Nigel Smallbones was the head ranger at Berry Head for 27 years between 1985 and 2012. We asked him to share his favourite memories.
Nigel, you lived and worked on Berry Head for half your life. What are your strongest memories?
My first visit to the headland still sticks out in my mind. I was driving in for an interview and I’d…
With thanks to Mike Langman, local ornithologist and illustrator
Berry Head is one of the richest and most rewarding locations in South Devon for bird watching. The headland overlooks a wide sweep of deep ocean and contains a mixture of varied habitats, all of which combines to attract a wide variety of sea and land birds.
The guillemots are perhaps the headland’s…
We are delighted to announce another award for the Guardhouse. After our success in the Visit Devon awards we were encouraged to enter the national “Taste of England” awards. There isn’t a cafe category at this level so we were up against restaurants from all over the country. Incredibly we made it into the top 5, the only cafe to…
We had some incredible weather on Berry Head on March 9th: 91mph Northerly winds, blasting up over the quarry and smashing into the Guardhouse! It was windy enough to have difficulty standing up, to be blown sideways when you jumped in the air, and for at least a hundred roof tiles to come flying off the roof. Sadly we had…
We’re delighted to announce our 2016 Italian regional evenings. Following the success of last year’s events Lucy has been hard at work developing another group of evenings from different regions, inspired by her time working, travelling and living all over the country.
Each evening starts with a welcome drink and a short informative lecture about the region, it’s culture, food and…
It must be Spring: we have two new employees at the Guardhouse! We are really excited to welcome Ben and Vicky to the team, until at least the end of the 2016 season.
Ben is a construction student, who is putting his skills to the test by overhauling a house in Furzeham. He has worked in a busy pub kitchen and…
This winter we have been repeatedly humbled and amazed by success in tourism awards. In November we won the Gold award for “best cafe / tearoom of 2015” at the Devon tourism awards. That award was down to the amazing hard work, customer focus and improvement mindsets within our wonderful team. We can’t believe we really are the best cafe…
Today was pancake day! And we couldn’t let such an opportunity pass without cooking up some delicious new specials. The most popular option on the savoury side was smoked salmon with avocado, watercress and homemade pesto; but my favourite remains simple lemon and sugar.
Even the joke of the day was taken over by the pancake theme. “Why was the pancake…
Valentine’s Weekend Evenings
Friday 12th February 7pm
Sunday 14th February 7pm
That’s right, our evenings are back! And we have a fantastic menu to celebrate our return.
“The Life of a third-century Roman Bishop: St Valentine”
Set menu including an ancient Roman chicken main course and an almond & rose dessert (although as always we can cater for all dietary needs).
A glass of bubbly on…
We are delighted that we have been granted permission to recommence evening activities following a decision by Natural England, the government’s advisors for environmental issues. As you may remember, our evenings were suspended from April 2015 after doubts were raised regarding the impact of our evenings on our local colony of Greater Horseshoe Bats (which breed and live year-round in cliffs…