Mazzard Farm Holiday Cottages, Ottery St Mary, Devon

We've just got back from a lovely little break at Mazzard Farm, near Ottery St Mary in Devon. We visited in January, so it was pretty cold, but we still had a great time. Harry was just 3 and Mia 8 months. I've put some notes together in case anyone reading this was thinking about a stay there.

The Cottage

We stayed in Medlar Cottage, which sleeps 4 and is one of six cottages available. The cottage was lovely, nice and warm with everything that we needed. We were also able to borrow some of the bulkier baby equipment like a steriliser, baby monitor, potty and changing mat, so that saved us some space in the car.

Our favourite thing about Medlar Cottage was that it had large double doors leading out onto the main courtyard. The courtyard is closed to vehicles and we were more than happy to let Harry run around outside while we were able to keep an eye on him from inside (it was pretty cold!).

Around the farm

Mazzard Farm isn't a working farm (although there are plenty in the area). The cottages are situated around a central courtyard (they don't all have direct access to the courtyard but it's only a short walk around), with gardens, an orchard and a large area of woodland to explore. There are some chickens and guinea pigs to feed and plenty of space to play outside with two play areas. On one side of the courtyard was a garage which was full of outdoor toys and ride-ons. Harry was particularly taken with a digger in the garage, and he spent a lot of time trying to transfer pinecones from the floor into the trailer of a tractor, then driving the tractor around outside. There were also toys and DVDs which you could borrow to take back to the cottage, which we appreciated very much on a couple of rainy afternoons when Mia was asleep and Harry couldn't play outside. The phone reception wasn't good, but the free wi-fi meant that we weren't completely cut off, quite sad how we've become so used to our internet access now that it would be hard to do without it!

Our last day was a bit rainy, but we hadn't really had chance to explore the outside areas so I stuck Harry into his wellies and we went out for a walk. Sometimes it's nice for us to spend some time together, just the two of us. We followed a little path out into the woods. Harry is a reluctant walker, so I wasn't sure how far we would get, but as usual, when he wants to walk he can go for quite a distance and we had a lovely long walk. At the bottom of the hill we found a choice of bridges across a small stream. I let Harry choose, and luckily he chose the one with the netting around the edges! We've not really walked out much in the forest before with him because of the difficulties in taking pushchairs about, so this is definitely something to do with him again when not encumbered by a baby.

Local area attractions that we enjoyed

We tend to take holidays out of season, and unfortunately as we have discovered in the past many attractions do close or have limited opening in the winter. There were a couple of places that we would have liked to visit which were not open. However one thing about Mazzard Farm was that there were so many things to do in the local area that if we had visited in peak season I think that we would have been spoiled for choice!

We enjoyed a morning at Escot, which is open all year round. It is really an outdoor attraction, so best saved for a dry day, although there is a large indoor play barn for little ones. We were also lucky enough with the weather to be able to spend some time on Sidmouth Beach. The tide was in so it wasn't as sandy as we had hoped, but we are used to pebbly beaches down here and Harry was perfectly happy. It was also nice to walk along the seafront with the pushchair and Harry on his scooter.

We visited the Donkey Sanctuary, which was very well run with plenty of opportunities to meet the donkeys. A couple of rainy hours were spent at the Playdome indoor soft play centre, which both little ones enjoyed very much.

I'd fully recomment Mazzard Farm for a family holiday. For lots more information about their cottages and the facilities, do see their excellent website.

Disclaimer - this was a review stay, however it was for a separate travel review website and I was under no obligation to post about it on my own blog.