INCR-EDIBLE DORSET & DEVON

Caroline Mills discovers delicious food and drink while exploring the glorious South-West, staying at parks featured in our Top 100 Sites Guide

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1 Shaftesbury's Gold Hill has become one of England's most photographed landmarks, thanks to a Hovis advert!

When shall we four meet again? Hopefully not in thunder, lightning or rain! Because Dartmoor dripped. Frog-green, mossy tree trunks soaked up every downpour like a sponge, while roadside streams gurgled more than usual. But on Pew Tor, the sun peeped out and cast rays over four haggard-looking hawthorn bushes, yet to leaf.

Their exposed forms were windswept, bent like the witches of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, as I approached the otherworldly rock formations at the tor’s summit. At least a meal at Langstone Manor Holiday Park’s onsite restaurant, only a 30-minute walk away, awaited my return.

I had opted for a tour of Dorset and Devon to enjoy its food and drink scene. But a week of indulgence called for locations where a good walk was possible, too. A series of stately homes and gardens, alongside windswept hills for a rousing stomp to the summit, seemed a good match.

2 Whipped feta, beetroot and pea salad - light lunch in the Kitchen Garden Café at Cranborne Garden Centre

Lock, stock and beer barrels

I had begun at Back of Beyond Touring Park, tucked away in woodland on Dorset’s eastern edge, where nightly food trucks serve freshly cooked fish and chips, curry and the like.

My fridge was empty – waiting to be filled at a farm shop (or the site shop, which sells Dorset fare) – and I’d heard the fish was good. It was.

I can hardly claim that supper was properly walked off along the campsite’s lakeside and woodland walk, but it was a start.