Dartmoor National Park

To view our Dartmoor accommodation guide featuring hotels and guest houses in Dartmoor National Park click the link at the bottom of this page.

Located within the county of Devon in the South West of England is Dartmoor. The National Park covers an area of 368 square miles and has a population of over 34,000 people living within its boundary area.

Dartmoor can be reached by using the M4, M5 and M6 motorways and by train using the First Great Western service which operates a high speed service from London Paddington. For international travellers the county of Devon is also served by Exeter Airport and Plymouth Airport.

Dartmoor became a national park in 1951 and contains some of the wildest countryside you will find in the south of England. There are over 47,000 hectares of open access land containing over 450 miles of public rights of way. Over half the area is open moorland and is best explored on foot as there are many marked way paths.

There are many way marked walks available within the park area including The Two Moors Way which is a 102 miles long walking route through the centre of the park and The Dartford Way - a 90 miles long route taking you around the outskirts of the park.

The Northern area of Dartmoor has been used by the military for training since the early 1800’s and there are now three military camp sites in the area. The Okehampton Range, The Merrivale Range and The Willsworthy Range are used by the army but there is public access to these moorland areas except when the ranges are in use. Confirmation of the operational status of these ranges be checked by phone, the firing information is also available at all the local tourist information centres and published locally on notice boards.

Dartmoor National Park is also famous for its “Tors” there being over 160 of these. A Tor is known as an area of moorland that is capped with granite hilltops as well as providing habitats for Dartmoor wildlife. An event called the Ten Tors Challenge has become internationally known where over a thousand people aged between 14 to 21 walk distances of 35, 45 and 55 miles over a weekend.

For the person venturing into the depths of the moorland on foot a good knowledge of compass work and navigation is advisable, also good maps (the Ordnance Survey have produced an ‘Outdoor Leisure’ Map of this area Scale size 1:25000). Walking boots and protective clothing should also be taken.

A popular past time for walkers on Dartmoor is called letterboxing where watertight containers or ‘letterboxes’ are hidden throughout Dartmoor each containing a visitor book and a rubber stamp. In the 1970’s there were no more than a dozen of these, now there are many thousands throughout the park. Letterboxing has become a sport with thousands of walkers gathering for ‘box-hunts’. There is even a club called the 100-Club. A more recent variant of this activity is known as geocaches where the letterboxes are much harder to find and require GPS coordinates to locate.

Dartmoor is a place full of mysticism with legendary ghosts, witches and pixies and was also made famous by the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his novel ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.

There many places for you to visit within the Dartmoor area, a small selection of these are:-

Buckland Abbey: located in a secluded valley on the edge of the moor with over 700 years of history where Sir Francis Drake lived during the turbulent period of the armada and is still a working monastery.

Castle Drogo: a must for castle enthusiast - the last castle to be built in this country.

Dartmoor Accommodation Guide
There are a number of good hotels and guest houses offering accommodation in the Dartmoor National Park area. Ideal for a self guided Dartmoor walking holiday giving you the full flavour of the scenic experience.