Lustleigh

Lustleigh is one of the prettiest villages in Devon, a cluster of thatched cottages around a church and an orchard in a sheltered valley on the eastern edge of the moor. The Church of St John the Baptist holds a Saxon inscribed stone, evidence that people were here long before the village took its present shape. Its seclusion has kept it largely unspoilt, and the village has a long tradition of looking after its own customs, most famously the crowning of the May Queen each spring in the orchard, where the names of past queens are cut into a granite rock.

Above the village lies Lustleigh Cleave, a steep wooded valley of the River Bovey scattered with granite boulders, which is among the finest walking country on the eastern moor and quite different in character from the open tops. The village has a tea room and an inn, and the old railway line to Moretonhampstead once brought visitors here in numbers. Hound Tor, Becka Falls and Manaton are all within reach on foot, and the combination of woodland, water and granite makes this one of the most rewarding corners of Dartmoor.