Cream teas and the Tarka trail.... a wealth of holiday potential exists in Devon and Cornwall, as Mandi Millar discovered when she headed into the west.

That's how we felt about our first trip to England's 'burry' West Country - land of Thomas Hardy, Daphne du Maurier, Poldark, Arthurian legend, cream teas and the adorable Mowzer. The danger was, though that it had swirled to such romantic proportions in our imaginations that its rugged coastline and pastoral perfection might never fulfil the reality.

Anyway, it wasn't until the advent of the low cost airlines that we actually got around to finding out. Before this the area was prohibitively awkward to reach - either a buttock-battering jaunt the length of England from the Scottish ports or an expensive fly-drive option from London.

But thanks to Flyte's new connection, this evocatively beautiful part of the UK has at last been opened up to budget travellers like us. So, fifty quid and an hour later, we were touching down in the quaintly-named Exeter 'International' Airport.

These are afternoon flights so you're really looking at a three-night option to make it worth your while and, because we wanted to see as much of the scenery as we could on our maiden sortie, we hired a car from Avis at the airport. Couldn't be handier.

A word of warning though - you'll need a big scale map to find a lot of the gorgeous little hideaways nestling amidst a mad fuse box of ridiculously narrow roads.

But apart from the hide-and-seek your destinations might play, there's something intrinsically English about this countryside. We just don't have those vistas - the Norman-style square towers of village churches poking up from the canvas of eye-brow thatched cottages, Red Dragon pubs and wonderfully named places like Black Dog, Choriton Fitzpaine and Nymet Tracey.

However, when it comes to accommodation, there's an embarrassment of choice - Google threw up over 600,000 sites - but we found Discover Devon (www.discoverdevon.co.uk) to offer the most comprehensive information.

And ultimately we opted for the award-winning Bugle Rocks B&B at Battisborough Cross near Holbeton (www.buglerocks.co.uk). It's about 40 miles from Exeter and about 15 from Plymouth.

Its website blurb made it an instant winner - a coach house and stables converted from what was formerly Lord Mildmay's estate - clinging to the crags of the south Devon coast and overlooking a smugglers' cove, if ever I saw one.

And if you're looking to get away from it all, this is the place for you - it certainly ticked all the boxes for owners Jan and Nick, who had ten properties to view when they decided to up sticks for a new life among the bushes. Bugle Rocks was their third instruction and they didn't bother with any more.

It was the peace and quiet that sold it to them - technically you're even out of mobile phone range (though 100 yards up the road gets you back on) so it's easy to see why our fellow guests thought this place was 'a real find'. And the beautifully styled rooms in olde worlde pine and New England simplicity only added to the package.

It was a great base too for exploring - not that you've to go far to get a real flavour of the West Country. Mothecombe is about a mile away - a Hardy-esque village of thatched cottages overlooking a sheltered sandy cove, reached through the Fleet Estate via a rhododendron tunnel down the hillside. Exquisite.

The Dartmoor National Park is just nine miles away and Plymouth, with its historic Hoe and Barbican and fabulous aquarium, is also about 20 minutes..

Then there's the old fishing villages of Noss Mayo and Newton Ferrers with their higgledy-piggledy cottages clinging to the hillsides, and fishing boats that rise and fall with the tide. And for those who want to sample life in the saddle, you can even cycle the Tarka (as in the otter) Trail.

All this is on your doorstep.