To avoid having to sell the family farm and house he grew up in, Hugo Guest and his wife Olive, took over the reins of Glebe House from his parents, who also ran it as a guest house. They combined their love for homemade and local food, cooking, and art to create their modern vision of a countryside bolthole.
It feels like a welcoming family home and their ethos of feeding guests using produce they've reared, grown, or made on their 18-acre smallholding, along with offering rooms is based on the Italian agrotourismos model. These are family-run farmhouses with restaurants, which cleverly combine tourism with supporting rural communities and their traditional practices.
It was in Italy where Hugo learned the art of salumi from traditional pork butchers, then trained at Ashburton Chefs Academy in Devon and worked in London restaurants, including The Marksman and Sorella before setting up Glebe House. The focus at Glebe is about making everything from scratch, from the butter to the bacon and everything in between. It's rustic farmhouse cooking done very well and moves with what's available at the time.
Olive comes from a family of artists, where the interiors of her home growing up were full of decorative paintings. This has formed the inspiration for Glebe, along with initially enlisting the help of an interior designer friend. The result is a bohemian-inspired joyful celebration of color and pattern, with antique furniture and works from local artists (and Olive's) adorning the walls. They're also available to buy, making the house feel like a constantly revolving gallery.
Glebe House's East Devon location means it's right on the border of Somerset and Dorset, where the duo often go with their young family too. The rural area means they need to travel a little bit further for things, inevitably crossing into the shouldering counties. From in and around Devon and nearby Dorset, here are their favorite places for eating, shopping and activities.
Eating & Drinking
Where do you go for a morning coffee?
Hugo: "Our favourite spot is Finn's Coffee in Colyton, which is our nearest town. It's set up by a photographer friend of ours who has a studio gallery adjoined to the coffee shop which is on the river. The hatch sells lots of baked goods and great coffee, so that's where we go to get our fix. It's also a really social meeting point, so inevitably we bump into somebody we know too, which is really nice."
What about breakfast with the whole family at the weekend?
Olive: "Kiosk in Lyme Regis (Dorset) is about 20 minutes away and is good as the kids can run around on the beach, and we go with the whole family. There's nice coffee, as well as breakfast baps and pastries, and there's space to sit there on deck chairs and it's even a good one for the winter too."
If you wanted to book a table for an occasion, where would you go?
Hugo: "For dinner, we tend to travel a bit further afield as there are some great places within an hour. One of my favorite spots is The Seahorse in Dartmouth, Devon. It's a lovely town, and The Seahorse is an amazing restaurant and dining room – it has a real timeless feel to it and it's delicious seafood cooked over coals and wood."
Olive: "There's also Emilia in Ashburton, Devon too.
What about a table just for two for dinner?
Hugo: "Something a bit more local is the The Pea Green Boat in Sidmouth, Devon, it's great for a special occasion as they do a lovely whole fish to share."
Do you have a favorite local pub?
Hugo: "The Kingfisher in Colyton is a sweet pub and is very much a drinking pub and it has a nice menu too. They have their fishing boat, so often the seafood you get there has been caught by themselves. Again, you don't even have to arrange to meet someone there, and you know you'll bump into someone you know."
What about a pub worth driving for?
Hugo: "There's a pub in Exeter, Devon, the Hour Glass, and the head chef is a friend. He's an amazing chef. We like going there with friends too, it's a cool pub and the food is good."
Where do you go for lunch or dinner with friends?
Hugo: "For lunch, we'd go to Lilac in Lyme Regis, Dorset. It's owned by a chef called Harriet Mansel and it's a wine bar with small plates."
There's also a great place in Bridport in Dorset called Soul Shine – we're off there for dinner with some friends next week. They do supper clubs and it's flavoursome but simple food and it's really good value."
What about something casual?
Olive: "The Lost Kitchen near Tiverton in Devon. We went recently and had delicious wood-fired pizzas and cocktails. It's in a converted barn with floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the rolling hills and has a great family-style atmosphere."
Shopping
Where do you head to for the farmer's market?
Hugo: "We're slightly underserved here, considering the number of people growing such great produce, producing quality meat, and making all these artisan products.
There is a good food market in Axminster, which has some nice food including lots of seasonal veg and some interesting heritage varieties, artisan bread and cheese stalls too, and it's all quality."
And antique markets?
Hugo: "There's a good one in Bridport. Lots of people come down selling all sorts of vintage furniture, knick-knacks, and antiques. There are also lots of food vendors. It happens every Saturday and it's a real bustling market, it's quite fun."
Olive: "There's the antique village in Exeter, near Cullompton, which in the last couple of years has had a big refurb and they've got loads of sellers and it's really good. We always come away with loads of stuff. It's in a cool building, which is warehouse style and it's got a nice cafe."
Do you have a favorite local deli?
Hugo: "There's a great Italian deli, Mercato Italiano in Bridport, where they do great pizzas and nice well-sourced Italian produce".
Where do you go to buy wine?
Olive: "Castlewood Vineyard is a local vineyard to us in Devon, and a lot of our wine here is Castlewood."
Hugo: "They have cellar doors, where you can go and buy wine directly from them. It's a good friend of ours and they make really lovely, local sparkling English wine."
What about any local food events to look forward to?
Hugo: "Castlewood does a wine festival in June, it's a celebration of their wine and there are feasting tents that bring in guest chefs. We'll also likely have a stand there. It's a really small local festival with about 600 people, a little stage for music, and lots of food options."
Where do you head to for the farmer's market?
Hugo: "We're slightly underserved here, considering the number of people growing such great produce, producing quality meat, and making all these artisan products. There is a good food market in Axminster, which has some nice food including lots of seasonal veg and some interesting heritage varieties, artisan bread and cheese stalls too, and it's all quality."
And antique markets?
Hugo: "There's a good one in Bridport. Lots of people come down selling all sorts of vintage furniture, knick-knacks, and antiques. There are also lots of food vendors. It happens every Saturday and it's a real bustling market, it's quite fun."
Olive: "There's the antique village in Exeter, near Cullompton, which in the last couple of years has had a big refurb and they've got loads of sellers and it's really good. We always come away with loads of stuff. It's in a cool building, which is sort of warehouse style and it's got a nice cafe."
Where do you source your pottery and cookware from?
Olive: "In Lyme Regis, there's a nice courtyard with lots of galleries and a pottery studio. There's a potter called Harry, who does Town Mill Pottery and we get lots of our pottery from him. Next door is Molesworth & Bird which does the pressed seaweed pieces too.
"There's another potter called Michael Emmett, based in Honiton, Devon, who has a big studio and the most stunning ceramics and we've sold some of them at Glebe. They're big onions and Japanese-inspired. I'm going next week to pick up a load of more ceramics to sell.
"Keith Smith is based in Colyton so we get lots of mugs and other homeware bits and bobs from him, like our pie dishes and things we serve our breakfast in. They're all made locally by him."
Any favorite boutiques or stores for clothes?
Olive: "It Totnes, there's a few vintage shops which we like. There's a little strip of shops, near The Bull Inn in Totnes (another good place to eat!) and there's a few little shops there. There's a vintage shop, Butterworth's Vintage Company, where Hugo has got a few jackets.
"There's also a shop selling Indian fabrics and clothes, Loko Luma. We've got lots of bedspreads from there, as well as pyjamas, dressing gowns and nice block-print dresses."
What to Do & See
Where are your favorite walks you like to do?
Olive: "Our favorite walk is the Beer to Branscombe coastal walk, and it's in our little walk book for Glebe House. You end up at the Fountain Head pub in Branscombe, which is probably one of the oldest pubs in the area and you can just feel the history and it's got lots of its original features. They have local ales and fish and chips and it just has a nice feel to it.
"There's lots of other walks to do from Glebe too. One we do is up to Blackberry Camp, an Iron Age hill fort, especially in spring the bluebells are incredible and it just feels like magical woods – we always recommend that as a great picnic spot."
Where's your favorite beach?
Olive: "On the Beer to Branscombe walk, you can drop down the cliff path and there's a little secret beach called Hooken. We call it a secret beach as it's really quiet and as the access is via a footpath and it's over 20 minutes to get there, it's never really that busy."
What about wild swimming spots?
Olive: "It's mostly the sea we go swimming in, as it's so close. We usually go to the sea at Beer as it's a great place to swim. Seaton Hole is also very nice, it's at the far end of Seaton.
"We quite often go to Bridport as there's a few different places around there. There's also a sauna there, so you can go in the sauna and then go for a sea swim."
Where's good for fishing?
Olive: "You can take the boat out at Beer, and there's a guy there, Paul, who does mackerel fishing and that's something we always recommend to people. We have an experience doing this at Glebe, which is mackerel fishing followed by a twilight dinner on the beach."
What about museums or a gallery?
Olive: In Honiton, there's a place called Thelma Hulbert Gallery. It's run by an artist and it shows some of her work, and the rest changes all the time. There's a little art shop in Honiton too, Pilgrim Fine Art.
Is there anything touristy that you'd recommend doing?
Olive: "If someone is coming with kids, a good place that's quite touristy but is excellent is the railway, Pecorama in Beer. It's a little steam train and it has really lovely gardens, a big playground, and a nice place to have lunch with a good coffee spot."
What's an ideal day trip from Glebe House?
Olive: "South Devon is really lovely, we don't know it as well, and we love discovering a bit more of it. We stayed near Modbury last year and we love the beaches around there like Mothercombe, South Milton Sands and Bantham. There are some nice cafes there, we went to the School House Cafe, and it's quite accessible for places like Salcombe. For us, it's quite nice to still feel like tourists in that part of Devon as there's a lot for us to discover there."
