About the Exmoor coast and country area of North Devon

The west coast of Exmoor is the highest coastline in Great Britain. Many of the hills are over 1,000 feet high. The National Trust owns and maintains 20 miles of this glorious coastline and in several cases miles inland up wooded valleys. This is some of England's finest walking country. Wooded combes with rushing rivers, mossy boulders and waterfalls, with wild flowers in abundance, herds of red deer and Exmoor ponies, heather, gorse, ferns and lichens, and unpolluted airs. Whatever the weather, whichever the season, this is a treasury of natural splendour - a joy even in the snows of winter. Gentle drives along unfenced moorland roads, occasionally stopping for a stroll, picturesque villages with cricket greens and cream teas, country hotels offering stabling for horses, countrymen's pubs sporting hunting trophies beside blazing log fires. This is the West Country at its best.

A walk from Woody Bay (free carpark) via the lower coast path westwards to Hunters Inn, for a ploughman's lunch and half a cider, then back on the higher path, once a road for horse-drawn coaches - you may see a horse trough or two - past the old roman signal station is an enjoyable and relatively easy introduction to the glories of this part of the world. The walk totals four and a half miles, and should take about an hour and a quarter each way. Don't do it in strong or gusting winds.