Dartmoor National Park

Dartmoor is a granite dome that has been weathering for a very long time, and the tors are what is left: stacks of stone stripped of their softer surroundings, standing on otherwise bare skyline. Haytor is the easy one, twenty minutes from a road. Hound Tor and Bellever are quieter. Between the tors lies blanket bog, several metres deep in places, holding water that feeds the Dart, the Teign and the Tavy, and this is the ground that makes Dartmoor navigationally serious. The prehistoric record is exceptional - hut circles, stone rows and the reconstructed village at Grimspound are visible without hunting for them. Wistman's Wood, a small stunted oak wood grown over boulders and hung with moss, is the strangest thing on the moor and is now fenced from entry to let it recover.

What you actually see

• Haytor and Hound Tor - granite stacks with the moor spread below.
• Wistman's Wood - a dwarf oak wood on mossy boulders, viewed from the path.
• Grimspound - a Bronze Age settlement of hut circles inside a stone wall.
• Dartmoor ponies - hardy free-roaming stock across the commons.

When to go

May to September for the driest ground and longest days. Spring brings the clearest air; late summer adds heather and whortleberries. Firing ranges in the north of the moor close on published days, so check before planning a route there. Fog can arrive in any season within minutes.

Honest expectations

This is the wettest and boggiest of the southern moors, and paths marked on maps often vanish into peat. Navigation by map and compass is a real requirement, not a formality. Haytor's car parks fill by ten on sunny days. Wistman's Wood is smaller than photographs suggest and can no longer be walked into.

Nearby

Exeter's cathedral lies northeast, and the south Devon coast is under an hour away.