HEART TO DART

THERE are times when there is nothing better for the soul than to just sit back and soak in what's around you and there are few finer places to slow down than in the grounds of Dartmoor's five-star Bovey Castle.

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As I sat sipping tea in the sunshine on our room's balcony in the September warmth, perfectly manicured gardens stretched out in front of me, with the hills of Dartmoor framing a picture perfect foreground. What a tonic.

You've barely crossed on to Dartmoor National Park when you turn off the road into the winding drive that takes you to the main hotel building. That itself is vast, and something of a mix between Downton Abbey and a grand mansion house setting from an Agatha Christie novel.

The exterior has all the Gothic drama you'd expect from an early 20th-century building, but inside there are Art deco touches that take you to a totally different time, showing just some of the incarnations this building has had.

In 1890, William Henry Smith later of WH Smith high-street stationery shop fame purchased 5,000 acres of land, and it was his son, Frederick, who went on to build the lavish neo-Elizabethan manor house for his family.

In the First World War, it was used as a convalescent home for army officers, before being sold in 1928 to the Great Western Railway who turned it into a golfing hotel.

They bought it for £15,000, the equivalent to £772,000 in today's money. In the Second World War, it again had uniformed guests, becoming a military hospital.