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Perhaps the most popular resort on Devon's north coast, Ilfracombe is blessed by its surrounding high cliffs, for they have prevented over development to retain the town's Victorian and Edwardian flavor. The access to Tunnels Beach is through tunnels dug into the cliff. Harbor cruises are most popular, especially to tiny, windswept Lundy Island, with its handful of human residents but home to many thousands of sea birds. The rare puffin, which nests here, can be best seen in April and May. Many beaches in the area have become popular with surfers, particularly Croyde Bay and Morte Bay. For families looking for a fun place to go, Watermouth Castle is located between Ilfracombe and Combe Martin on the A399.

The market town of Barnstaple, inland from the coast at the head of the Taw estuary is a good base to tour the north Devon coast and the wild, empty uplands of Exmoor. (M5 from Bristol, then the A361 west). The huge timber-framed Pannier Market and Butcher's Row are well worth a look, as well as St.Ann's Chapel which became a grammar school in 1549 and which numbered among its pupils John Gay, author of "The Beggar's Opera". The Museum of North Devon contains a good collection of the 18th century pottery for which the area was noted. The Tarka Line is the name given to the Barnstaple to Exeter rail route, after Henry Williamson's "Tarka the Otter", set in the Taw Valley.

Difficult as it is to believe, Bideford once rivalled London as a port. In the 17th Century, its ships sailed the oceans, many of them to Newfoundland. Its Quayside is a bustling, friendly place, as are its weekly cattle market and regular pannier markets. Dating from the 13th century, the bridge has been reconstructed many times; not two of its twenty-four arches have the same span.

The port was once owned by Richard Grenville, commander of the ships that carried the first English settlers to Virginia. He is featured in Charles Kingsley's "Westward Ho!" part of which was written here. Boats take one-day trippers to Lundy Island, but you may choose to go by helicopter.

From Bideford, it is but ten miles along the coast to one of the most popular tourist spots in all England (and one of the most congested). Called "impossibly picturesque," the village of Clovelly is a visitor's dreamscape, but a motorist's (and frugal visitor's) nightmare. Walkers, cyclists and users of public transport have the right of way to the village, where the cobbled, traffic-free main street plunges steeply down to the sea past flower-smothered, tiny cottages. At the bottom of a cleft in the cliff is the tiny harbor and stony beach from where there are fishing boat trips and excursions to Lundy Island (you can reach Clovelly by train from Paddington, change at Exeter for Barnstaple, and then by bus).

Once notorious for shipwrecks and smugglers, the town has grown with the demand of surfers for fine beaches and endless rollers to practice their craft. Those in the know say that the surfing at Bude, with a 3,000 mile ocean facing it to the west, is as good as that at Bondi Beach, Australia. The swimming pool at Summerleaze Beach fills up with the incoming tide. At nearby Stratton, built on a hillside, the Tree Inn, the former mansion of the Grenvilles, served as Royalist headquarters in the Civil War. Dating from the 13th century, it contains timber beams from wrecked ships.

Vying with Clovelly for the highest number of visitors, Tintagel can be reached by rail from London (change at Bodmin, then take a 30 minute taxi ride: by road, M5 to Exeter, then A30 west to Launceston, and A 395 to Camelford before joining the minor road through Trewarmett: or A39 from Barnstaple and B3263 via Boscastle). It is well worth your patience, for perhaps nowhere in Britain is the spirit of Arthur so profoundly felt (or capitalized upon).