Outdoor Activities to Enjoy on Your Devon Self Catering Holiday

Devon is a great county to holiday in and you can find enough activities there to keep the whole family busy for the length of your holiday.

Some of the most beautiful coastal towns in Britain are in Devon. They include Dartmouth, one of Devon’s real gems. Almost hidden from view, the town perches on the River Dart and has a busy port, interesting shops and galleries along its cobbled streets, and a twice-weekly market. It’s famous for the Royal Naval College that has been training officers there since 1905. Dartmouth faces the town of Kingswear, and there’s a ferry that takes pedestrians and cars from one to the other.

There’s also the annual sailing regatta that takes place in August each year. If you want to do some sailing on your holiday, there are lots of sailing schools around Dartmouth. Just down the road from Dartmouth is the fantastic Blackpool Sands beach. Although this is a private beach that you have to pay to go on, it’s well worth the all-day fee, as the beach is made of smooth round pebbles and the water is immediately deep, making it a perfect swimming beach. There’s a café and shop at the back of the beach, so you don’t even need to bother making a picnic. Another popular town for sailing is Salcombe. The town is the centre for some stunning local villages and there are beautiful beaches and coastal paths to explore.

There are plenty of sporting activities to be done in Devon. As well as the usual mountain biking and hiking, you can do a whole host of water sports like sailing, windsurfing and kayaking. Devon also has a lot of great places to climb. Even if the weather is no good, you can go to a climbing wall centre like the Dart Rock Climbing Centre.  Suitable for novices to experts, there are four different climbing walls for you to try there, and you’ll get support and encouragement from the staff if you’re a beginner. They have all the rock climbing equipment there so you don’t need to bring any with you.

As for outdoor climbs, there are some interesting crags and points to try out on the granite North Coast and the high tors of Dartmoor.For example, you can do some slab-climbing at Baggy Point. The climb is on sandstone, which has many thin cracks and overlapping points, allowing plenty of footholds. The routes here are usually single pitch. Sheeps Tor is a vertical granite wall, which offers a variety of easy to middle grade routes. Quite a few of the climbing tour groups go here because it’s a good place for beginners to climb.

You can climb all year round in Devon, but the most likely thing to spoil your climbing plans is high wind conditions. It doesn’t snow very often in Devon, so you’re unlikely to need to bring your crampons with you.

These are just some of the highlights that Devon has to offer. If you’ve never been on holiday in this part of the world, your first trip will probably be the first of many.