PINT TO PINT

The Pack o’ Cards Combe Martin, Devon

When the magician Paul Daniels wanted to film one of his Eighties Saturday-night TV shows on location, the Pack o’ Cards, nestling in a remote nook of quaintly pastoral Devon, must have seemed heaven-sent.

It’s got the name of course, but there’s plenty of close-up conjuring in the fabric of the place as well. It sits on a footprint that’s 52ft square (the number of cards in a pack) across four floors (for the suits), with 13 doors on each floor and 13 fireplaces, overlooking any superstitious connotations to represent the cards in each suit. It’s said that before the window tax, the number of panes of glass matched the total of the numbers on the cards in a pack.

It was built as a private house by a local landowner in the 17th century to celebrate a big gambling win, according to legend. During its tenure as an inn it served time as the King’s Arms before reverting its original name in the Thirties.

All those floors and rooms offer plenty of scope for the modern pub, enough room to retain a liquid-led bar for the locals, a Habitat-chic conservatory and dining room for holidaymakers, a sprawling garden and playground for the children and a skittles alley that doubles up as a museum for heritage geeks.

Anyone booked into the accommodation on the upper floors may well, it transpires, be sleeping in the room where Michael and Mary Parkinson spent their honeymoon.

The food at the Pack o’ Cards is bold of flavour and generous in its portions, avoiding the rip-off prices that often come in such idyllic settings in tourist areas.

The ale selection showcases some of the region’s best, with St Austell Tribute the standout: a golden, refreshing pint laced with gentle melon fruit and spicy hops.

In times when so many pubs seem to want to be something else, be it a Michelin restaurant or a high-street coffee shop, the Pack o’ Cards is comfortable in its own skin, proud to be a pub and a pub for Devon to be proud of. And that’s magic!