South Devon & Dartmoor

This new, thoroughly updated third edition of South Devon and Dartmoor is part of Bradt’s distinctive ’Slow Travel’ series of guides to UK regions, offering in-depth exploration of one of England’s most popular areas. Written by resident experts Hilary Bradt, Janice Booth (who died in 2023), and Gill and Alistair Campbell, it remains the essential companion to discovering not just obvious, well-known sites, but also for getting off the beaten track.
South Devon has many links with the USA. The Pilgrim Fathers set sail from the port city of Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620. The region was the birthplace of US-connected sons including Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, and the site of the ill-fated, little-known ’Exercise Tiger’ during World War II, in which perhaps 1,000 American lives were lost. Meanwhile, the guide’s detailed descriptions of village churches assist visiting genealogists searching for ancestors from Devon.
Colourful and witty writing, along with the authors’ enthusiasm for their subject, makes reading the guide a pleasure. Much of the information has appeared in no other guidebook as the authors uncover the lesser-known charms of the region and different aspects of the more popular places, together with colourful characters from the past, folk history and literary links from Agatha Christie to Arthur Conan Doyle. Discover the region’s new whisky distillery; learn what really goes on at a wassail gathering; find out what to do if harassed by Dartmoor’s pixies; and attend the International Worm-Charming Festival.
The guide has a special emphasis on car-free travel: walking (this edition features a revised selection of routes, including ’miles without stiles’ - accessible Dartmoor walks), cycling and river boats, as well as local buses (including the new Dartmoor Explorer service) and trains. This edition has a stronger emphasis on local food (both in markets and when eating out), while the authors have updated their hand-picked suggestions for places to eat and drink, and for accommodation (from idyllically located campsites to boutique B&Bs via caravans, treehouses and haunted coaching inns). Let Bradt’s South Devon and Dartmoor guide you around this gorgeous region.

Hilary Bradt co-founded Bradt Travel Guides in 1974, but now lives in semi-retirement in Seaton, East Devon. After nearly 50 years of writing guidebooks to Africa and South America, she has embraced her chosen home to the extent of insisting that such a large, varied and beautiful county deserved three Slow Travel guides, not just one. A keen walker, she has covered many miles of the South West Coast Path and inland footpaths, as well as enjoying Dartmoor on someone else’s legs - those of a horse. Most Saturdays see her taking part in one of Devon’s parkruns (5k, but she’s appropriately slow), and during the summer a swim in the sea, just a few minutes away, is always a pleasure. She is a productive member of the South West Sculptors’ Association and lectures regularly on travel-related topics at libraries and literary festivals, both in Devon and further afield. After many decades living in various other parts of Britain, the late Janice Booth settled in Devon (’within sound of the sea’) in 2001, and enjoyed exploring her adopted home county on local buses until her death in February 2023. As a wartime toddler she lived briefly in Colyton (East Devon), where her mother took her ’to the seaside’ at Seaton via a branch of the old Southern Railway that ran where the Seaton Tramway now rattles to and fro. On family holidays she tasted her first clotted cream in Sidmouth aged eight, rode on the Burgh Island tractor aged ten, and rock-hopped along the shore near Wembury in her early teens. She was fascinated by Devon folklore, co-wrote (with Hilary) Bradt’s Slow Guide to East Devon & the Jurassic Coast, and - further afield - was co-author of Bradt’s Rwanda. Alistair and Gill Campbell (travelblog.org/Bloggers/Postcards) have lived in the West Country for more than 16 years. During that time they have walked extensively in the area, often leading walks for local residents, tourists and foreign tour groups. They have walked the entire South West Coast Path, the Two Moors Way, the Macmillan Way West and the Tarka Trail. They are both volunteers for the National Trust and for Exmoor National Park, leading a team who restore ancient stone walls and aiming to ensure that visitors get the most out of their experiences in the South West. They have written a very successful walks book for the local tourist association, co-authored (with Hilary Bradt) Bradt’s North & Mid Devon (Slow Travel) and contributed to other Bradt guides for the South West.