Twenty-seven miles from Exeter Airport, in the eastern hills of Dartmoor National Park, a cluster of stone ruins sits in the grass with barely a sign to explain itself. This is Hound Tor, and scattered around its granite outcrop are the remains of a 13th-century village called Hundatora — a settlement so old it traces back to Neolithic occupation, and so empty it has been abandoned since the late 1300s.
The setting explains why it ended up here. Hundatora consisted of a handful of longhouses, buildings where families lived at one end and livestock at the other, sharing body heat through hard Dartmoor winters. There were corn-drying barns and smaller outbuildings too. Records are thin, but two catastrophes likely finished the village off: the Great Famine of 1315–1317 (with further famines following until 1369) and the bubonic plague, which reached Europe in 1347. A combination of the two probably emptied Hundatora for good.
What's left is strangely photogenic. The stone footprints of the homes contour the hillside, and the tor itself — a jagged granite stack — rises from moorland said to have inspired the same legend behind Conan Doyle's "Hound of the Baskervilles." For the best angle, climb Greator Rocks: a 3.7-mile moderate-rated hike with roughly 900 feet of elevation gain, starting from the Swallerton Gate parking lot about seven miles north of Ashburton. The name of the game in Dartmoor is layers — weather turns fast, so pack waterproofs and boots you don't mind getting muddy.
Hound Tor is really just an appetiser for the wider park. Dartmoor covers 368 square miles of moors, rivers, wetlands and woodland, drawing over three million visitors a year. There are more than 217 miles of biking trails and bridleways, bouldering for all skill levels, horseback riding on historic byways, and even legal wild camping if you want to wake up in the middle of it all. Wistman's Wood, one of Britain's oldest forests, is a short hop away, and the free-roaming ponies are half the charm. Ashburton, dubbed the "Southern Gateway to Dartmoor," makes a practical base, while the hike pairs neatly with a coastal detour to Salcombe.
For travellers, this hits a sweet spot: a genuinely atmospheric slice of medieval history that costs nothing to wander, combined with one of England's best walking landscapes — and all within an easy day trip of Plymouth, Exeter or the Devon coast.
