Dartmoor is the moor at the heart of Devon, and the one that catches first-timers out fastest. It rewards a little preparation before the first visit, more than most walks do.
What’s different about moorland walking
Dartmoor is not a coast path with a view swapped for hills. It’s 368 square miles of open moorland, most of it unfenced, with no waymarked route telling you where to turn. Grass tussocks give way to heather, then to bare granite where a tor breaks through the ground; there are over 160 tors scattered across the park, some barely a scramble from the road, others reachable only by a longer walk across open ground. Underfoot changes every few hundred yards, and some of it is boggy: the low-lying mires hold water long after rain has stopped elsewhere, and a dog who charges ahead can be knee-deep before either of you notices the ground has changed.
Weather turns quickly up here too. A clear morning at the car park doesn’t guarantee a clear afternoon on the tor, and cloud can drop over high ground fast enough to take the view, and the sense of direction, with it. None of this makes Dartmoor difficult. It makes it a walk worth planning for differently than a signed coastal path, where the route and the exit are rarely in doubt.
Livestock and lead guidance, in general
Sheep, cattle and Dartmoor’s wild ponies graze the open moor year-round, under grazing rights that go back centuries. None of them are used to dogs approaching at speed, and none of them belong to anyone who’ll be nearby if something goes wrong. A dog on a lead near livestock is not a suggestion here: cattle with calves will defend them, and a startled pony can move faster than most dogs expect, faster than most dogs can outrun in open ground. Keep the lead on whenever stock is in view, and give a wide berth rather than a confident stride past. The ponies look tame from a car window. They are not pets, and feeding them, however tempting, teaches them to approach the next dog walker with less caution than this one showed.
Three areas of Dartmoor, around Okehampton, Willsworthy and Merrivale, are also used as military firing ranges, and have been for well over a century. Red flags and flagpoles mark the boundaries when a range is in use, and the current firing programme is published in advance by the Ministry of Defence. Check it before you set out if your route crosses any of the three, rather than relying on last visit’s schedule or assuming a quiet weekend means no activity. Outside the ranges, none of this applies, and the vast majority of the moor is unaffected.
A gentle first route
Haytor, on the eastern edge of the moor, is the easiest introduction. A car park sits close enough that the tor is a fifteen-minute walk away on a clear, well-trodden path, with the option to extend the loop toward Saddle Tor if the dog still has energy left. It’s popular, which means less wilderness and more reassurance: paths are obvious, other walkers and dogs are common, and turning back early doesn’t mean retracing miles of open moor.
For a gentler start still, Bellever Forest offers a wooded alternative to open moor: marked trails through conifer plantation, the East Dart River running alongside for a good stretch, and enough tree cover that a dog unsettled by wide open ground has something more familiar to walk through first. Postbridge, a few minutes further on, adds a clapper bridge: a slab of granite laid across the river on stone piers, medieval in origin, with flat riverside walking either side of it. Both make a better first outing than the high open moor, and both sit close enough to Haytor to combine into a longer day once the dog has settled.
What to carry
Water for the dog matters more here than on a coastal walk. Streams look clean and mostly aren’t, given how much livestock grazes upstream, so carrying enough for the length of the route is worth the extra weight rather than relying on what you pass. Phone signal is patchy across large parts of the moor, worse in the valleys than on the tors themselves, and mist can close in fast even on a clear morning, so a paper map or a downloaded offline route is worth having alongside a phone that might not have one. Layers matter more than they would on a beach walk: the moor sits high enough that wind and temperature shift fast, even in summer. A basic first-aid kit covers the ordinary cuts and thorns a dog picks up in heather and gorse, and a bright collar or coat is worth it on the areas of open moor with no tree line to break up the ground against a dog’s colouring.
Basing a stay nearby
Dartmoor sits inland from all of it: the coast on one side, the rest of Devon spreading out from its edges. A handful of the cottages we curate in the Devon collection sit close enough to reach the moor without a long drive first, which matters more here than on a single easy walk. Two or three visits, starting at Haytor or Bellever and building toward the open moor once the dog has a feel for the ground, go better than one ambitious day that tries to cover all of it at once.
