Hotels in Dartmoor

Granite rocks and tors, rearing up from barren bogs and heather moors, cover the surface of Dartmoor. Once home to many thriving, prehistoric communities, it is now an area of charming villages, old churches and wild lanes. Tumbling moorland streams and rivers are crossed by bridges built in medieval times.

Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles imprinted the brooding topography of Dartmoor on the imagination of the world. The extensive granite plateau is a separate, untamed county within Devon. It is an ancient volcanic region whose highest peaks have been scoured and eroded into the present sparkling profile of tors, some like Yes Tor, rising to over 2000 ft.

Characterful villages include Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Buckland in the Moor and Postbridge.
At the southwest corner of Dartmoor lies Plymouth, largest city of Devon, and a historic port, where Drake was playing bowls when informed of the Spanish Armada. Merchant’s House provides a museum of the city’s history. The Hoe is dominated by by the 1759 Eddystone Lighthouse and Dome Heritage Centre. Much of Plymouth’s old town was destroyed by bombing in the last war.