, handing me a glass of raw milk virtually straight from the cow. ‘People here are turning away from the supermarkets.’ I take a deep swallow: rich, creamy milk that leaves you with a moustache is a forgotten taste that is just so good. Linda also uses this unpasteurised milk to produce wonderful soft cheeses such as creamy Kentisbury Down and a very mild, fresh Barton Blue. Customers come direct to the dairy, helping themselves and leaving the money in an honesty box.

At the Old Rectory in nearby East Down, Victoria Cranfield uses the bounty from her rather wild garden and surrounding fields to produce an astonishing array of handmade jams, jellies, chutneys and pickles. A former lawyer, Victoria first came to East Down for holidays as a child. As we walk in the field, she points out not only fruit, flowers and plants but also the incredible biodiversity of a pesticide-free microclimate. ‘Listen to the field,’ she instructs. ‘You can taste it in my jams, just as you can taste the smells.’

Indeed, her apple and rose petal conserve evokes the intense scent of roses; lemon and horseradish marmalade is pungent and sharp. Victoria makes marmalades known as ‘proper’ (Seville Orange, Pink Grapefruit) or ‘improper’ (Blood Orange and Espresso won gold at this year’s World Marmalade Festival). The Chocolate Splattered Marmalade is ‘my homage to Jackson Pollock’. My guess is that it is the ‘improper’ that interests Victoria more. In this overgrown paradise, she is having fun. Enjoyment seems to be a real motivation for people living and working in the region. Chef Noel Corston used to come to Croyde to surf. Learning to chef was a way to travel the world and nurture his passion. He met his wife while in Mexico and the couple returned to north Devon, opening The Courtyard restaurant in Woolacombe more than a decade ago. In 2012, he relaunched it as NC @ EX34, serving a seven-course tasting menu at dinner. Noel’s aim is to express the unique flavour of North Devon’s protected Unesco Biosphere Reserve, working directly with farmers, fishermen, foragers and hunters to create food that is simply stunning. The menus may simply list the main ingredients, but the cooking is anything but spartan.

‘Red Ruby’, for example, consists of perfectly grilled Red Ruby feather steak, confit of shoulder, and lightly poached bone marrow with local vegetables: a parsnip purée, baby carrots and broccoli, and sharp homemade choucroute made from local cabbage. for Noel, the cooking and intensity of flavour of the vegetables is as important as the meat. ‘Apple’ is the thinnest caramelised apple tart with an ice cream churned from Devon Blue cheese. This is food that is at once totally local and really satisfying.

‘Do you still get time to go out and surf?’ I ask. ‘I don’t do too badly,’ the 36-year-old chef tells me. ‘We work incredibly hard for six months, then we close and go to Mexico. I am really trying to get the balance of work and family life right.’ Equilibrium seems to be the key here, in food as in life.

Our trusty red Camper also takes us to the roof of Exmoor, where we marvel at the most rugged cattle you will ever see, their shaggy coats offering protection from the harsh elements that buffet this high moorland, even in the summer months. Way up here they thrive on a diet of coarse grass, gorse and heather, yielding meat with fine marbling and terrific flavour. Exmoor lamb similarly matures in a harsh natural environment to result in a character that is deliciously robust and full. Just over the border in Somerset, we pause for lunch at the bustling Tarr farm Riverside Inn & Restaurant beside a popular beauty spot. Moorland lamb, chargrilled and pink, is served with local vegetables and washed down with a quenching pint of Exmoor Ale.

Coming off the moor, we head into mid-Devon to meet organic and free-range pig farmers Will Knowles and Jeannie Morrissey of Pork Heaven from Devon. An ex-commercial pilot, Will took over his father’s farm and only began to breed pigs about eight years ago. To see Jeannie in the pens with the creatures is to know that this is clearly a labour of love. ‘Animals should be given the life they deserve,’ says Will, matter-of-factly. ‘I really do think ours enjoy about the best life that a pig can have. The way to give respect to the animal is to produce the best-tasting meat you can.’

The results speak for themselves: since Will and Jeannie began their business, they have won no end of praise, and awards for their sausages, burgers, chops and belly pork, including Best of Sausages at the prestigious Taste of the West Awards in 2014. ‘Meat has lost so much quality because of supermarkets. We are producing our food in the old way, to make meat and sausages that have real taste,’ says Will.

At the nearby Stoodleigh Court Coach House B&B, we sample the result of Will and Jeannie’s labours the next morning over an ample farmhouse breakfast. The sausages are succulent, tasty and absolutely delicious, certainly ranking among the best I have ever tasted. The black pudding, fried until just crispy, is pretty sensational, too. Rosey and Steve, our hosts, renovated the coach house of the Stoodleigh Court estate into a beautiful, luxury, boutique B&B that is welcoming and warm.

In Dulverton, the gateway to Exmoor, we visit the Exmoor Beastro and meet Alex Nutts and Fiona O’Mahoney, another couple working together to create a life for themselves and their young family. Previously, Alex and Fiona ran a successful street food van. Their favourite activity was to pick a spot on Exmoor to have a pop-up happening, then tweet and send messages on facebook and wait for the crowds to appear. So successful were they that everyone kept asking them to open a restaurant.

Alex cooks just about everything in a small wood-fired oven, while Fiona makes the puddings and is front of house. The street food ethos shines through in dishes made with impeccably sourced local ingredients: onglet in red wine, ‘damn fine BBQ pork ribs’ in a sticky, finger-licking sauce, 65-day dry-cured steaks, and a beef tagine with preserved lemon.

While some city folk dream of escaping to the country, for others it’s more of a rediscovery. In Appledore, over a crab sandwich at The Coffee Cabin (supplied by Dan the fishman), Martin Ford and Richard Parsons, both from North Devon and in their early 30s, tell a little of their story. ‘We moved away to study and work before returning to open this business. When you come back to your home, you see it with fresh eyes. There is a real quality of life here.’

There is indeed. Our journey, though, is nearly at an end. We meander down the lovely Exe Valley in our VW Camper, which has transported us through the heart of North Devon. Just south of Tiverton, we spy a sign to a local vineyard, Yearlstone, and can’t resist sampling Roger and Juliet White’s delightful pink sparkling wine, made with pinot noir grapes grown in a steeply sloped vineyard overlooking the river. The wine, with its fine and persistent bubbles, is light and invigoratingly fresh, a sparkler that can stand comparison with the best. It’s the perfect wine to toast the artisan food producers, the fishermen, the farmers and the chefs of North Devon.