Devon heaven at Georgian manor
MICHAEL Caines has a smudge of what looks like red wine sauce on his chef whites, but Lympstone Manor is his baby – he can wear as much sauce as he wants.
Set on the edge of Devon’s Exe estuary, at the boundary between Exmouth and Lympstone village, the Georgian manor house is as milky and square as a lump of nougat, with alabaster gravel pathways fringed with lavender
Early in his career, Michael was championed by Raymond Blanc and became head chef at Gidleigh Park, Devon, where he went on to hold two Michelin stars for 18 years, before leaving last year to renovate Lympstone.
The plush book-lined foyer has ladders worthy of Beauty and the Beast and the house, then called Courtlands, was pretty run down and the grounds overgrown.
The lawn slopes down to a brackencovered ridge, where the trees are
XXXXXX xxxxxx silhouetted against the smooth, shifting
Xxxx water of the Exe – and then there’s sky. A huge wide-open wedge of it, seemingly doubled by its reflection in the estuary, where the odd boat bobs restlessly, and the tide slips and slides on the sand.
Every aspect of the ex-private house, built in the late 1700s, is geared towards that vaulted view, from the wraparound terrace to the crest of the driveway.
Here, a string of free-to-use burgundy bikes hang waiting to be whisked off down to the water’s edge, or cycled the two miles to Exmouth.
Like a scoop of orange sorbet, the sun bleeds and melts into the Exe, before plunging into creamy golden clouds the exact colour of the Brixham scallops we’re served at dinner. When it comes to style, it’s no Downton Abbey
Indoors, there’s no stuffiness, despite the plushness (turn up windswept and sand-encrusted from a surf in north Devon en-route from London, as I did, and they’ll still let you into the gilded bar).
Michael is all about being contemporary. Instead of dynastic portraits on the wall, there are delicate murals of estuary birds in flight, and each of the 21 bedrooms and suites comes with its own set of GHD hair straighteners.
The bedrooms are also themed around birds and decorated to mimic their plumage – our Gannet suite is all iridescent blues and greys, and even has a decadent outdoor bath.
But dinner is the main event. The signature tasting menu (£140), eaten in the Berry Head dining room starts with those scallops, delicately frosted with truffle and doused in cumin-scented foam.
Despite being eight courses, portions aren’t skimpy – you get a whole bread basket of mini baguettes and warm split buns, served with ridiculously delicious butter.
The fillet of beef from nearby Darts Farm, is sticky in the dark red wine sauce that did manage to escape Michael’s collar, and livened by sweetsharp shallots and beads of velveteen celeriac puree. Pudding is a staggeringly good white chocolate candle you blow out (wish-making, optional) – everything is full of detail and fun.