Exmoor is a beautiful national park in the south-west of England, below the Bristol Channel and spanning the counties of Somerset and Devon. It is characterised by wooded valleys, open hills grazed by livestock, unspoilt moorland and simply magnificent scenery. In other words, it has everything you need to retreat to a somewhat quieter corner of England for two weeks in a delightful cottage, enjoying plenty of nature and little discoveries along the way.
You can easily reach the area via Bristol (about a 1.5-hour drive from there), although the number of international flights is fairly limited. Most visitors – ourselves included – will therefore travel via London . For the journey west, London Heathrow Airport is a good choice, as you can join the M4 motorway directly. Allow at least three hours for the drive. For anyone not yet used to driving on the left, the motorway is actually a good way to get accustomed to it – the physical separation of the carriageways means there is no risk of accidentally driving on the wrong side!
And a word of warning at London Heathrow: the car-hire companies are a long way from the terminals and can only be reached by shuttle bus. It takes a while!
The journey there, with a few little detours
But eventually we were on the road, and if you are not in too much of a hurry, a little detour to Bradford-on-Avon in the Cotswolds is well worth considering. On the way there – if you do not want to stick to the motorway – you pass through the very attractive market town Marlborough . You can also stop at Avebury, one of those mysterious stone-circle sites, much like Stonehenge. While Stonehenge has become so crowded that the nearby car park has been closed and visitors are now taken there by dedicated shuttle buses at scheduled times, the stone-circle of Avebury is right in the middle of a small village and are nowhere near as well known. Certainly fascinating. We liked the place very much…
A small lane in Avebury
And then there is Devizes. A town in Wiltshire that you do not necessarily need to know. But it is home to an engineering innovation from the late 18th century: a flight of locks! The boats on the Kennet & Avon Canal can overcome a height difference of 72 metres through a total of 29 locks. It takes a good five to six hours, and every lock is operated entirely by hand! The middle section is particularly impressive, with 16 locks one after another:
The Caen Hill flight of locks in Devizes, viewed from below
The Caen Hill flight of locks in Devizes, viewed from above
In the evening, of course, we headed from our accommodation (a nice B&B with lovely views over the River Avon valley) to the Pub with very good food. The route – well, path is probably the better word. England is somehow very much designed around cars, and walking along the roads is not particularly pleasant. But there are little paths and tracks everywhere, often visible only once you know where to look. They can then lead, sometimes in solitude, through narrow, overgrown and wonderfully romantic surroundings right to your destination:
A typical path – you just have to find it first
After breakfast, we also visited the nearby Courts Garden of the National Trust, which is really more like a private village park:
Courts Garden
These “gentlemen” welcome us to Courts Garden
Courts Garden – sadly, the house is not open to visitors; note the beautifully clipped shrubs
Then came the highlight of the day: a boat trip on the Kennet & Avon Canal! These canals were once important commercial routes, until the railways made freight transport by canal uneconomical. Thousands of kilometres of canals across England subsequently fell into disrepair, but were extensively restored in the 1970s and 1980s. Today they are once again economically important – for tourism! You can spend your holiday on Narrow Boats; many people live on them, and the towpaths along the canals make for wonderfully romantic walking and cycling routes.
Our two-hour trip starts at the wharf in Bradford-on-Avon, passing through the lock and continuing to the Avoncliff Aquaeduct, where the canal spectacularly crosses both the river and the railway on a bridge.
At the wharf in Bradford-on-Avon: plenty of activity, and a lovely pub beer garden under the trees
Out on the canal
At the end of the trip, a tremendous downpour arrives – but stops just as we get off the boat. Perfect! We continue on and, purely by chance, end up in Norton St Philip – a tiny but incredibly lovely village with an ancient inn and wonderful views.
The beer garden in Norton St Philip, overlooking the church and the hills.
You just want to sit down here and have a pint of beer or cider, don’t you? Both are subjects we still need to write about. For now: to our continental European palates, “bitters” are the most agreeable, more so than ordinary ales.
And yes: it is not uncommon to find somewhere just as pleasant to sit as the place shown above!
And so we continued on to our accommodation for the next two weeks, in Exmoor. We’re in for two wonderful and relaxing weeks.
Our time in Exmoor
We chose our accommodation in the north-eastern corner of Exmoor, near the town of Minehead (around 12,000 inhabitants).
Minehead viewed from North Hill – the sea is visible in the distance to the left
Our cottage really is as lovely as the landlord’s photographs suggested. The only real nuisance is that the heating flue is right next to the kitchen’s garden door!
By the way, prices in Exmoor are remarkably low by English standards. It is rare to find such affordable accommodation and living costs elsewhere in Southern England.
Our cottage viewed from the garden
Breakfast in the spacious garden of our cottage
Otherwise, we enjoy a mixture of lovely weather, somewhat cloudier skies and even one day of really dense fog. The landscape is completely shrouded! It does rain from time to time, but nothing too serious overall.
Walking on North Hill towards Selworthy Beacon: the hill rises directly above the sea cliffs, bright yellow gorse is flowering at the top, sheep graze on green fields beyond, and beyond that the more or less blue Bristol Channel.
And then there is the gorse. It captivated us from our very first year here. It brings back memories of Enid Blyton’s “The Famous Five” books – the gorse was always flowering and prickly. Only here in England did we really understand what that meant. You can see plenty more of it, for example, on the Selworthy circular walk.
Oh yes, we are in Exmoor. There are free-roaming ponies here too:
You often encounter the ponies while out walking.
Very much worth seeing nearby are Dunster Garden and Castle as well as the lovely village Dunster.
Dunster Castle
Not entirely politically correct by today’s standards: the coloured lamp men
The Morning Room – visitors are warmly invited to make themselves comfortable.
The sign is easier to read here
West Street in Dunster
An entirely ordinary front door in Dunster
This is how a pub in Dunster attracts customers. Sadly, our names are Sabine and Thomas
Well, we did not get the free drink. But it is so typically eccentric for this country – as are quite a few other things. Take the obsession with high-visibility vests. Everyone and everything seems to wear one whenever possible. In two years, perhaps all pedestrians will have to wear one as standard equipment. It is not even that far-fetched – on a primary school outing, a high-vis vest is compulsory, even when playing:
A group of children at Dunster Castle – note the high-vis jackets.
And while looking for events in Minehead, we came across this advert:
A dance in an airfield helicopter hangar, with music from the Second World War and Vietnam War eras. All clear, then?
And then, every now and again, we get proper fog:
A foggy day in Exmoor – the hill has completely disappeared
No problem – we simply spend more time at home. It is cosy anyway.
The view from our bedroom window into a foggy Exmoor
And here is a little look at our photographic techniques
And Sabine’s brilliant photo shows just what effects you can achieve (like all the photographs here, it has NOT been digitally edited!):
Detail of a flower photograph after the rain
Now it was time to head deep into – and up onto – Dartmoor. We spent several hours driving through both the wooded areas and the high moor:
Typical signpost – Selworthy church in the background
The roads are narrow here in Exmoor …
… and simply beautiful!
Deeply wooded valleys (with flowering gorse)….
… alternate with high moorland (note the sharp boundary between cultivated land and moorland)
The highest point is Dunkery Beacon. From here, you have wonderful panoramic views:
Being out and about makes you hungry. The ideal snack is a “Ploughman” (pronounced “plowman”), consisting of thick slices of bread with cheese and ham, plus plenty of garnish and chutneys. Absolutely delicious!
A very popular lunch: a Ploughman’s
Lonely high-level paths in Exmoor
It is a landscape of breathtaking beauty – and silence! There is not a soul around.
No one? Not quite. And when there is someone, they almost always have a dog!
The humidity is very high because of the nearby sea, so everything grows accordingly.
The weather is becoming sunnier again. We make the most of it by walking along the River Barle valley to the famous Tarr Steps, a so-called “Clapper Bridge”. It is a stone bridge probably dating from the Middle Ages – although it may even be prehistoric.
The walk itself is nothing spectacular, but it is beautiful!
Our walk along the River Barle
The first view of the famous Tarr Steps
The Tarr Steps are 55 metres long and consist of 17 sandstone slabs, loosely resting on pillars about a metre above the water.
The return walk along the River Barle is just as beautiful
But why anyone thought it was a good idea to hammer coins into an old tree trunk is something only the British could explain!
As a reward, we have a “Cheese Cream Tea” today at the tea room in Withypool – a large pot of tea (we prefer Earl Grey), plus a cheese scone with cheese and a delicious chutney. You do not need much more in the evening…
Cheese Cream Tea in Withypool
Afterwards, we head back up onto the high moor – today without the fog:
Out on the high moor
The brilliantly yellow gorse is difficult to capture in photographs, but it is beautiful
This is Exmoor too – a pub in the small village of Winsford
Lovely valleys with pretty houses alternate with wooded areas. And the sea is already just beyond the hill!
Bratton – a hamlet of just a few houses
The weather stays fine, so we take a look around Minehead, our nearby “big city” (as mentioned, around 12,000 inhabitants). “Higher Town”, an old part of the town with a church high on the hill, is particularly interesting:
Higher Town in Minehead
By contrast, nearby Allerford is tiny and particularly charming. The most important and most photographed house stands right beside the ford. Like many of the fords still found in Exmoor, it is quite routinely driven through by cars of all sizes:
The ford at Allerford
And then we thought we would take you along for a little drive through Exmoor. For now, we are in the “green part”, not yet up on the high moor. The roads really are so narrow that usually only one car can just about squeeze through – when there is oncoming traffic, someone has to reverse to the next passing place (or wait for the other driver to do so).
So that we do not get bored in Exmoor (as if that were possible!), we take a boat out for the day to Lundy Island . It’s a tiny little island in the Atlantic, just 4.5 km long and no more than 1 km wide. Lovely!
Our ship for the crossing to Lundy, the MS Oldenburg, awaits us in Ilfracombe
This is Lundy Island – viewed from the lighthouse
The harbour of Lundy Island in beautiful afternoon sunshine.
The island is home to plenty of wildlife: puffins, penguins, seals – and rabbits!
And a lovely beer garden!
On the way home, we once again drive through the magnificent Exmoor landscape along the Bristol Channel:
Foreland near Lynton
en route the A39
Pure tranquillity in magnificent scenery
Finally, we also drive to Beach of Bossington gefahren, where we enjoyed a beautiful sunset during our very first year in England. And this time, too, it is simply wonderful!
Evening at Bossington Beach
An almost perfect sunset…
…ends another wonderful day in Southern England!
The weather stays fine – so we take a look at a few gardens. Particularly lovely are those gardens you would not normally be able to visit because they are private. But through the NGS, the National Garden Scheme, many private gardens open their gates once or twice a year.
Court House Garden – impressive, isn’t it?
This abundance of colour is everywhere in English gardens.
That is how we met Beth. She too has a private garden at her home, which she opens to visitors by appointment through the NGS. And, as is customary in England, it does not stop with an extensive tour. Afterwards, we enjoy tea and cakes together on the terrace, with a dream view over the breathtaking coastline. We almost got sunburnt!
Some garden visitors literally look for the right frame for their enjoyment of the garden
Your two protagonists are always looking for the nicest places!
… and in the process discover the occasional important hint about where it is better not to park!
We already know that sheep farming is widespread. This time, we got to see a “shepherd 2.0” in action – the dog has apparently been made redundant
Sometimes we do get a craving for a typically English meal: cod & chips
How mean of us: we have already eaten it all!
We did not have dessert, but we almost could not have resisted this invitation:
Ice cream advertisement at a National Trust ranger station
We continue to spend a lot of time out and about
sometimes with rather unusual encounters
In the tiny 13th-century church at Stoke Pero
And even if you think England is flat – nope! Here, in particular, the roads often go steeply up and down – even the main roads
View towards Lynton – but there are still two steep descents and climbs before we get there
Sometimes you also come across little heritage railways – this section of the “Lynton & Barnstaple Railway” is just one mile long!
Magnificent, magnificent! (Dunster Castle in the background, of course, not the cows!)
Naturally, we also went walking. For example through Horner Wood – a real enchanted forest further up. Come along with us for a little while:
One evening in Porlock, we came across this sign:
Invitation: Learn to ring the church bells!
So we quickly phoned John and asked whether we could join in. Of course – gladly! And that is how we ended up spending an entertaining hour and a half in the church beneath the bell tower with six bell-ringers, including an introduction to ringing the bells by hand using the ropes. Not easy at all! But with weekly practice, John and Martin agreed, we would manage to ring safely by Christmas that year. Not necessarily correctly in time or anything like that yet – but at least without serious injuries caused by being pulled towards the ceiling by the swing of the bell and the subsequent fall back down.
This short video shows what it can look like:
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Later, it turned into a very long evening at “The Castle”, the pub right next door, together with our new acquaintances. We continued the convivial get-together the very next evening at the “Ship Inn” – together with Dave from Birmingham. He somehow manages to talk all evening without taking a breath. He was interrupted mainly by Toni, whose every sentence was pure irony – we literally laughed until we cried!
And when the sun sets behind the Valley of Rocks on the drive home, silence settles over Exmoor
Sadly, our time here is now coming to an end far too quickly. Two weeks really are not very long. Before heading back to London and our flight, we reward ourselves with an extended cream tea:
This is what a proper cream tea for two looks like
A large pot of tea (we prefer Earl Grey – have we mentioned that already?), plus plain scones and fruit scones (with raisins), which you first spread with clotted cream (completely calorie-free!) and jam. It looks like this:
One very important point: throughout England, the clotted cream goes on the scones first, followed by the jam. Only in Cornwall do they do it the other way round!
Well fortified, we can already start planning our next trips to Southern England!
We have personally visited all the places, sights and gardens featured in our itineraries and have written about them in detail on this website. We hope that, after exploring Southern England for yourself, you will be just as captivated by this beautiful part of England as we are!
