Bolventor

Colliford Lake is a worthwhile natural stop near Bradford, valued for open views, sea air and the kind of landscape that gives Cornwall much of its identity. It rewards slow exploration, whether that means a clifftop walk, a pause at a viewpoint or simply taking in the changing weather and light.

A remote and wind-swept pool on the heart of Bodmin Moor, Dozmary is steeped in Arthurian legend — it is one of several places claimed as the lake into which Sir Bedivere threw Excalibur as Arthur lay dying. Once thought to be bottomless, it is in fact quite shallow, but the atmosphere of the moor around it — especially in winter — remains genuinely unearthly.

The eighteenth-century coaching inn on the old packhorse route across Bodmin Moor was immortalised by Daphne du Maurier's 1936 novel of the same name. The inn retains its atmospheric stone exterior and houses a museum dedicated to du Maurier and to the smugglers and wreckers of her story. Whether the ghosts she encountered here actually exist is, perhaps, best left unresolved.