Exmoor earned National Park status in 1954 and takes its name from the River Exe, whose source rises near the village of Simonsbath in Somerset. The park covers 267 square miles of open heath and moorland, stretching across the north coast of Devon and into west Somerset. Most visitors are unprepared for the drama of its coastline: 34 miles of cliffs that include the highest sea cliffs in England, plunging into the Bristol Channel with a ferocity that seems at odds with the gentle rolling moor behind them. The South West Coast Path traces these clifftops and was voted Britain's favourite trail in 2006. Inland, the moor rises to Dunkery Beacon at 1,704 feet, the highest point in Somerset, from which views stretch across the Bristol Channel to Wales on clear days.

Sheep have worked these moors for more than 3,000 years. Traditional breeds including Exmoor Horn, Cheviot, and Whiteface Dartmoor still graze the open land, alongside Devon Red cattle. But the moor's most distinctive inhabitants are the Exmoor ponies -- not a breed in the conventional sense but a race, the closest surviving relatives of wild horses in Europe. Small, hardy, and supremely adapted to wet moorland, they roam freely across the park and are rounded up once a year to be marked and checked. Red deer hold their own territory on quieter hillsides, best spotted in the early morning when the mist still clings to the valleys. The bird life is equally rich: Merlins hunt across the heather, peregrine falcons patrol the cliffs, and the rare Dartford warbler has found a foothold in the gorse.

R. D. Blackmore's 1869 novel Lorna Doone gave Exmoor its most famous story -- a tale of outlaws, romance, and revenge set around the villages of Brendon in Devon and Oare in Somerset. The Doone Valley remains a draw for visitors who want to walk the landscape Blackmore described, even if the Doone family itself was largely his invention. More verifiable is the connection to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who lived in the area and drew inspiration from its isolated valleys and sudden weather changes. The Valley of Rocks, a short walk from the town of Lynton, offers a landscape so geologically dramatic -- twisted formations of sandstone rising above the sea, inhabited by herds of feral goats -- that it seems designed to produce poets.

Exmoor is not a wilderness in the conventional sense. It is a working landscape, shaped by farming, managed for grazing, and threaded with villages that have supplied provisions to travellers for centuries. The Brendon Hills to the south are cultivated; the Somerset towns of Dulverton and Minehead mark the park's eastern edges; and the coast path connects to trails that reach all the way to Ilfracombe in the west. Local food -- clotted cream, fudge, cider -- is part of the experience, as is the particular quality of light on the moor, which changes character with the weather and the season. For walkers, the Two Moors Way links Exmoor to Dartmoor to the south, crossing some of the most sparsely populated country in England. No great fitness is required to enjoy short walks on the moor, but those who tackle the long-distance routes discover an Exmoor that reveals itself slowly, one valley at a time.