The underrated Devon escape where wild swimming, ancient legends and opulent hotels meet

Dartmoor

In his 1900 tome A Book of Dartmoor, Sabine Baring-Gould described the moor as the nursery of many Devon rivers: “And what a mother! She sends them forth limpid and pure, full of laughter and leap, of flash and brawl.” Nowhere is this more evident than at Olga Polizzi’s extraordinary Hotel Endsleigh, housed in the Duke of Bedford’s former hunting lodge amid Humphry Repton-designed gardens where running water can be heard in every corner. Cream tea with home-baked scones,…