The mild wild west: Why Exmoor’s wildness is best explored on a literary tour

Taking on Doone Valley, Coleridge Way and Tarka Trail has expanded Alexis Self’s lockdown horizons

It’s all downhill from here: the dramatic descent to Lynmouth (Alexis Self )

Lockdown recalibrated our shrinking planet: easily traversable cities became small states, while countries took on continental proportions.

I was fortunate to spend Lockdown 2.0 at my Mum’s in west Somerset and pleased to find that Exmoor’s windswept plains remain what they have always seemed to me: another world. During the Romantic period, painters, writers and poets descended on this part of the West Country, eager to discover a rural idyll they felt was disappearing elsewhere.  

Not long ago, I walked one of its most storied corners on a crisp December day. I passed through valleys, over rivers, around lakes and along cliffs, but barely scratched the surface of what is sometimes called Britain’s “forgotten national park”.