The dining room at the Exmoor Forest Inn
The Exmoor Forest Inn, Simonsbath on Exmoor sits in an idyllic valley surrounded by wild and beautiful moorland. Built in the 1850s, the recently refurbished pub with eleven ensuite rooms and three cottages, is part of the Exmoor Forest Estate, an organic traditional hill farm, producing native breed, grass-fed beef and lamb, and home to several hundred red deer.
In May 2021, the Inn was acquired by three brothers, Edward, Freddie & Alexander Greenall, who have since embarked on a full refurbishment to provide guests with accommodation and dining fitting for the 21st century traveller.
Welcoming and cosy, guests will find tucked away snugs with comfortable sofas to sink into, a bar full of friendly locals and farmers, and a beautiful dining room with soft armchairs next to wood burning stoves. Head Chef Ben Ogden cares deeply about quality sourcing and seasonality, the menu conveys a real sense of place - it is representative of Exmoor, its climate, its seasons, its altitude, its farming, its animals and its coast.
Food
The pub is an integral part of the Exmoor Forest Estate. The menu offers organic beef and lamb that has been farmed, finished and aged on the Exmoor Forest farm, fish from the Bideford day boats off the North Devon coast, just 8 miles from the pub, venison and other game from the surrounding 6000 acres of moorland, British cheeses and locally foraged mushrooms, plants, herbs and berries.
The kitchen garden on the farm supplies soft fruit and vegetables to the pub restaurant while Ben and his team regularly forage for seasonal treats such as wild garlic, sea purslane, sweet woodruff and pineapple weed, while local wild mushrooms are something of a house speciality.
Start with a generous serving of house sourdough with roasted yeast butter to start and a creamy hummus of yellow split peas from British growers Hodmedod’s served with crisp local grown crudites and meltingly tender slow cooked beef nuggets with homemade pickles or grilled Withycombe asparagus, Whitelake goats curd and wild garlic. There are pub classics, done well, like Middle white sausages and mash and expertly cooked local game; tender slices of Venison haunch are paired with salt baked beetroot, a paean to local ingredients, or braised North Devon cuttle fish, Cornish Earlies and rock samphire. For pudding, try English black fig and Somerset cider cake with clotted cream and a superb sticky hogweed pudding with milk ice cream, both of which confirm Ben’s commitment to finding the best ingredients and his capabilities at preparing them. Late Spring will see the addition of a new meat ageing chamber, charcuterie fridge, wood fired oven and asado grill.
Food is served every evening and is open for lunch Wednesday to Sunday. A full seven days a week offer will launch from 1st May.
Sleep
The Exmoor Forest Inn has recently undergone a total refurbishment and offers a choice of eleven newly renovated en-suite rooms, three holiday cottages adjacent to the pub, sleeping up to four guests and Limecombe cottage, sleeping up to 10 guests, which is in a remote, wild and unspoilt moorland location on the Exmoor Forest organic hill farm, on the edge of Simonsbath, and it is perfect for those wanting to immerse themselves in nature.
All rooms are individually and beautifully decorated, with pocket-sprung beds, deep baths and big showers with excellent water pressure. Each room has hanging space, storage and somewhere comfortable to sit.
Well behaved dogs are welcome in most of the guest rooms for a small charge.
The Farm
The pub is part of the Exmoor Forest Estate, a 6000-acre farm producing organic, grass-fed, traditional and native breed cattle and sheep, and red deer. The cattle and sheep are born, raised and eaten on one farm.
The farm runs two beef herds - one of purebred pedigree Galloway cattle and the other of crossbreeds produced from Aberdeen Angus or Shorthorn dominant cows. About 100 cattle a year are finished on the farm, including the surplus heifers (females) and steers (males) from the Galloway herd. At around 28-34 months of age, those cattle go to a tiny, local cottage abattoir in Combe Martin, which has the highest welfare standards, about 12 miles away, before returning to the pub for dry-aging and eating.
The farm runs a flock of 1200 Scottish Blackface ewes, a traditional breed that have thrived on the estate for generations. Half of the flock are put to Scottish Blackface rams to produce purebred lambs and half of which are put to Blueface Leicester rams to produce a Scotch Mule.
The wild red deer living on the estate are considerably larger than Scottish red deer. In the spring, the stags shed their antlers (known as horns on Exmoor) and then re-grow new ones, which start off with a furry surface (known as velvet) when the horns are growing. The ‘rut’ is the mating season in October, when the stags fight over the hinds and can be heard roaring loudly as they establish their territory.
The whole Exmoor Forest Estate is run with biodiversity, flora and fauna as the guiding lights. Three hundred acres of species-rich grassland and traditional hay meadows are managed traditionally, with no cutting until after 1 July, and grazed by native breeds. The estate has two farms, one at Simonsbath Barton, behind the pub on the edge of the village, and the other at Cornham Farm, a little further west on the Barnstaple Road.
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