Doone Valley Exmoor
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.