Dartmoor

Dartmoor contains the largest concentration of Bronze Age remains anywhere in the United Kingdom. There may be as many as 5,000 hut circles across the moor, the foundations of round houses where families lived for centuries before the climate turned, the temperature dropped by around one degree, and high Dartmoor was largely abandoned around 1000 BC. Grimspound, a walled settlement of 24 stone house foundations from roughly 3,000 years ago, is still clearly visible near Hameldown Tor. Conan Doyle used it in The Hound of the Baskervilles as the hiding place on the moor. He first heard the legend of Dartmoor’s spectral hounds in March 1901 while on a golfing holiday in Norfolk, and within days had come down to see the moor himself.

That sequence of facts, ancient settlement, Victorian fiction, bleak landscape, is a reasonable introduction to what Dartmoor actually is. A working national park of around 954 square kilometres in Devon, with living farms and villages at its edges, an active military training zone in its northern quarter (check schedules before walking there), and a particular atmospheric quality that is hard to replicate anywhere else in England.

What to See

Haytor Rocks is the most accessible of Dartmoor’s granite tors and a reasonable first stop. The car park is well-signposted off the B3387 and the walk to the top is 20 minutes. Views extend across the full width of the moor on a clear day. The Haytor Granite Tramway nearby is almost always overlooked: a 19th-century quarry railway with stone rails, still largely intact, that carried granite down to the Stover Canal. Walk the line north from Haytor and you find yourself alone with something genuinely peculiar, iron-flanged stone rails running across open moorland.

Hound Tor is better than Haytor for atmosphere and sees fewer visitors. Just below it is the remains of a medieval abandoned village, complete with longhouse foundations. The village was deserted in the 14th century, most likely a combination of plague and the same climatic deterioration that had driven off the Bronze Age occupants two millennia earlier. Nothing about Dartmoor is optimistic.

Merrivale on the western moor has two parallel stone avenues (processional rows) from around 2000 BC, plus a stone circle and a menhir, all within a short walk of each other. Nobody is quite sure what the avenues were for. They are on a different scale to Stonehenge but the isolation here is complete, you will likely have the site to yourself.

Widecombe-in-the-Moor is the village people picture when they think of Dartmoor: a 14th-century church known as the Cathedral of the Moor, a National Trust village green, and tea rooms. It gets crowded in summer. The annual Widecombe Fair in September brings in significant numbers and is genuinely worth seeing if you can tolerate crowds for one day.

The Warren House Inn on the B3212 between Moretonhampstead and Princetown claims to have the longest-burning fire in England, allegedly lit in 1845 and never extinguished. Whether that is precisely true or not, the pub sits at 434 metres on open moorland and is one of the most isolated licensed premises in England. Worth stopping at regardless.

Where to Eat

The Chagford Inn, Chagford: Chagford is a stannary town, historically one of the four Dartmoor towns where tin was assayed and taxed, and the Chagford Inn has become one of the better dining destinations in Devon. It earned a place in the Estrella Damm Top 100 Gastropubs 2026 and Food Drink Devon’s Best Pub award two years running. The menu follows the seasons and uses local produce without making a performance of it. Book ahead for dinner; lunch is more relaxed.

Two Bridges Hotel Restaurant: The hotel sits at the confluence of the East and West Dart rivers and has been feeding walkers for over a century. The restaurant holds two AA Rosettes and the focus is Devon produce: venison from the moor, fish from Brixham, local cheeses. The setting, Victorian hotel, open log fire, moorland visible through every window, is exactly right for a cold evening after a long walk.

Gidleigh Park: A Michelin-starred restaurant inside a luxury country house hotel near Chagford, set in 107 acres above the Teign Valley. The tasting menu is serious cooking from a kitchen that treats the surrounding landscape as its larder. Expensive, but if you are going to do one special-occasion dinner in Devon, this is the argument for making it here.

East Dart Inn, Postbridge: A coaching inn next to Dartmoor’s famous clapper bridge (flat slabs of granite across the East Dart River, probably medieval). Refurbished in recent years while keeping the original fabric. Good pub food, good ales, and a friendly crowd of walkers who have been on the moor since early morning. The clapper bridge is a five-minute walk from the door.

Where to Stay

Two Bridges Hotel: Central to the moor, comfortable, and the West Dart River runs past the garden. Prices for a room with dinner typically start around £180-220 per night per person. Worth it if walking is your main purpose, the location means you can be on the open moor within ten minutes of leaving the front door.

Gidleigh Park: The rooms match the restaurant in quality and price. Expect to pay £400-600 per room per night at the lower end, more for the larger suites. The grounds and the kitchen garden alone justify an afternoon’s exploration.

Self-catering cottages: The most practical option for a longer stay. A number of rental cottages sit on or near the moor, some with direct access to open moorland from the door. Bovey Tracey (on the eastern edge) and Tavistock (western edge) both have a reasonable range. The advantage over hotels is cooking your own dinner after a wet day, a more appealing proposition than it sounds when the weather has been properly Dartmoor.

Wild camping: Dartmoor is one of the few places in England where wild camping is legally permitted on open moorland, outside enclosed land. The right has specific rules (you must move on every two or three nights, camp more than 100 metres from roads and walls, leave no trace). The experience of a night on the moor, fog rolling in at dusk, complete silence by 10pm, is one that is hard to replicate anywhere else in England.

Getting There and Around

The nearest major city is Exeter (30-40 minutes to the eastern edge of the moor). Plymouth gives access to the western and southern areas. There is no practical public transport network within the moor itself outside summer weekends, when the Haytor Hoppa bus runs from Newton Abbot and Exeter. A car is the honest answer for most of the year.

Fuel stations inside the park are sparse. Fill up before you head in if you are doing a long circuit.

Practical Notes

Weather changes fast and without warning on high Dartmoor. A clear morning can become low cloud, driving rain, and zero visibility on the tors by midday. OS map and compass navigation skills (or a downloaded offline map) are not optional if you are heading off marked paths. This is not exaggeration: people get into serious difficulty on Dartmoor every year.

The northern military ranges (Okehampton and Merrivale ranges) are closed when red flags or lights are flying. The Dartmoor National Park Authority publishes firing schedules online and by phone. The paths through these areas are popular and fine to use outside firing times, Cranmere Pool in the centre of the northern moor is only accessible via these paths and is a traditional Dartmoor letterbox destination.

Dartmoor ponies are wild animals, not friendly ponies waiting to be patted. Feeding them is illegal under national park byelaws. They graze across the open moor and will approach cars at Haytor car park out of habit; that habit is the problem, not a reason to encourage it further.