Sustainability, at its most persuasive, tastes of something. At
The Pig at Combe it tastes of just-cut chard, Otter Valley lamb and herbs still warm from the greenhouse, and in 2024 that flavour carried the Devon house to a Finalist place for Best Sustainable Hotel of the Year (Europe) at the
2024 Travelling for Business Awards.
The hotel occupies a glorious Elizabethan manor folded into the Otter Valley in East Devon, its honeyed facade presiding over meadows, ancient trees and gardens that work for their living. The Pig collection's aesthetic, faded grandeur, roaring fires, potting-shed spa treatments, mismatched armchairs that invite a second glass, fills the house, but the operational heart beats in the kitchen garden, whose beds, fruit cages and glasshouses set the menu each morning.
What the garden cannot provide, the neighbourhood must: the group's defining 25-mile menu sources virtually everything else from a tight web of Devon farmers, fishermen, foragers and makers, collapsing food miles while anchoring the hotel in its local economy. Seasonality is not curated here, it is enforced by geography, and waste is designed out at the planning stage rather than offset after the fact. The result is environmental practice guests experience as pleasure, plates that could not have been served anywhere else on earth.
That authenticity, plus the deep quiet of the valley within practical reach of the M5 and mainline rail, has made Combe a favoured setting for away-days and retreats where organisations want their sustainability values on the table, literally.
The 2024 judges ranked it among Europe's finest, in a shortlist won by Hotel Valsana alongside Borgo Pignano, Cas Gasi and Svart, with the group doubly honoured through The Pig at Harlyn Bay's UK Hotel shortlisting.
Devon rewards the hotel's localism with extraordinary range. The 25-mile circle around Combe takes in coastal day-boats, cider orchards, artisan dairies and game from neighbouring estates, a larder most restaurants would kill for, and the kitchen's job becomes editing rather than sourcing. Guests taste the geography course by course, then walk it the next morning on the valley paths, sustainability rendered as sense of place.
The
Travelling for Business Awards reward substance over slogans, and The Pig at Combe's 2024 recognition celebrated a philosophy you can eat, with next season's beds already sown.
