Guardhouse Café

Lucy and Alex have run the café in the 1795 guardhouse of Berry Head's Napoleonic fort since 2014, inside a national nature reserve that is also a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a scheduled monument — Britain's shortest, highest lighthouse stands a few steps away, and one of the country's most important greater horseshoe bat colonies roosts below. The kitchen keeps it local: Bays beer from Paignton, Torquay-roasted coffee, Brixham fish, and in summer ice cream sold off a retro bicycle. Muddy boots and dogs are welcome by design. The reserve is council-owned; the café is independently run and nobody's but its own.