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Radio Times South West. 4th-10th February 2006

Timeless Quality...
Mimic Jon Culshaw's impression of Combe House

London is an incredibly addictive city...so full of opportunities. You really don't know what's going to happen from one day to the next and that's why I love living there. But you have to be careful. If you're there for too long, you can become jaded. You have to get out just to catch your breath, People talk about " recharging your batteries", and I realise it's time for me to do just that.

Devon's not really an area that I know at all. I'm a Lancashire lad - but we decide to try a relaxing weekend break at Combe House Hotel in Gittisham, near Exeter (described by Prince Charles as the "ideal English village". Getting there is ridiculously easy: we get the train from Waterloo to Honiton, then it's a short cab ride from the station. As soon as I get off the train, I know I've made the right decision. Just getting your lungs full of that country air and not having to listen to the constant hum of traffic. It's as if I can feel my brain uncoiling.

As for the hotel itself...well, what can I say? You step inside and it's like falling back through time to the 1600s. Parts of it date all the way back to the 1300s. Huge sandstone fireplaces, creaky old floorboards...I'm sure I'll turn around and see Queen Elizabeth 1 checking in for the night. It's quite a big place - about 15 rooms - but it doesn't have that horrible hotel atmosphere. It feels like we're in

somebody's home. Just really, really cosy. And when you look out of the windows, you've got more surprises. We wake up to see pheasants and a herds of arabian horses. And if walking is your thing, you've got hills and moors right on your doorstep.

We decide to have a bit of a lie-in - well, it is meant to be a relaxing break - so we have breakfast in bed, but for the evening meal, I just have to go down to the banqueting hall. Incredible! The walls are covered in old portraits of kings, queens and knights, all looking down at us. We eventually go for the roast beef, but what they bring is much more....I must have about half a cow on my plate. It's a Desperate Dan-sized portion, complete with all the trimmings. Although we don't get the log fire going in our room, we do light candles and enjoy the views out across the night sky. Without all that light pollution, it's truly spectacular. Both Venus and Mars are visible and I really have never seen anything like it.

Combe House is a real find. One of those special places to visit time and time again. It almost seems a shame to tell anyone else about it.

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Times online – Sept 25th 05

The World's Best Hotels For Dirty Weekends

COMBE HOUSE HOTEL, Gittisham, Devon

Lascivious gimmicks are all very well, but if your libido leans to the romantic rather than the raunchy, little can compare with a country-house hotel.

We choose Combe simply because it’s gorgeous — no spa, no pool, no designer names, just a perfectly intact Elizabethan manor in 3,500 secluded acres. It offers award-

winning food and only 15 rooms: our favourites are the quirky Pitt, with its bed under a mullioned window; and the Willington, for the thought-provoking four-poster. Both are straight out of the pages of a racy period novel, with stunning views over a verdant valley where thoroughbreds roam free. So rip those bodices and get busy.

Daily Mail - Saturday June 4th 2005

Combe voted one of the Top Ten Glorious British Sunsets

As the hills of Dartmoor turn purplish blue, magnificent Arab horses from a nearby stud gallop in the secluded valley beyond. You won't find a hotel with a more English setting than Combe House, a Grade 1 Elizabethan Manor surrounded by softly verdant parkland in the village of

Gittisham. The hotel bar's speciality drink makes a delicious aperitif: the 'Dowa' consists of honey, ice, vodka and crushed limes, all sipped through a straw, and comes from the Swahili word for medicine.

From The Good Food Guide 2005

Philip Leach runs the kitchen at this many-gabled Elizabethan manor house, where architectural grandeur does not translate into a stuffy ambience. The dedication to sourcing fine seasonal and often local ingredients is clearly a driving obsession, and the sylvan setting includes a large kitchen garden producing an array of herbs, vegetables and fruit. Begin with a woodsy pairing of ceps and leeks in an open ravioli sauced with cep velouté, or tempura oysters with celeriac and oyster soup, before moving on to pot-roast poussin simply paired with colcannon and wild mushrooms,

or poached fillet of halibut with tagliatelle and pesto dressing. A six-course tasting menu is on hand if choices prove difficult. Puddings range from chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream to pistachio bavarois with sesame tuiles and milk sorbet. France, in particular Bordeaux and – unusually – Chablis, is the first love of the wine list, with some well-chosen New World back-up. Half bottles are in plentiful supply and six come by the glass. House wine is a rather steep £17.50

The Sunday Times Travel Awards 2004

Country House Hotel

JOINT WINNERS- Combe House Hotel and Restaurant, Devon and Castle Leslie, County Monaghan, Ireland

We were agreed that this prize should go to a stately home, but we just couldn't decide between the splendid Elizabethan pile that is Combe House, and Ireland's Castle Leslie.

Combe House remains refreshingly unreconstructed in today's country-house-hotel world of statement spas and OTT extensions: guests choose between the old

Sunday Times August 8 2004

A Manor to which you'll be accustomed

It may be grand, but it feels like home: Matt Rudd finds the perfect place to unwind - Combe House Hotel, Gittisham, Devon

Combe House Hotel has no plans to expand. It has just 15 rooms, and if you want a bioneoduothermal seafood mud bath or a raspberry colonic, you'll have to go elsewhere. There are no modern bits – instead, you get to choose between the old servants' quarters and the old master's quarters.

Relaxation comes in the form of afternoon tea on the lawn(s). Sunday papers on voluminous sofas and G&T's by the croquet lawn. It's the sort of place that makes you say “righty-ho”, “smashing” and “old chap” repeatedly. Maybe even “spiffing”.

The house isn't Georgian, but that's okay because it's Elizabethan. Over the centuries it has been owned and added to (tastefully) by posh Devon families such as the Willingtons, the Beaumonts, the Putts and the Markers. So there's plenty of intrigue, king-bashing and inbreeding to read up on while you stay , none of which is, to my knowledge, still practiced by the current owners.

Ken and Ruth Hunt took over seven years ago and run it with a small team of expert waiters, maids, gardeners, chefs and Jeevesian bartenders, for whom nothing is too much trouble. And despite the mile-long driveway, the sumptuous antiques and the old- school service, it's not at all intimidating. It feels homely. In fact, by the end of the weekend, you'll feel as if this Grade I – listed manor house is your home. But it isn't – so you'll have leave, all right?

So what are the rooms like?

All individually and sumptuously furnished with antiques and rich fabrics. I couldn't decide which was my favourite – the curiously misshapen, bargain Pitt, or Tommy Wax, the no-holds-barred deluxe option with a bath a deux. They're all lovely.

And the food? The house is set on a huge estate of rolling hills and magical forests, with paddocks of whinnying Arabian horses and no restaurants to speak of, other than its own. To leave this calm sophistication for the cruel realities of Devon proper is, frankly, too much. So it's fortunate that the food here is amazing.

What doesn't come from the walled kitchen garden is sourced from a list of high-class supplier: master butchers, smokehouses, local farm shops. Urbane Ken pootles down to Brixham in his Land Rover each afternoon to collect the catch of the day, and the excellent head chef, Phillip Leach, then knocks up an unpretentious, delicious menu – roast rump of lamb with aubergine millefeuille ,pan-friend fillet of sea bass with crushed new potatoes, that sort of thing.. Before you think this is a Huttonesque whitewash, I'd avoid the John Dory with vanilla veloute, unless you like fishy vanilla. But the duck was the best I've ever had. It tasted like it died happy. Which is probably true for the morning kippers. I'll leave you to find out how good the breakfast is.

Let's suppose we want to leave the hotel. Madness – this is the place to convalesce, Matisse-style. You want to sit, vegetable-like, soak up the views, stretch a lot, and wake up from an unscheduled afternoon nap with a big pillow crease across your face. You don't want to sightsee.

We insist. Fine. Go walking or riding around the estate. Have a crab sandwich in pretty Beer, 20 minutes' drive away. And walk along the cliffs from there to Branscombe: one of England's finest coastal stretches. Then, just stop it and go back to Combe House.

On a vast Devon estate of woodland, meadows and pastures with Arabian horses, stands Ruth and Ken Hunt's Grade I listed Elizabethan manor house (with 19th-century additions). It continues to please most comers: 'A treat: great welcome, gracious surroundings, excellent food,' said visitors in 2003. Other appreciation: 'Friendly, professional; we felt special.' 'Wonderful position, magnificent rooms; everything tastefully done.' The panelled public rooms have huge fireplaces with Grinling Gibbons-style carvings, coats of arms, stags' heads, plastered ceilings, 'an abundance of fine antique furniture, ancestral portraits and flowers'. Rooms are priced according to size and aspect. 'Our "superior" had a three-seat sofa in the window; large bathroom with separate shower.' 'A delightful, spacious room, well appointed, oozing atmosphere.' 'Ours, decorated in lived-in country house style, had lovely views over the gardens. The owner himself brought a tray of tea and delicious home-made biscuits.'