Dog Walks in Exeter

Exeter is the main city of Devon and — more importantly for dog owners — the single best base for exploring Dartmoor. It sits at the head of the Exe estuary with the city's medieval quayside, a Norman cathedral and genuinely good independent food scene, and Dartmoor National Park begins about twenty minutes' drive to the west. For visitors bringing a dog, the combination of a walkable small city and immediate access to one of the UK's wildest landscapes is hard to beat.

The city itself has a compact historic core and the Exe riverside path, which is flat and easy-going for a post-journey leg-stretch. But almost everyone with a dog is here for the moor — and Dartmoor is properly different from anywhere else in England. Granite tors pile up on the skyline, streams cut deep cloughs into the open grass, and on clear days you can see most of Devon from a single summit. It's also one of the few national parks where open access land genuinely means what it says, which makes it a dream for off-lead walking.

Best Dog Walks in Exeter

The Haytor and Hound Tor Walk (4.5 miles, moderate) is the classic Dartmoor introduction — a short climb onto the most recognisable tor in the park, then a rolling moorland traverse to the jumbled granite outcrops of Hound Tor, with a medieval deserted village along the way. For a completely different atmosphere, Wistman's Wood Ancient Forest Walk (4 miles, moderate) threads through one of the strangest woodlands in the country — stunted, moss-smothered oaks growing out of a granite clitter field, looking like something from a fairy tale. The Lydford Gorge Walk (3 miles, moderate) is the wet-weather option, following a dramatic river gorge with the White Lady waterfall as its turnaround point.

Planning Your Visit

The Haytor visitor centre has a large free car park and is the easiest starting point on the moor. Wistman's Wood starts from Two Bridges, and Lydford Gorge is a National Trust site with its own pay car park. Dartmoor grazes thousands of sheep and ponies, and the ponies are genuinely wild — dogs must never chase them. Leads on around livestock and ground-nesting birds between March and July. The weather can change fast, so pack a jacket even on sunny mornings. The Warren House Inn on the moor is one of the most famously dog-friendly Exeter-area pubs, and The Stables Cafe near Haytor is a handy post-walk coffee stop. Dog walks in Exeter really mean Dartmoor, and Dartmoor really means one of the best dog walking landscapes in the country.