South Hams

The sheer range of self-catering cottages on offer in South Hams tells you a lot about the place itself. This is a stretch of Devon coastline and countryside where old farm buildings have quietly become homes, and where the pace of life has always run alongside the working land and sea rather than against it. With 258 cottages listed, from The Granary House and The Hayloft to The Courtyard and The Figgery, you get a real sense of an area built around agriculture and estuaries that has adapted its buildings for visitors without losing what made them useful in the first place.

Many of these properties started life as something else entirely - a barn, a stable block, an outbuilding attached to a larger farmhouse. The Garden Barn and The Lawns suggest settings with room to breathe, gardens and grounds rather than tight village terraces, while names like The Courtlands Collection and The Lodge point to properties that come as part of a wider group, often clustered around a main house or shared grounds. This mix means South Hams suits people who want a self-contained base with genuine space around them, whether that is a couple looking for a quiet retreat or a family wanting somewhere to sprawl.

South Hams itself is defined by its coastline and its creeks - a landscape of estuaries, small harbours and steep-sided valleys that run down to the sea. It is the kind of area where you might spend a morning on the water and an afternoon walking coastal paths or pottering around a market town, and the accommodation reflects that flexibility. A converted granary or hayloft works just as well as a base for exploring the coast on foot as it does for simply staying put and enjoying the garden.

Days here tend to divide between the water and the land. Sailing, kayaking and simply watching the tide move through the creeks are all part of the appeal, alongside walking routes that take in cliffs, farmland and the villages tucked into the folds of the coastline. It is an area that rewards slow exploration rather than a packed itinerary, and having a cottage with its own outdoor space, like The Lawns or The Garden Barn, makes it easy to build in that kind of unhurried rhythm.