Lydford

Lydford is far older and was once far more important than its size suggests. It was one of the four Saxon burhs of Devon, fortified against the Vikings under Alfred and his successors, and it had its own mint. After the Conquest it became the administrative centre for the Forest of Dartmoor and for the stannaries, and the square stone tower still standing in the village served as the stannary prison. Its reputation was grim enough to enter the language, and Lydford Law, in which a man was said to be hanged first and tried afterwards, was proverbial by the seventeenth century.

The village today is quiet, with a church, an inn and the castle ruin, but the ground beside it is dramatic. Lydford Gorge, cared for by the National Trust, is the deepest gorge in the south west, where the River Lyd has cut a narrow channel through the rock past the whirlpool known as the Devil's Cauldron and on to the White Lady waterfall. It is one of the most popular places on Dartmoor and rightly so. Above the village the western moor rises towards Brat Tor and the ranges, empty country that repays anyone prepared to climb into it.