The beguiling beauty of Bodmin Moor is a wild, windswept and awe inspiring landscape, overlooked by the summits of Brown Willy and Roughtor, Cornwall's highest point, and dotted with an abundance of Neolithic and Bronze Age remains including stone circles and menhirs.
Wisps of mist curl around prehistoric stone circles, wild ponies graze the wind-shaped tors, birds of prey patrol the open skies - Bodmin Moor is an untamed world. Climb the summit of Stowe’s Hill, near the 4000-year-old stones of the Hurlers, and be entranced by the magic of the moors.
Follow in the footsteps of Daphne du Maurier, and explore the crags from Jamaica Inn to Altarnun. Or saddle up for some moorland trekking, and ride out to the pools around the Cheesewring and the lakes of Siblyback and Colliford, fringed with marsh plants and frog orchids.
After a foray into the moors, why not recharge your batteries with a ploughman’s lunch or a cream tea? In sheltered moorland villages like Blisland and St Breward, North Hill, St Neot and St Cleer, you’ll find welcoming oases of stillness, with cosy inns and churches steeped in history and legends.
Rare plants flourish on the moors - bog orchids, coral necklace, round-leaved sundew and needle spike-rush - and the rock-strewn slopes and open heathland are home to linnets, stone chats, lapwings, golden plover and snipe. On the moorland fringes, in wooded river valleys such as the beautiful Golitha Falls National Nature Reserve, you might be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of otters and great spotted woodpeckers.