Devon has long been the urbanite's ideal vision of a pre-industrial, "authentic" England, and a quick tour of the county might suggest that this is largely a region of cosy, gentrified villages inhabited mainly by retired folk and urban refugees. Certainly parts of Devon suffer from an excess of cloying nostalgia and an abundance of commercialism, but its popularity has a positive side to it as well - chiefly that zealous care is taken to preserve the undeveloped stretches of countryside and coast in the condition that has made them so popular. Pockets of genuine tranquillity are still to be found all over the county, from moorland villages with an appeal that goes deeper than mere picturesqueness, to quiet coves on the spectacular coastline.

Devon has played a leading part in England's maritime history , and you can't go far without meeting some reminder of the great names of Tudor and Stuart seafaring, particularly at the two cities of Exeter and Plymouth . These days the nautical tradition is perpetuated on a domesticated scale by yachtspeople taking advantage of Devon's numerous creeks and bays, especially on its southern coast, where ports such as Dartmouth and Salcombe are awash with amateur sailors. Land-bound tourists flock to the sandy beaches and seaside resorts, of which Torquay , on the south coast, and Ilfracombe , on the north, are the busiest - though the most attractive are those which have retained something of their nineteenth-century elegance, such as Sidmouth, in East Devon. Other seaside villages retain a low level of fishing activity but otherwise live on a stilted Old World image, of which Clovelly is the supreme example. Inland , Devon is characterized by swards of lush pasture and a scattering of sheltered villages, the county's low population density dropping to almost zero on Dartmoor , the wildest and bleakest of the West's moors, and Exmoor , whose seaboard constitutes one of the West Country's most scenic littorals. Exeter and Plymouth are on the main rail lines from London and the Midlands, with branch lines from Exeter linking the north coast at Barnstaple and the south-coast towns of Exmouth and Torquay. Buses from the chief stations fan out along the coasts and into the interior, though the service can be extremely rudimentary for the smaller villages.

Occupying the main part of Devon between Exeter and Plymouth, Dartmoor is southern England's greatest expanse of wilderness, some 365 square miles of raw granite, barren bogland, sparse grass and heather-grown moor. It was not always so desolate, as testified by the remnants of scattered Stone Age settlements and the ruined relics of the area's nineteenth-century tin-mining industry. Today desultory flocks of sheep and groups of ponies are virtually the only living creatures to be seen wandering over the central fastnesses of the National Park, with solitary birds - buzzards, kestrels, pipits, stonechats and wagtails - wheeling and hovering high above.