Walk the full length of the cathedral vault and find the roof bosses

See the astronomical clock and the misericords

Go down into the medieval Underground Passages

Walk the quay and cross the river on the hand ferry

Exeter Cathedral was finished by about 1400 and has the longest uninterrupted medieval stone vaulted ceiling in the world, along with an early set of misericords, a minstrels' gallery and an astronomical clock. Under the streets nearby run the medieval Underground Passages, built from the 13th century to bring fresh water into the walled city, and the quay below the city still has its warehouses.

Exeter: The Longest Unbroken Medieval Vault in the World

Tour the Gothic Revival interiors at Knightshayes Court, with Burges's restored ceilings and furniture

Walk the walled kitchen garden and terraces at Knightshayes

Ride or walk beside the horse-drawn barge on the Grand Western Canal

Walk the canal towpath out of Tiverton towards Halberton

Knightshayes Court above Tiverton is a Victorian Gothic house by William Burges, built for the lace-making Heathcoat-Amory family, with a walled kitchen garden and terraces looking over the Exe valley. In the town, the surviving arm of the Grand Western Canal is now a country park where a horse-drawn barge still works the water.

Tiverton: Knightshayes and the Grand Western Canal

Walk the abbey church the monks built themselves

See Dom Charles Norris's 1968 slab-glass window in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel

Walk the lavender, sensory and physic gardens

Book a honeybee experience day or a beekeeping course at the abbey apiary, where Brother Adam bred his bees

Benedictines returned to the ruined site at Buckfast in 1882 and rebuilt the abbey church between 1907 and 1938 on the medieval foundations, mostly with their own hands — four monks at a time, one of them a trained mason, working with a horse and a winch. The community still makes tonic wine and keeps bees, and Brother Adam's bee breeding here was known worldwide.

Buckfast Abbey: A Church Built by a Handful of Monks

Walk up to High Willhays and Yes Tor, the highest ground in southern England

Walk the ruins of Okehampton Castle above the river

Walk or cycle the Granite Way along the old railway

Check the firing times before crossing the military ranges

Okehampton sits under the northern edge of Dartmoor, where High Willhays rises to 621m, the highest point on Dartmoor and in southern England, with Yes Tor beside it. The Norman castle ruins stand above the West Okement, and regular year-round trains returned to the town in 2021, almost fifty years after they were withdrawn, so you can arrive by train and walk onto the moor.

Okehampton and the Dartmoor North Moor

Climb the keep of Totnes Castle on its Norman motte

Walk the Butterwalk and the Elizabethan high street

Walk into the roofless mansion at Berry Pomeroy Castle

Walk the riverside path along the Dart from Totnes

Totnes climbs from the Dart to a Norman motte-and-bailey castle, built for Juhel of Totnes in William I's reign, and its main street has the covered Butterwalk and the East Gate arch, rebuilt after a fire in 1990. Two and a half miles east, Berry Pomeroy is a Tudor mansion inside the walls of an earlier castle, sold to Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, in 1547, abandoned in the late 17th century and famous since the 19th both as a picturesque ruin and as a haunted one.

Totnes and Berry Pomeroy: A Norman Motte and a Haunted Shell

Climb High Willhays (621m), the highest point on Dartmoor and in southern England, and neighbouring Yes Tor (619m), from Okehampton Camp; check the MoD firing notices first

Walk to the Merrivale stone rows, the two Bronze Age double rows of standing stones on the western moor

Walk into Wistman's Wood, the stunted ancient oakwood in the West Dart valley

See the Dartmoor ponies roaming free on the open moor

High Willhays, 621m, is the highest point on Dartmoor and in southern England, climbed with Yes Tor from Okehampton Camp on the edge of the military ranges. On the western moor, Merrivale has two Bronze Age double rows of standing stones running side by side, with a stone circle and a tall standing stone nearby, and in the West Dart valley Wistman's Wood is a stunted ancient oakwood among the boulders. Dartmoor ponies roam free across the open moor.

Dartmoor: High Willhays, Merrivale and Wistman's Wood

Fossil-hunt at Monmouth Beach and Church Cliff with a guide, on the Lias shore where Mary Anning found the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton as a girl

Visit the Lyme Regis Museum on Bridge Street, on the site of the Anning family's home

Visit Dinosaurland Fossil Museum on Coombe Street

Walk out along the Cobb, the harbour wall that appears in The French Lieutenant's Woman

Join a fossil walk from the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre along the beach

As a girl Mary Anning found the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton on the Lias shore at Lyme Regis in 1811–12, after her brother Joseph had found its skull, and fossil hunters still work Monmouth Beach and Church Cliff. The Lyme Regis Museum stands on the site of the Anning family's home, Dinosaurland is in Coombe Street, and the Cobb, the harbour wall, is the one in The French Lieutenant's Woman. East along the beach, the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre runs fossil walks.

Lyme Regis: Mary Anning's Fossil Coast

Walk the gun platforms of Dartmouth Castle above the harbour mouth

Find where the harbour chain was anchored

Cross on the ferry and ride the steam train from Kingswear

Walk the Embankment and the Butterwalk in the town

In 1388 Richard II authorised John Hawley, mayor of Dartmouth and privateer, to raise money for a fortalice by the sea. By the end of the 15th century it had an artillery tower and an iron chain that could be winched across the harbour mouth to a tower at Godmerock — the oldest known purpose-built coast artillery fort in Britain. Steam trains run along the far bank from Kingswear to Paignton, and the higher and lower ferries still cross the Dart.

Dartmouth: Britain's Oldest Known Coast Artillery Fort and the Steam Railway

Cycle the Tarka Trail along the estuary from Barnstaple

Walk through the Pannier Market in Barnstaple

The Tarka Trail follows the journeys of Henry Williamson's otter in a figure of eight of 180 miles centred on Barnstaple, established in 1987; its traffic-free section runs on a disused railway along the Taw and the Torridge and forms part of the Devon Coast to Coast route from Ilfracombe to Plymouth. Braunton Burrows, at the mouth of the estuary, is the core of the North Devon UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.