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mansion, built in 1860, which somehow adds to its cuteness – it’s not even a whole house. There are just a handful of letting rooms, all as exquisitely furnished and eclectically ‘thrown together’ as the downstairs space, plus a smaller private room set aside for beauty treatments, massage and therapies. Daisy is clearly not a lady to let any detail escape her – there’s nothing that you might need or want to enhance your stay that she hasn’t already thought of, including a box of emergency cosmetics in the bathrooms. And, most ingenious of all, the suitcases-turned-bedside tables that prop up the night lamp have sockets sunk into them, so you don’t have to get out of bed to charge your phone or iPad. Elsewhere, glamorous chandeliers cast their shadows across the high ceilings at night, while skins are draped across chairs as if they’ve always been there. There’s even a classy midnight snack bar in the corridor between the rooms, with artisan crisps and choccies for those indulging and artisan energy bars for those taking the healthier snacking pathway. And, downstairs, an artisan gin bar and huge Smeg fridge full of Champagne and local beers and anything else you’d hope to find if you were planning a nightcap (or a night in). Daisy runs foraging classes here – you can also book yoga or pilates (or even dog sitting, if you want to head off to nearby Lyme Regis for dinner) – and, sure enough, we find her at the bottom of the rose garden sorting through the petals for her homemade wine. Daisy’s not alone in this mission, as her 94-year-old grandfather is visiting, and helping to make a blackberry whisky that will go into the pantry for two years before it’s ready for Old Park guests. “This couldn’t be easier,” says Daisy, cramming blackberries into a sterilized bottle that might actually be a specimen jar. “Use the cheapest whisky you can buy and then follow the 3:3:3 rule – one third blackberries, one third cheap whisky and one third brown sugar. No wukkas!” She makes it look and all sound easy, but Daisy is a serious cook and foodie and you can pre-book supper, too, when you stay. Indeed, she rustled us up a delicious (and deliberately rustic) Mocqueca-depeixe, a Brazilian fish peasant stew she made with fresh pollack cooked with peppers, coconut milk, chillies, lime and
coriander, which you drench over a bowl of pillowy rice. The stew was followed by an equally-impressive deconstructed lemon meringue pie with tiny blobs of homemade Italian meringue and, of course, homemade lemon curd. I can’t believe how quickly Daisy and James have winkled out the best eating spots along the East Devon coast (an area currently making a real foodie name for itself) in just a few short months, but then she shows me her cookbooks – hers, her late mother’s, even her grandmother’s – all with the pages glued together by old food splatters or burned by hot pans, and I know that I’ve found myself a true foodie soul-mate. Daisy – who in another incarnation was a wedding planner after graduating in Australia, where she lived and worked for 10 years (hence the Aussie words cropping up in the middle of a well-bred English accent) – describes Old Park Hall as a ‘quintessential country pile’, despite the fact that its only actually a third of the house. She first came across it on her return from a holiday in Ibiza. “I’d just got back, and when I saw it my first thought was to make everything white-washed and airy,” she says. “But the house itself told me no. It knew what it wanted, and how I should furnish it.” I’ve actually visited Old Park Hall twice now, the second time treating a grown-up niece to a sleepover before she returned to university, and she said, as we drove away: “I don’t think you can fault it.” And whether ‘it’ means the food, the hospitality, the décor or just the hotelstandard mattresses on the Emperorsized beds, she’s right. Daisy hasn’t put one foot wrong here, and her flexibility is compelling. She can cater for freefrom here, or she can deliver the full fry up works, if that’s what you want. She seems to be all about making sure your enjoyment of your stay is equal to her enjoyment in creating and running this unique place. Old Park Hall should be on your mustvisit foodie list. Just remember to take the dog and leave the kids – “it was one or the other,” Daisy says. “We could either be dog-friendly or child-friendly” – and treat yourself to a mini break at Devon’s best foodie B&B. ✱ oldparkhall.co.uk
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