Devon

Best British Days Out (The Times, June 2007)

CREAM TEA @ Southern Cross tearoom
It's got to be Devon? clotted-cream teas were born in Tavistock in 997, when the locals helped monks rebuild the Benedictine abbey and were repaid with bread, clotted cream and strawberry preserves. And it's got to be Newton Poppleford, near Sidmouth, where Southern Cross tearoom serves up 4oz dollops of Dartmoor-grazed Guernsey-cow clotted cream that would fur the arteries of the friskiest gym junkie. The setting is ideal, with teas served either in the 500-year-old thatched longhouse or in the walled garden surrounded by magnolias and laburnum. Good cod (23): no way to treat a newspaper £4.25; 01395 568439, www.southerncrossguesthouse.co.uk