Best Scenic Place in Devon and Torbay, England - Map and Reviews

Heddon Valley lies within Exmoor National Park on the north Devon coast, sheltered between high wooded hillsides that fall steeply towards the Bristol Channel. It is one of the most beautiful and unspoiled small valleys in southwest England, a place where ancient oak woodland, clear rivers and dramatic coastal scenery combine within a compact landscape that rewards exploration on foot. The valley follows the course of the River Heddon as it descends from the Exmoor plateau through dense sessile oak woodland before meeting the sea at Heddon's Mouth, a secluded rocky cove accessible only on foot. The oak woodland clothing the valley sides is ancient and ecologically rich, a remnant of the native woodland that once covered much of this coastline. The trees support an intricate community of lichens, mosses and ferns that flourish in the valley's moist, sheltered microclimate, and the dappled light through the oak canopy creates an atmosphere of genuine wildness even in high summer. The National Trust manages most of the valley and has developed a network of well-maintained footpaths that allow walkers to explore at their own pace. The main valley walk follows the River Heddon downstream from the car park at Heddon's Gate, passing through old coppiced woodland and across wooden footbridges to reach the shore. The round trip to Heddon's Mouth and back takes around two hours at a comfortable pace and is suitable for most walkers. More ambitious walkers can continue from the valley along sections of the South West Coast Path, which runs along the clifftop above. The coastal section between Heddon's Mouth and Combe Martin to the east, or toward Lynton to the west, is among the most dramatic walking on the entire South West Coast Path. The cliffs here are among the highest on the English coast, and the views across the Bristol Channel towards South Wales can be exceptional on a clear day. The Hunter's Inn, a Victorian hunting lodge converted to a hotel and pub, sits at the valley bottom near the car park and provides welcome refreshments after a walk. A small population of fallow deer can sometimes be spotted in the woodland, and kingfishers have been recorded along the river. The valley also provides habitat for pied flycatchers, wood warblers and other summer migrants that arrive to breed in the oak woodland. Heddon Valley is close to the twin towns of Lynton and Lynmouth, which together offer the extraordinary cliff railway, several good cafés and excellent access to the broader Exmoor National Park landscape.

Ilfracombe is the principal seaside resort of the north Devon coast, a Victorian town of considerable character built into the dramatic cliffs and valleys of the Bristol Channel coast whose combination of the historic harbour, the Tunnels Beaches carved from the cliff by Victorian entrepreneurs, the Damien Hirst sculpture Verity on the harbour pier and the dramatic coastal scenery of the surrounding cliffs creates a destination of considerable variety and interest. The town has reinvented itself in recent decades as an arts destination and the contemporary cultural activity complements the Victorian heritage. The Tunnels Beaches at Ilfracombe are one of the most unusual visitor attractions on the Devon coast, a series of hand-cut tunnels through the cliff rock created in the 1820s to provide access to a series of natural tidal bathing pools on the sheltered side of the headland, with the pools divided by a low wall to provide separate male and female bathing in the Victorian propriety that governed public bathing at the time. The tunnels are still used and the tidal pools provide excellent natural bathing in a setting of considerable historical and geological interest. The Verity sculpture by Damien Hirst, a 20-metre bronze of a pregnant woman holding scales and a sword on the harbour pier, has become one of the most talked-about and most controversial pieces of public art in Devon and has contributed substantially to Ilfracombe's profile as an arts destination. The sculpture dominates the harbour entrance and provides an immediately striking introduction to a town of considerable character.

Clovelly on the north Devon coast is the most dramatically picturesque fishing village in England, a settlement of whitewashed cottages cascading down an impossibly steep cobbled street to a small harbour below the great cliffs of the North Devon coast whose combination of the extraordinary topography, the complete absence of motor traffic and the genuinely historic character of the buildings creates one of the most visited and most consistently admired small coastal communities in Britain. The village is privately owned by the Asquiths of Clovelly and has been maintained in its historic character with exceptional care over several generations. The main street of Clovelly, the Up-along and Down-along as the villagers call it, descends approximately 120 metres from the clifftop to the harbour below in a series of cobbled steps and narrow paths too steep for wheeled vehicles. Goods are carried by sledge to the houses below and donkeys traditionally helped with the heavier loads, a few still being kept in the village as much for their role in the visitor experience as for practical necessity. The experience of walking down this street, with the whitewashed cottages on either side and the glimpse of the harbour and the sea below, is unlike any other in England. The harbour at the bottom, with its medieval quay, the fishing boats and the atmosphere of an entirely authentic working fishing community, provides the destination that makes the descent worthwhile. The herring fishing that once sustained the village is commemorated each November in the Clovelly Herring Festival.

Totnes is the most independent and most characterful small town in Devon, a medieval market town on the River Dart whose combination of a Norman castle, fine Elizabethan architecture, the remarkable colonnaded Fore Street and a contemporary culture of independent shops and alternative businesses gives it a vitality unusual among Devon market towns. The town has attracted a creative and unconventional population that has made it disproportionately famous for its size. Totnes Castle, with a near-complete round keep on one of the finest Norman mottes in England, overlooks the town and provides the best views of the Dart estuary from any accessible point. English Heritage manages the castle and its combination of architectural quality and historical associations makes it an excellent complement to the town's other attractions. The Elizabethan House Museum on Fore Street occupies one of the finest surviving Elizabethan town houses in Devon. The River Dart below Totnes provides boat trips to Dartmouth and excellent riverside walking, and the Totnes to Buckfastleigh steam railway provides a heritage rail experience through the Dart Valley. The combination of the medieval heritage, the Elizabethan townscape, the river setting and the contemporary independent character makes Totnes one of the most rewarding and most distinctive small towns in the West Country.

Dartmouth is one of the finest and most completely realised historic harbour towns in England, a settlement on the west bank of the Dart estuary in south Devon whose combination of the medieval and Tudor town houses, the two great castles guarding the harbour entrance, the naval college on the hill above and the extraordinary natural beauty of the Dart estuary creates a destination of exceptional quality and historical depth. The town has one of the finest collections of historic buildings of any small port in England, its prosperity as a medieval wine trade and privateering centre having financed architecture of considerable ambition. The Butter Walk in the centre of Dartmouth, a series of four seventeenth-century merchants' houses whose overhanging upper floors rest on granite columns creating a covered walkway below, is one of the finest examples of Jacobean commercial architecture in England, its carved woodwork and the scale of the merchants' ambition speaking directly to the wealth generated by the trade of this exceptionally well-positioned harbour. The nearby Flavel Arts Centre occupies the church built by Thomas Flavel, whose merchant fortune funded many of Dartmouth's finest buildings. Dartmouth Castle guarding the harbour entrance is one of the earliest purpose-built artillery castles in England, its round towers designed specifically to mount cannon for the defence of the harbour against attack from the sea. The combination of the castle, the estuary views and the Bayard's Cove Fort below the town provides a concentration of military heritage in a small area of great scenic beauty.

Lundy Island lies in the Bristol Channel approximately 18 kilometres off the North Devon coast and is one of the most distinctive and rewarding island destinations in Britain. Three miles long and about half a mile wide, the island rises to granite cliffs some 120 metres above the sea on its western side while the eastern shore slopes more gently to a small beach and landing beach. Its very remoteness, enforced by the channel crossing and the absence of cars on the island, makes Lundy genuinely unlike anywhere else on the British coast. The island's name comes from the Old Norse for puffin, and seabirds remain one of the principal reasons visitors make the journey. Puffins, razorbills, guillemots, kittiwakes and Manx shearwaters all nest on the island's cliffs and ledges, while peregrine falcons hunt along the clifftops. The waters surrounding Lundy were designated as England's first statutory Marine Conservation Zone in 2010, and the exceptional quality of the underwater environment supports populations of grey seals, reef fish, sponges, anemones and cold-water corals that make it one of the finest snorkelling and diving locations in the country. The island's human history is appropriately colourful. It was used as a base for pirates and smugglers throughout the medieval and early modern periods, and the cave-riddled cliffs provided excellent hiding places for contraband. The Marisco family, who held the island during the thirteenth century, were eventually hanged for piracy and treachery against the crown. Later inhabitants included eccentric Victorian squire William Heaven, who managed the island with such absolute authority that he became known as the King of Lundy. The island even issued its own stamps, which are still collected by philatelists worldwide. The island is managed today by the Landmark Trust, which maintains 23 properties available for holiday rental ranging from the Castle to converted lighthouse cottages. Day visitors arrive by ferry from Bideford or Ilfracombe during the summer season and are free to explore the island's farms, footpaths and wildlife habitats. The Marisco Tavern, the island's only pub, provides food, accommodation and the social centre for both residents and visitors.

Wistman's Wood on the west side of the River Dart in the heart of Dartmoor is one of the most extraordinary and most atmospheric fragments of ancient woodland in Britain, a relic of the original high-level oak woodland that covered Dartmoor after the last Ice Age, the stunted and contorted pedunculate oak trees growing in the shelter of the granite clitter boulders at an altitude where woodland would normally be impossible. The combination of the gnarled trees draped in moss and lichen, the massive granite boulders between which the roots wind and grip and the isolation of the high moor creates a woodland experience unlike any other available in England. The trees of Wistman's Wood are among the oldest in the British uplands, many estimated to be several hundred years old despite their small size, the combination of altitude, wind exposure and the thin soils between the boulders limiting their growth to a twisted and ancient-seeming form quite unlike the upright oaks of the lowland woodland. The moss and lichen communities on the trees and boulders are among the most diverse and most ancient in the southwest, reflecting the very high atmospheric humidity and clean air of this remote moorland location. The wood features prominently in Dartmoor folklore as a place of dark character, associated with the Wild Hunt and with supernatural occurrences in a way that reflects the human response to a woodland of genuinely unusual and rather sinister aspect. The walk across the open moor from the Two Bridges road to the wood takes approximately thirty minutes and the sense of arrival at this unexpected and otherworldly place after the open moorland crossing is one of the finest natural heritage experiences on Dartmoor.

Badgworthy Water in the Exmoor National Park, the location of the fictional Doone Valley of R D Blackmore's celebrated novel Lorna Doone published in 1869, provides one of the most rewarding walking destinations in Exmoor, a long valley walk through heather moorland and ancient oak woodland beside a stream of considerable beauty whose association with one of the most popular novels of the Victorian period has made it a place of literary pilgrimage since the book's publication. The walk from Malmsmead through Badgworthy Wood and up the valley to the medieval village site on the moor provides the complete Doone Country experience. Blackmore's novel, set in the seventeenth century and involving the outlawed Doone clan who terrorised the Exmoor moorland from their hidden valley, drew on the landscape of this specific valley while considerably embellishing its historical basis. The novel created an enduring Exmoor mythology that has made this remote section of the national park one of the most visited, and the combination of the literary association and the genuine beauty of the valley justifies that reputation. The medieval deserted settlement visible as earthworks in the upper valley is sometimes identified as the site of the Doone village of the novel, though the historical Doones are far less substantial than Blackmore's fiction suggests. The watersmeet of Badgworthy Water with the Lankcombe Brook, set among ancient sessile oaks of great character, is the finest single landscape feature of the valley walk and one of the most beautiful woodland stream settings on Exmoor.

Capstone Hill is one of the defining landmarks of Ilfracombe, a dramatic rocky promontory that juts above the town's Victorian harbour and offers sweeping views across the Bristol Channel toward the Welsh coast. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a beloved public open space that has drawn visitors for well over two centuries. The hill rises steeply from the seafront promenade and is encircled by a well-worn coastal path, making it accessible to most visitors while still feeling genuinely wild and elemental at its summit. Its combination of geological interest, panoramic scenery, and proximity to a working harbour town makes it one of the more quietly impressive viewpoints on the South West Coast Path. The hill's geological character is ancient and visually striking. It is composed of Devonian slates and shales laid down roughly 400 million years ago, folded and contorted by immense tectonic forces into dramatic tilted layers that are clearly visible in the cliff faces. The rock is darkish grey-green, often glistening with moisture from sea spray, and the surfaces are colonised by lichens in shades of orange, silver and black. Walking the circular path around the headland, visitors encounter sudden shifts in texture and exposure — sheltered grassy slopes on one side, raw wind-scoured rock on the other. The sounds shift accordingly: birdsong and the distant clink of rigging in the harbour giving way to the rush and hiss of waves breaking directly below the cliffs. Historically, Capstone Hill has been intertwined with Ilfracombe's identity since the town emerged as a fashionable resort in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The arrival of improved road links and later the railway in 1874 brought Victorian tourists in large numbers, and a promenade walk around the Capstone became a standard feature of a seaside holiday. The path was formally laid out and improved during this era, with benches and viewing points established for the comfort of visitors who came seeking the bracing combination of sea air and scenery that Victorian physicians enthusiastically recommended. The hill also served more practical purposes across earlier centuries, with local fishermen using its height as a natural vantage point to watch for shoals of herring moving through the Channel. The views from the summit and the path around it are genuinely remarkable. On a clear day the Welsh coast is visible across the Bristol Channel, with the Gower Peninsula sometimes discernible on the horizon. Closer at hand, the town of Ilfracombe spreads below in a compact Victorian arrangement of terraces and hotel facades, its small harbour sheltering fishing boats and pleasure craft. The harbour itself is medieval in origin and is protected by the natural shelter of the surrounding headlands. Lundy Island, a remote National Nature Reserve belonging to the National Trust and managed by the Landmark Trust, is visible roughly twelve miles offshore on good days, sitting low and grey-green on the water. The experience of standing on the Capstone with that view spread out is one of the better free panoramas available anywhere on the North Devon coast. Ilfracombe itself offers a rich context for a visit to the Capstone. The town retains much of its Victorian and Edwardian character and has in recent years attracted additional attention as the home of Damien Hirst's large-scale bronze sculpture "Verity," which stands at the harbour entrance and has become a significant draw in its own right. The nearby St Nicholas Chapel, perched on Lantern Hill on the other side of the harbour, dates from the fourteenth century and served historically as a lighthouse whose lamp was tended by monks — another of the town's quiet historical curiosities. The South West Coast Path passes through the area, and the walking in both directions from Ilfracombe is considered among the finest coastal walking in England, with the stretch toward Morte Point to the west being particularly dramatic. Visiting Capstone Hill requires no special preparation beyond sensible footwear, as the circular path involves some uneven and sometimes slippery surfaces, particularly after rain. The hill is open at all times and there is no admission charge. Access from the town centre is straightforward — the Capstone is a short walk from the harbour along the seafront promenade, and the path up and around it begins near the Landmark Theatre. Parking is available in Ilfracombe town centre and near the seafront. The best conditions for visiting tend to be on clear days in spring or early autumn when visibility across the Channel is at its greatest and the crowds of the peak summer season are somewhat thinner, though the hill has a particular wild appeal in winter storms when the waves are dramatic and the isolation is more keenly felt.

Salcombe is the most sophisticated and most expensive small resort town in the West Country, a south Devon harbour town set on the steep hillside above the Salcombe Estuary whose combination of the beautiful wooded estuary, excellent sailing water, the attractive town with its independent shops and seafood restaurants and the accessibility by water to the remote beaches of the Salcombe-Kingsbridge Estuary system creates a destination of exceptional appeal for those who can afford the prices. The harbour is one of the most beautiful in Devon, the wooded hillsides on both shores of the estuary reflecting in the still water and the blue of the sea visible through the estuary bar at the southern end. The estuary provides some of the finest sailing water in the southwest, its sheltered channels and anchorages ideal for yachts and dinghies and the Salcombe harbour a crowded centre of marine activity throughout the summer. The combination of the estuary sailing and the open sea sailing available through the bar at the mouth of the estuary, with the dramatic South Devon coast extending in both directions, makes Salcombe one of the leading sailing destinations in Britain. The beaches accessible by water from Salcombe, particularly North Sands and South Sands immediately south of the town and the more remote Millbay and Starehole Bay beyond the bar, provide some of the finest sandy beaches in Devon in settings of considerable beauty. The ferry services connecting these beaches during the season allow a day of beach hopping and sea exploration that is one of the most distinctive experiences of this stretch of the Devon coast. The South West Coast Path traversing the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty above the estuary provides excellent walking with views of the estuary and the open sea.

Watersmeet in the East Lyn Valley near Lynmouth in Exmoor National Park is the meeting point of the East Lyn River and Hoar Oak Water, a confluence of two fast-flowing streams in a deep wooded gorge of exceptional beauty managed by the National Trust. The combination of the wooded gorge, the rushing streams and the Victorian fishing lodge at the confluence, now serving as a National Trust café, creates one of the most rewarding and most consistently visited short walks on Exmoor. The gorge of the East Lyn is one of the finest examples of Atlantic oakwood in the national park, its sessile oak woodland thriving in the humid, sheltered conditions of the valley and creating the layered, moss-covered character of a genuinely ancient woodland. The valley sides above the path are steep and wooded throughout, and the combination of the rushing water, the mature oak trees and the narrow rocky path provides an experience of enclosed natural drama characteristic of the Exmoor gorge woodlands. The 1952 Lynmouth flood, in which the East Lyn River rose catastrophically following exceptional rainfall on Exmoor and destroyed much of the village of Lynmouth below, was one of the most destructive natural disasters in post-war Britain. The power of the river that now runs peacefully below the Watersmeet path is fully comprehensible after understanding what this valley can contain in extreme conditions. The walk from Lynmouth up the East Lyn valley to Watersmeet and return provides one of the most rewarding short walks on Exmoor, the combination of the woodland, the water and the gorge scenery providing a complete valley experience.

The Valley of the Rocks near Lynton on the North Devon coast is one of the most extraordinary dry valley landscapes in England, a dramatic rocky gorge running parallel to the coastline and separated from the sea by only a narrow ridge of contorted sandstone and slate, its floor strewn with massive frost-shattered boulders and its ridgeline marked by a series of rock towers with names like Castle Rock, Ragged Jack and the Devil's Cheesewring that reflect both the dramatic character of the landscape and the imagination of those who named them. The valley is unusual in geological terms: it runs parallel to the coast rather than perpendicular to it, and it is dry, lacking any stream in its floor despite the obvious work of water erosion in its formation. The current understanding is that the valley was cut by a river during the Pleistocene period when sea level was substantially lower than today, and that the subsequent rise in sea level after the last Ice Age cut off the river's coastal outlet and diverted it away from the valley, leaving the gorge abandoned and dry. The angular, frost-fractured character of the rocks scattered through the valley reflects the periglacial conditions of the Ice Age when repeated freeze-thaw cycles shattered the bedrock into the chaotic boulder fields still visible today. A herd of feral wild goats has inhabited the Valley of the Rocks and the surrounding coastal cliffs for as long as records exist, and their ancestors were probably here considerably longer. The goats, shaggy and long-horned, add an appropriately elemental quality to the landscape and can often be seen picking their way across the rock faces with the casual contempt for exposure that only a goat can project. They are entirely wild and should not be approached, but can often be observed at close range from the paths through the valley. The South West Coast Path passes through the valley and continues along the clifftops in both directions, providing connecting walks to Lynmouth below and Woody Bay to the west. Coleridge and Southey planned an epic poem, The Wanderings of Cain, during a visit to the valley in 1797.

Appledore is one of the most attractive and most completely preserved maritime villages in Devon, a small port at the confluence of the Rivers Taw and Torridge near Bideford whose combination of narrow streets of Georgian and earlier cottages, the active shipyard, the maritime museum and the estuary setting creates one of the most authentic and most rewarding small coastal destinations in the West Country. The village retains the genuine character of a working maritime community in a way that more tourist-developed Devon coastal settlements have lost. The shipyard at Appledore, one of the last traditional shipbuilding yards in Britain, has constructed vessels on this site for centuries and continues to build and repair ships of considerable scale. The sight and sound of an active shipyard working with steel and tradition in a village of this intimate scale is one of the most distinctive features of Appledore and the most powerful evidence of the maritime heritage that the village museum documents in more conventional ways. The North Devon Maritime Museum in the village provides an excellent account of the seafaring history of the Taw-Torridge estuary, including the Victorian seamen who emigrated to Newfoundland and established the fishing communities of that coast. The estuary itself, with its shifting sandbanks, the bird life of the mudflats and the views across to Instow and the Taw Valley beyond, provides the beautiful setting for a village that rewards extended exploration.

Hartland Quay on the north Devon coast is one of the most dramatic and most remote coastal destinations in England, a small building group on the shore beneath great Devonian sandstone cliffs of considerable height where the Atlantic meets a coast of extraordinary geological complexity and where the wreck of numerous vessels over the centuries has made this one of the most dangerous and most storied stretches of the British coast. The former quay buildings, now converted to a hotel, café and museum, provide the only facilities in a setting of complete exposure to the Atlantic. The geology of the Hartland cliffs is among the most visually dramatic of any section of the British coast, the Carboniferous and Devonian rocks folded into extraordinary patterns of near-vertical strata that create the characteristic chequerboard pattern on the cliff faces as alternating hard and soft layers erode at different rates. The geological structures visible in the Hartland cliffs have been used as textbook examples of coastal fold geology since the nineteenth century and the combination of the scale, the variety and the clarity of the structures makes this one of the most instructive geological coastlines in Britain. The South West Coast Path from Hartland Quay traverses the most remote and most demanding section of the entire route, the succession of headlands between Hartland and Bude providing walking of exceptional quality and considerable physical challenge in a landscape of complete wildness where the Atlantic and the ancient rocks meet in constant dramatic engagement.

Wistman's Wood on the high moorland of Dartmoor National Park near Two Bridges is one of the most ancient and atmospheric fragments of natural woodland surviving in southern Britain, a grove of stunted, moss-draped pedunculate oaks clinging to a boulder-strewn hillside at an altitude of approximately 380 metres where the harsh conditions of the high moor have produced a woodland of extraordinary character. The trees, which would be sizeable forest specimens in a more sheltered valley setting, have been dwarfed by the wind, poor soil and high rainfall of the moorland to a height of rarely more than seven metres, their gnarled trunks and twisted branches creating a landscape of considerable visual power. The clitter, or boulder field, within which the trees grow provides the conditions for the wood's survival at this altitude. The large Dartmoor granite boulders offer protection for tree seedlings from grazing animals and from the worst of the moorland weather, and the moisture retained between the boulders supports the luxuriant growth of mosses, lichens and ferns that cover every available surface within the wood. The effect is one of absolute verdancy in an otherwise austere moorland setting: the interior of Wistman's Wood is green and dripping even in dry weather, the mosses holding moisture like sponges and creating a micro-climate considerably warmer and more humid than the open moor outside. The antiquity of the wood is difficult to establish precisely, but pollen analysis from nearby peat deposits indicates that oak woodland has been present in this location for at least 7,000 years, connecting the existing trees to a woodland tradition extending back to the period immediately after the last Ice Age. Individual trees within the wood may be several hundred years old. The wood has a powerful atmosphere that has generated folk associations with the supernatural throughout its recorded history. Local tradition associated it with the Wisht Hounds, spectral black dogs said to pursue the souls of the unbaptised across the moor, and Arthur Conan Doyle's Dartmoor research almost certainly encountered this tradition before The Hound of the Baskervilles was published.