Exmoor holiday experience ideas

Exmoor offers  each individual visitor, a wide range of opportunities for experiences on your holiday, either alone or together with family and friends.

Here are some of the best ideas for experiences on Exmoor, gathered together for your choice.  We hope these ideas will wet your appetite and feed your imagination.

For a ‘shared experience’

  • Enjoy a cream tea at Watersmeet – National Trust, Stable Cottage – Triscombe, Mortimers – Dulverton or Periwinkle Cottage – Selworthy
  • Enjoy a wildlife safari by landrover (with Exmoor Safaris or Barle Valley Safaris)
  • Climb Dunkery Beacon at midnight / to see the sun rise (with guide)
  • Go Coasteering at Watermouth Cove (with guide)
  • Go rockpooling at Dunster Beach, Lynmouth or Combe Martin
  • Find England’s tallest tree at Nutcombe Bottom
  • Go butterfly hunting in Heddon Valley / find a rare heath fritillary on Dunkery Beacon
  • Make a basket on The Somerset Levels – Willow and Wetlands Centre

To get away from it all and just ‘contemplate’

  • View the night sky through a telescope  from your own cottage garden at West Withy Farm
  • Walk the Coleridge Way – follow in the steps of romantic poets Coleridge and Wordsworth – from West Withy Farm to Coleridge’s Cottage at Nether Stowey perhaps?
  • Watch the sun set from North Hill
  • Feel ‘the past’ at Hoaroak Cottage
  • Go bird watching at Porlock Marsh
  • Visit St Beuno’s Church, Culbone – Exmoor’s remotest place of worship
  • Touch the Longstone at Chapman Barrow
  • Explore the Mineral Line (engine house / incline plane) on the Brendons

Exmoor’s top ‘physical challenges’

  • Experience the Exmoor Cycle route – 60 miles on the route of the Pros.
  • Walk the Exmoor part of the South West Coast Path – the start of England’s longest footpath
  • Experience organised endurance challenges – Ironman or Exmoor Beast
  • Cycle Porlock Hill (both ways) – ‘driving is enough of a physical challenge for most’

Exmoor’s top places to ‘escape’

  • Great Hangman Point (highest sea cliffs in England
  • Pinkery Woods
  • Horner Woods (native oak trees, mosses, lichens – and no wind)
  • Heddons Mouth (and hidden beach)
  • Molland Moor (just to stare in all directions)
  • Dure Down (for the birth of the River Exe)

I want to help Exmoor National Park

  • Complete the ‘eye spy’ in the National Park visitor newspaper
  • Spend a day without the car – walk Wimbleball Lake circular from West Withy Farm
  • Visit local village shops, spend time at village shows and local markets.
  • Volunteer to collect litter or remake a path or count wildlife.  Find out more:                 Exmoor National Park – Volunteering
  • Reduce, reuse, recycle at West Withy Farm

 What will be your memories of Exmoor?

  • An Exmoor ‘traffic jam’ – two farmers blocking a country lane while they chat – landrover to landrover – for 20 minutes
  • The fresh, clean air – that’s why mosses and lichens grow on Exmoor trees
  • The silence – the bird song – the noise of a hedgerow of sparrows at dusk as they argue over ‘who sleeps where’ – the bellow of rutting stags
  • Chatting to a fourth (or more) generation local in a pub and understanding one word in three.
  • The taste of fresh food eaten in fresh Exmoor air – freshly grown, freshly picked, freshly cooked

Want to do more planning for your dream holiday

There are two invaluable sources of extra information to help you plan your holiday:

Exmoor National Park – Enjoying Exmoor

Active Exmoor

For events that will take place during the dates of your stay, visit:

Exmoor events calendar

 

Bury Pack Horse Bridge, about 2 miles from West Withy Farm Cream Tea, Dunster, Exmoor Polypole Fungus, Exmoor Rockpooling, Exmoor Watersmeet, Exmoor Heath Fritillary Butterfly, Exmoor Pub lunch, Dunster, Exmoor Chapman Barrows, Exmoor The Coleridge Way crosses the Brendon Hills - 3 miles from West Withy Farm Culbone Church - Exmoor's remotest church