Robin Hutson, the man who paired wine with rooms to make the Hotel du Vin group, went a step further by pairing very local food with rooms when he opened his first Pig in the New Forest in 2011. Half an hour’s drive east from Exeter, the Pig at Combe, an 18th-century country house with sweeping views across the Otter Valley, followed in 2016. Added in 2023 were five wagons (a deluxe upgrade from a shepherd’s hut), each sleeping two and each with its own private outdoor rolltop bath. From your wagon, nestled near a stream, stroll the half mile up through the parkland for dinner. It’s a boutique country house set-up, but it’s the food that really sets it apart.
Overall score 8/10
Main photo: the Pig at Combe (Jake Eastham)
Rooms and suites
Score 8/10
First, the big choice — do you stay in the main house, in the converted stables round the back or off down the hill for some splendid isolation in one of the wagons? If it’s summer, go for one of the grand, high-ceilinged rooms with a view at the front of the house — Room 15 has a bath by the bay windows. The spacious Comfy Luxe categories also have baths. You’ll have to make do with huge monsoon showers in the Snug and Comfy categories. If it’s autumn or winter, go for a wagon or one of the quirkier stable rooms. They also have some delightful family rooms (with bunks for tots in an adjoining space).
Food and drink
Score 10/10
Each Pig has its own kitchen garden and goes to great lengths to source food locally. At Combe, the perfectionist head chef plots whole seasons of menus with the perfectionist head gardener and the result is feel-good, taste-good, picked-this-morning perfection. The 25-mile menu changes depending on the day, the week and the season. Expect lots of convert-me-now veggie options, fish from the coast, local venison, Dartmoor pork and West Country steak, plus mushrooms from just over here, eggs from just over there, and all manner of goodies pickled and potted from the garden. You’ll probably end up ordering local wine as well, particularly if you are sitting out on the terrace. Breakfast is another celebration of local produce and, when you just want a pizza for lunch, cut across the croquet lawn to the Victorian greenhouse Folly.
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What else is there?
Score 6/10
You are free to stroll around the kitchen gardens, but that’s not recommended if you have your own allotment and it needs weeding. This is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon of vegetable patches, bringing on green eyes for the green-fingered. Arrange a spa treatment in the potting shed or hole up in one of the several cosy public rooms with a cocktail instead.
Where is it?
Score 9/10
The house looks across the sort of east Devon valley that would have set the Romantics’ juices flowing (Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born up the road in Ottery St Mary). It won’t have changed much since William the Conqueror gifted the land to Odo, his half-brother. Exeter is 15 miles to the west and, should you stay long enough to tire of the restaurant and the Folly, Heron Farm, a ten-minute drive north of the A30, is a local favourite. For the complete foodie short break, Mark Hix’s seafood restaurant is 20 minutes away in Lyme Regis.
Price room-only wagons from £370; snug rooms from £255
Restaurant mains from £20
Family-friendly Y
Dog-friendly N
Accessible Y
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