A wizard weekend at Bovey Castle

We motored through the lodge gates of the castle in a 4x4, and were wafted up the drive to the carriage sweep, dominated by a large fountain with a statue of a lady in a diaphanous bikini. The car deposited us at the huge oaken-doored entrance where we were scooped up by an army of flunkeys clad in matching green tweed plus-twos, expertly trained to cater to our every, unexpressed, whim. You would be forgiven for the impression that we'd landed in the middle of ITV's period drama

Yes, Bovey Castle, a 103-year-old crenellated pile set in the middle of the 360 square miles of Dartmoor National Park, is luxurious, and, yes, it has a huge staff of charming and experienced butlers, sommeliers, chambermaids and nannies, but this isn't Downton Abbey. Because it's something much better: it's Hogwarts.

I realised this when I went to ask at reception about a spa treatment. They had a rather inexpertly realised sculpture of a very small owl on their desk and it struck an odd note because everything at Bovey is so tasteful and expensive. This fluffy blob was something you'd win in a funfair – grey feathers sticking out all over and unrealistic gobstopper glass eyes. I gave it a disdainful sneer and turned to the receptionist. As I did so, the sculpture swivelled its head and blinked at me and I shrieked: this was, in fact, a live white-faced scops owl, sitting on a tiny pedestal four inches from my face.

Guinevere, for that is her name, is not the only bird who's at home in Bovey Castle. Martin Whitely, the local falconer, does daily displays with his birds of prey. If the weather's good, he makes his gigantic owl, Merlin, hop across the lawn, his Harris hawks, Gawain and Hector, swoop over the terraces and perch on the window sills of the first-floor bedrooms, and his exquisite falcon, Galahad, slice swift, elegant arcs through the air by the lake. If it's rainy, the birds flap up and down the long, stone corridors of the castle.

Falconry is not the only near-obsolete sport offered at Bovey (a Quidditch pitch may well be awaiting planning permission as I write). The activities co-ordinator, Craig Loveday, who brews a mean sloe gin and takes care of the estate's ferrets, Frosty, Tallulah and Violet, and organises ferret racing (with enthusiastic side-betting for his hedge-funder spectators) also initiated me into the pleasures of archery. Feeling like Maid Marian, I planted myself side-on to the target, donned a strangely glamorous three-fingered gauntlet and an arm protector and proceeded to miss the huge bull's-eye for
an hour and about a hundred arrows. Craig also encouraged me to aim at, and miss, a foam-rubber fox, goat and bull, as well as a large scarecrow. I should have pretended that the scarecrow was an escaped convict from the 19th century, for Princetown Prison is only 20 minutes' drive away across Dartmoor, and a desperate Victorian murderer could easily have staggered across the boggy wastes to fall victim to my deadly assassin's dart.

In fiction, if not in practice, such villains have indeed tried to penetrate Bovey Castle, for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is said to have visited the area and based Baskerville Hall on the castle, and his deranged convict Selden on Princetown's miserable inhabitants. We saw no gigantic spectral hound on our own misty, marshy tour of the moors, but even in broad daylight, they, and the grim grey mass of the prison's walls, were dauntingly impressive. All the more so because I had spent a few minutes chatting in the entrance lobby with two of the staff, who regaled me with stories of haunted roads,
mysterious black beasts and other spooky happenings on Dartmoor.

There may well be ghosts at Bovey; there is something that looks a lot like an astrolabe, and there is certainly an elf. The hotel's delightful manager, Federico Aresti, has the look of a sorcerer about his dark Latin face, thick slanting eyebrows, tiny beard and immaculate dark suit. Come Christmas, though, he changes into a green costume with pointy shoes and a tall hat and transports Father Christmas and a huge sack of presents in a sleigh to his guests, waiting in the candlelit dusk in one of the lounges.

There's such magic about the place, I wouldn't be surprised if, come midnight on Christmas Eve, those owls started to talk.