Lynton and Lynmouth

A steep hill separates this pretty pair of Devonshire villages, which are linked by a Victorian cliff railway you can still ride. Lynmouth, a fishing village at the bottom of the hill, crouches below 1,000-foot-high cliffs at the mouths of the East and West Lyn rivers; Lynton is higher up. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley visited Lynmouth in 1812, in the company of his 16-year-old bride, Harriet Westbrook. During their nine-week sojourn, the poet found time to write his polemical Queen Mab. The grand landscape of Exmoor lies all about, with walks to local beauty spots: Watersmeet, the Valley of the Rocks, or Hollerday Hill, where rare feral goats graze.

Lynton and Lynmouth at a Glance

Elsewhere in The West Country

• Beer
• Bodmin
• Boscastle
• Bristol
• Chagford
• Clovelly
• Dartmoor National Park
• Dartmouth
• Dunster
• Exeter
• Exmoor National Park
• Falmouth
• Fowey
• Glastonbury
• Land's End
• Launceston
• Lizard Peninsula
• Lydford Gorge

• Mousehole
• Newquay
• Okehampton
• Padstow
• Penzance
• Perranporth
• Plymouth
• Porlock
• Port Isaac
• St. Ives
• St. Mawes
• Tavistock and Environs
• Tintagel
• Topsham
• Torquay
• Totnes
• Trelissick
• Truro
• Wells

See Also

• England
• The West Country