I returned to the Devon holiday cottage of my childhood to feel close to my departed dad
Family holidays as a child were often to far-flung spots, thanks to my dad’s job as cabin crew for British Airways. We were lucky enough to stay in a fancy hotel near Sydney Harbour, explore the high-rise mecca of Hong Kong and play on the beach in Barbados. But it was a little upside-down cottage in Tuckenhay, Devon, that we stayed in as a family – my mum, dad, older brother Nicholas and me – in the early 1980s, that has long been imprinted in my memory. And, since losing my beloved dad in November 2022, its significance has grown all the more great.
Dad was not one for seeing logistics as a challenge. Our trips away were last-minute dashes through the airport to the plane after he’d managed to secure us empty seats through his staff travel allocation. As a result, four tiny holiday cottages – two on the top of a hill and two below them – beside a derelict paper mill in deepest, darkest Devonian countryside, was not going to stop him making a holiday out of it. Mum thinks he saw the Tuckenhay Mill advertised in the British Airways staff newspaper, or was told about it by a colleague. Either way, with no real knowledge of what awaited, he took their word for it and off we drove from our home in Croydon.
Our first visit was in the February half term of 1983. I was five and a half, and my brother nearly eight – yet I still remember the excitement of the car revving up the steep driveway and pulling up outside the small cottage door. Nicholas and I got out and ran to it. I’d never been in a house where the bedrooms were downstairs and the novelty, for me, was palpable levels of excitement.
Nicholas and I shared a room. One window looked onto the stoney car park and the other out over the mill to the hills. We had to go upstairs for breakfast – which blew my five-year-old mind – climbing a steep staircase to the lounge and the small kitchen off it. A little hamper was left for guests, with essentials like milk, bread and marmalade, but mum and dad made sure we had a weekly shop with all the comforts of home, too.
We spent the holiday exploring pretty neighbouring villages and verdant countryside. We’d go to nearby Totnes, a 10-minute drive, to wander the bustling market, and visit the narrow lanes of Buckfast. At the cottage, we’d play Pooh Sticks on the Postman Pat-style bridge, dropping twigs into the stream below and running to the other side to see them float by. There was a rope swing and lovely little walks down by the creek. It was idyllic. We returned the following two years.
During the last 18 months of Dad’s life, he succumbed to dementia and moved into care near our family home in Somerset. It was hard seeing him, once bursting with life, turn into a shadow of himself, and was painfully hard when he passed away, knowing that was my time with him over.
I began to feel an increasing need to be somewhere that allowed me a glimpse of the “old” Dad – the one who shared his love of travel with us, was always busy doing something, and the one I was already finding so hard to recollect. Now with my own family – partner Jonjo, and twin boys, Ted and George – I knew the time was right to return to the “upside down” cottage.
As we wound our way along sinuous country roads towards Tuckenhay, it all felt comfortingly familiar – and by the time we turned left at the little bridge at the Waterman’s Arms pub, a mile from the mill, I was overcome with it. We ascended the driveway, just as I remembered it, and there, with its little blue door was 4 Castle Cottage. Knowing dad had once been in the very same place, it was as if, just for a moment, I had jolted back 40 years. I slotted the key into the door, and there it was: the place I’d found so enchanting, just the same, but for a gentle modern zhuzh.
I discovered that the cottages are still owned by the same couple, Peter and Kay Wheeler, as they had been all those years ago – and that since then, they have lovingly laboured on, restoring the whole site to create 22 properties (sleeping from two to 11 people), updating all the original buildings and adding a large outdoor pool and hot tub, two indoor pools, a tennis court, a football pitch, a children’s playground, a badminton hall and gym. This sounds major, but strangely, the new additions somehow feel as though they’ve been there all along. The whole place still feels homely, and you’ll occasionally still see Peter, now an effervescent octogenarian, wandering the grounds making sure everyone is having a lovely time.
And we did. The cottage was as homely as ever: with cots, highchairs and a wooden stair gate handmade by one of the mill team, and a lovely welcome pack with all the essentials, including milk, tea and biscuits. We took the boys to the bridge and threw sticks in the flowing water, had the pool all to ourselves for an hour, and even managed some “just the two of us” time rallying in the badminton hall while the twins busied themselves with a playhouse in the corner.
It was joyous. We walked alongside the mill’s leat to look at the views and find the tree from which the rope swing once hung, and through the grounds to the creak to watch the water trickle over the rocks. So much time had passed, but there were moments when it felt like no time at all.
I was nervous, however, that we might return and I might not feel dad’s presence – or that the hard memories of the past couple of years might have erased the joy of the older ones. But I needn’t have worried. They elevated each other. I felt warm knowing I’d shared this space with my dad, and encouraged that I was creating new memories. Now, we plan to start our own tradition, returning year after year with our little gang – and feeling that, somehow, my dad is there with us too.
Kate Leahy was a guest of Tuckenhay Mill (01803 732624), where a week’s stay at 4 Castle Cottage costs from £429 (sleeps four).
