Cairns

There's something rather moving about standing on high moorland where Bronze Age people once gathered. Cairns, just outside Tavistock on Dartmoor, are stone burial mounds that date back thousands of years - part of the landscape's ancient bones. You're looking at actual Neolithic and Bronze Age funerary structures, weathered but unmistakable, scattered across open moorland that hasn't changed a great deal in five millennia.

What you do here is straightforward: walk, look, reflect. There's no visitor centre, no café, no interpretation boards really - just you, the stones, and a good deal of wind. That's either brilliant or disappointing depending on your outlook. History enthusiasts will find it genuinely interesting; kids under ten might lose patience after twenty minutes. The setting itself is the main draw - those long views across the moor, the sense of solitude, the immediacy of deep time.

Allow an hour if you're walking from a nearby car park and want to explore a few of the cairn groups properly. Free to visit, obviously. Best in settled weather; moorland fog can swallow the whole experience rather too completely. It pairs well with broader Dartmoor wandering - you're essentially doing this as part of a larger walk rather than as a destination in itself.

Stay at Langstone Manor Holiday Park nearby and you've got a proper base for exploring this corner of the moor. The cairns won't take your breath away, but they'll make you think - which is worth the trip.