North Bovey

North Bovey is one of the least altered villages on Dartmoor, a green surrounded by thatched cottages and oak trees in the valley of the Bovey, a little south of Moretonhampstead. There is a church of medieval origin, an inn, and very little else, which is precisely the point. The village green with its ancient oaks and its granite cross is the kind of scene that people imagine when they think of Devon, and North Bovey has escaped both the growth and the traffic that have changed many places nearby.

The village sits just below the open moor, and lanes climb quickly from it onto high ground with views back across the Teign valley. Easdon Tor and Hameldown lie within walking distance, and the wooded valley of the Bovey provides sheltered walking in poor weather. For anyone wanting to see what a Dartmoor village looked like before the twentieth century, North Bovey is the obvious place to go, and it rewards a slow walk around the green as much as any climb onto the tors above it.