The Captain’s Cottage Blog

In between Brixham and Kingswear as you go along the South Coast Path is a 25m high tower called The Daymark.

Built in 1864 as a landmark for shipping, it sits in the middle of a farmers field, but is (of course!) visible from miles around, especially if you get the ferry from Brixham to Dartmouth.

This New Year’s we made a trip to see it a little closer up – not by walking the 8 miles from Brixham on the Coastal Path but by driving to the car park at Brownstone (just follow the signs for Coleton Fishacre National Trust property from the Brixham-Kingswear road).

The Daymark is quite a thing once you get close up, as you can see here – but walk a little further and you get to the Brownstone Battery and Coastal watch position, and some stunning coastal views.

You are also by this point rather close to Kingswear and Dartmouth, which is where we went for a really nice pub lunch at the Steam Packet pub as well

Definately a nice little trip out to consider adding to the list of things to do in and around Brixham during your stay.

We spent New Year down in Brixham at the end of 2024, and were blessed with some stunningly clear weather during our stay.

This inevitably resulted in a whole slew of photos of “the Bay” taken from our top bedroom balcony and also from along North View Road as we meandered back from the pub/restaurant/Breakwater walk.

We hope you like them – and have the opportunity (and the weather) to take some similar shots yourselves when you next stay with us in Brixham!

Another trip down to Brixham, just before Storm Darragh arrived! Thankfully the weather was pretty decent for our own out-of-season short break, and we managed to get out and about around Torbay as well this time.

Here’s a few photos from our trip to show how great Brixham and the bay looks even for a Winter break – there are even some shots of the Christmas Lights in town!

Any trip to Brixham wouldn’t be complete without a full English or two, and these are a couple of our favourites:

This is from The Guardhouse Cafe on Berry Head – you need to be mindful that they stop serving breakfast around 1130, and then have a 30 minute hiatus with no food service to swap over to the lunchtime ment… which does also include their legendary doorstep sandwiches, so even if you are a bit late for breakfast, thre is still an opportunity to get your daily fix of bacon that way too!

The Dilly Dally Tea room is now under new ownership as of Xmas 2024, but we’re hoping the new owners manage to carry on with breakfasts as good as this one, which we managed to get in just before the previous owners closed up shop at the start of December.

A very bold robin who we encountered on the South Coast Path walking round from Brixham to Fishcombe Cve and on to Broadsands.

This was the view of the harbour just before Storm Darragh hit the South West – we’ve never seen so many boats in harbour all at the same time!

As well as hhaving our own break, the other reason (or “excuse!”) for going to Brixham in December is of course to unpack and set up the Christmas Tree and decorations for our guests over the festive period.

Happy Christmas and New Year!

We’ve just discovered that there are (of course !!) a load of videos on YouTube which show off the best bits of Brixham and the surrounding area – so why not share a few of them here?!

Looking carefully at this video, we thinn Mr “Atomic Shrimp” must have been staying somewhere on the other side of North View Road – so while the view is very close to the one from the Captain’s Cottage, we’re still confident ours is even better !

This is one of our favourite walks – OK, maybe the first 1/3rd of it is from Berry Head round to Sharkham Point anyway, as after that we tend to head back into town to find ourselves a pub!

This one shows the town ( from 2023) and you can catch a couple of glimpses of The Captain’s Cottage in the background too.

We love the walk along the coast towards Paignton – Churston and Fishcombe Coves are truly stunning (even when the sun isn’t shining quite as brightly as in this video!), and are a great place to spot the occasional seal or two mooching around in the water watching the walkers amble by!

This summer in our annual trip to Brixham we managed to do something rather different – takea trip around the Fish Market.

The tours are arranged monthly during the summer, with the entry fees going to the Fishermens Benevolent Fund – a very worthy cause. You do also get breakfast at Rockfish too, which is rather welcome after a 6am start and a couple of hours standing in a very big fridge spent learning about how the beating heart of Brixham actually works!

We also of course managed to take advantage of the great weather, great food, and great views as well !

We also made a trip to the Buckfast Butterfly Farm and Otter Rescue – well worth a visit!

This little fellow was certainly pretty chilled to see us anyway!

This year we managed to squeeze in a week at the very end of August down in Brixham, and in the process discovered a few more local attractions.

For starters, did you know there’s a (rather excellent) vinyard within a few minutes drive (or a rather longer walk) of Brixham? Neither did we, but having discovered Sandridge Barton and their wine tasting tours we’re sure we’ll be going back !

They’ve also got a fabulour-looking restaurant onsite too, which we didn’t manage to visit – so there’s a lunch date in the countryside in our calendar for next time we are here as well.

We of course also did the walk along the Coast Path to Broadsands and onto Goodrington – it goes without saying that Fishcombe and Churston coves were lovely as ever this summer, and that we saw a few seals along the way too.

Later in the week we took a ferry across to Paignton harbour, and then completed the walk round to Torquay.

Paignton Harbour is a bit of a hidden gem around these parts, with a scenic (and very tidal) boat-filled harbour surrounded by a lot of really nice pubs and restaurants, so when the Brixham-Paignton-Torbay ferry is running (on its round-robin route – we suggest calling them to check which time it leave Brixham as their website is a bit confusing!) it’s very much worth the trip, and doubly so as it makes the walk to Torquay a lot shorter when you start in Paignton!

This section of the coast walk is much better in terms of being a hard-standing “path”, but as it snakes under, over and around the Dartmouth Steam Railway track it doesn’t skimp on the “ups and downs” – the result being a whole series of stunning views across Torbay.

We were also lucky enough to be crossing a bridge over the railway tracks when a steam train came past underneath!

And, of course, we had a few evenings out in Brixham’s many pubs and restaurants too!

We hope you’ll be able to enjoy some of these stunning views, and take some even better photos of your own when you next come to visit us down in Brixham!

We’ve been getting some great feedback about the Captains Cottage from our guests this year. If you flick through theguestbook in our lounge you’ll also be able to pick up some handy tips about places to visit around Brixham, and the best restaurants to try too!

A couple of the recent reviews stood out though, firstly this one which was sent to Luxury Coastal, our booking agent :

“We would like to personally thank Luxury Cottages and the owners of the Captains Cottage for a truly lovely stay at the property. The interior and setting were amazing. And the updates and instructions provided by the company and owners were really useful. Thank you also for complimentary wine and treats on arrival“

We also have an Instagram account, and one recent guest tagged us recently to leave this really nice comment:

We’re already pretty much full all through this summer, but there’s still availabillity for short breaks later in the year, so why not have a look at availability on Luxury Coastal’s site and see when you might be able to visit us down in Brixham this autumn too?

We always like to take advantage of at least one week in the summer to stay in Brixham ourselves, and 2022 was no different.

As well as all of our favourite haunts, this time we explored the area a little more, and found a couple of local gems to recommend visiting s part of your trip.

First up was Greenway – Agatha Christie’s summer residence on the banks of the Dart. It’s a lot more than “a house” – practically a stately home, and all preserved in the exact state it was in when she passed away complete with all of her writing materials, notes and the fax machine she sent manuscripts to her publisher on – the life of one of the world’s most famous authors preserved in aspic.

The house itself would be worth a visit even if it wasn’t for the Agatha Christie connections, and also has a huge amount of beautifully landscaped gardens to explore too – so next time you see that “Greenway” brown sign on the way into Brixham just before the railway, you now know what it is for!

Man Sands Beach was our other great find – a lovely secluded and sandy cove that you can find down a (steep and unpaved) turnoff on the road from Higher Brixham to Kingswear

Definately one to go back to with a picnic, bathers and beach towels next year!

Of course, we also spent plenty of time around Brixham, and took a few photos along the way too..

And, of course, we took full advantage of the view of Brixham Harbour from our balcony every time we could!

With our original managing agent (Brixham Holiday Homes) having been taken over by a huge national agency, we’ll be using a new local company from November 1st this year to manage bookings for The Captains Cottage – Luxury Coastal.

Luxury Coastal are a local agency who specalise in managing (what we think is) a sensibly-sized portfolio of luxury properties in the South West, as well as all working and living in the area too. The team at Luxury Coastal have really impressed us with their personal support, local expertise and knowledge – they certainly know the South West holiday market inside out, with most of the team having worked for many of the other agencies in their time too!

We’ve also conscious that “holiday rental” properties have become a bit of a contentious topic in some parts of the country in recent years, and so it’s always been really important to us that we make sure The Captains Cottage is contributing positively to Brixham and the local community.

Using local businesses based in the South West, employing people who live and have grown up in the area to market and manage our property has always been part of that plan, and so we’re really pleased to now be able to work with Luxury Coastal going forward.

(They’ve also taken a whole set of great new photos of The Captains Cottage too – you’ll see them on our new “Gallery” page as well as their own website!)