Activities at Winscott Barton

Fishing - On the Farm and Lambing - Clay Pigeon Shooting - Play Area - Golf - Beaches
Water Divining - Wild Life

Wild Life

Especially for wildlife watchers and enthusiasts. we've built a bird and badger hide for observing woodpeckers, treecreepers, finches and nuthatchers among others.

Night Life

See the night sky as you may never have seen it before - a wondrous, and for many, unexpected array of stars unaffected and undimmed by light pollution. Equally fascinating is the earthbound spectacle of the nocturnal wildlife. In the right conditions your host will attempt to show you wild rabbits, badgers, owls and roe deer with a high powered spotlight, and even “call up” a fox within feet of you by making the sounds of other foxes- or rabbits and mice if Reynard is feeling hungry!

Fishing

Coarse Fishing;

Try fishing in our course fishing lakes - only a few minutes walk away - well stocked with thousands of fish, a mixture of Crucian, Common and Mirror Carp, Green Tench and Golden Rudd.
While you concentrate on the bigger Carp and Tench your children, on past experience, are likely to land a tiddler every 10 to 15 minutes on a good day, keeping them well entertained.
The lakes afford the angler beautiful views stretching south all the way to Dartmoor on a clear day. You may well be visited by wild ducks, geese and even Roe deer, while the two resident pairs of buzzards can often be seen circling overhead.

Deep Sea Fishing;

Over Bideford Bay on the Atlantic coast. Boat and tackle can be prearranged.

 

Estuary Fishing;

Fishing on the Taw and Torridge river estuaries. Boat and Tackle can be prearranged.

Course and Fly Fishing;

Available on numerous local resevoirs.

Clay Pigeon Shooting

Try your hand and eye at Clay Pigeon Shooting ,in the field adjacent to the house with views overlooking Clovelly Bay to Hartland and Lundy Island. Double trap on site; guns, cartridges and clays provided at only 30p per shot.

Play Area

The play area includes a whizzer roundabout - that spins relative to your weight; hairy for adults and teenagers but gentle with children - a double solid timber swing and rope, and a matching timber framed slide. Sheep and lambs are often in the play area impersonating lawn mowers and in the spring, the lambs can even be seen playing on the roundabout!

On the Farm

April;

Lambing takes place after the Easter period. Watch lambs being born or try your hand, and quite possibly your arm, at midwifery and bottle feed tame lambs.

May;

Lambs still being born.

June to July;

Sheep shearing, harvesting - hay and corn.

August to September;

Sheep and lamb injecting and foot trimming, and many other everyday tasks.

Water Divining

Firstly your host will teach you to walk across a plot of land with two pieces of wire, marking any drainpipe or natural fault.
Secondly, he will instruct you how to discern what it is underground that you have marked - whether it’s a stone drain, alkathene pipe, clay or asbestos pipe, plastic pipe or any other underground man-made structure.
You can do it - 99% success rate!

 

Golf

North Devon is home to numerous first rate golf courses, including the famous Royal North Devon Golf Club, the world's oldest links course, only a few miles away.
On site is a fun but very testing Pitch and Putt comprising three holes approached from six tees, therefore 18 in total - many over water.

Beaches

The North Devon coastline is justly renown as one of the most beautiful in the country - from the open sandy expanses of Westward Ho! Saunton Sands and Croyde (a surfer’s paradise) to the small, dramatically rocky coves of Bucks Mills, Welcombe and Brownsham, among many others.

The Difference at Winscott Barton