The area
A city, a moor and a coast path, all inside half an hour
Longdown sits in the gap between Exeter and Dartmoor. You can be in a cathedral city in ten minutes, on open moor in twenty, and walking the coast path in about half an hour.
Clarence knows the lanes better than any map does.
Distances from the site
- Exeter city centre10 minutesBy car.
- Dartmoor National Park20 minutesBy car.
- South West Coast PathAbout 30 minutesBy car.
- Farm shop at Ide10 minutesBy car.
Ten minutes away
Exeter
A small city that is easy to do in a day and hard to exhaust. The cathedral is the obvious first stop and worth the time, and the quayside is the pleasant one: water, a few boats, somewhere to sit.
Practically, Exeter is also where the trains and the shops are. Exeter St Davids is 3.0 miles from the site, St Thomas 3.1 and Exeter Central 3.4, so arriving by rail and being collected is realistic. Exeter International Airport is 8.5 miles away, and Honiton Road Park and Ride is 6.1.
Ide, ten minutes
There is a farm shop at Ide, about ten minutes away by car, which is the sensible stop for provisions on the way in rather than driving into the city for them.
Twenty minutes away
Dartmoor
Twenty minutes west and the hedges stop and the moor starts. Dartmoor is high, open and genuinely wild in places, and it changes completely with the weather, which is most of the appeal. Take a map, take a coat, and tell somebody where you are going if you are heading out onto the open ground.
It is close enough that you can go for an afternoon rather than making a day of it, which is the real advantage of staying on this side of it.
And the sea
The South West Coast Path is about half an hour away by car, so a morning on the moor and an afternoon on the cliffs is a normal day from here.
Staying put
The reason to not go anywhere
All of the above is optional. The site has a Romany museum on it, with genuine bow top wagons and artefacts, and a host who is from a travelling family and will show you how meals were cooked over a fire.
Plenty of guests come for the moor and end up spending the evening on the steps of a wagon instead. That is not a failure of planning.