Dartmoor Holidays

Holiday in Dartmoor National Park for raw and rugged beauty as far as the eye can see and as far as your legs can take you. Dartmoor offers over 360 square miles of exploration, bogs, granite tors, ancient archaeology, mythology and wild moorland. It’s a popular choice for hiking holidays, adventure holidays and bird-watching holidays. While camping is allowed on Dartmoor, under certain guidelines, wild camping holidays aren’t for everybody. Thankfully there are plenty of villages and towns strewn across the park and at its outskirts, so the traveller in search of a little more luxury needn’t go short. You can find self-catering holiday cottages, bed and breakfasts, traditional inns and even cheap hotels in Dartmoor towns such as Ashburton, Buckfastleigh, Chagford, Christow, Horrabridge, Moretonhampstead, Okehampton and Yelverton. Backpacking holidaymakers and other budget travellers would do well to search out Princetown with its cheap accommodation.

 

Dartmoor’s undulating and rocky scenery attracts lovers of hill-walking, and its many peaks (the highest of which is High Willhays), provide incredible views as well as occasional sites of interest, such as Brentor Church, which sits atop a rocky tor 344 metres above sea level. Dotted across the moors are numerous prehistoric remains, dating back to the late Neolothic and early Bronze Age. These take the form of standing stones (menhirs), stone circles and kistvaens (stone tombs). Perhaps the most significant of these are Drizzlecombe, Merrivale, and Yellowmead Down, but there are many more besides, as well as around 5,000 hut circles. Ancient history turns to mythology; ghost stories abound, linked with locations such as the ancient burial site Childe’s Tomb, Jay’s Grave and Bowerman’s Nose. Near Two Bridges, the ‘hairy hands’ are reputed to attack passers-by. This moody, atmospheric moor was, after all, the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.

 

A Dartmoor holiday is all about the natural world; so whether you’re bird watching for buzzard, Ring Ouzel, Peregrine Falcon, Curlew and Nightjars or tracking down the elusive and mythological wild cats that have been reported, there’s stacks to see. Stacks to do as well: the rocky tors lend themselves to rock climbing holidays (visitors in early May could even enrol in hiking the Ten Tors Challenge), whitewater canoeing and kayaking on the River Dart, on or off-road cycling or indulging in the more relaxing holiday pursuit of angling.