Devon County
(Historic)

Map Reference: (50.801273, -3.86564)

Devon is a maritime county in the West Country of England. Devon has two seacoasts, with the Bristol Channel and English Channel respectively. The southern coast is very lovely, rugged between Thurlestone and Salcombe, from where a network of craggy tidal creeks reaches deep into the land. Cliffs front the sea. Tor Bay faces east into the Channel. Around it lie the resorts of Torquay and Paignton. Inland much of southern Devon is Dartmoor, a bleak but picturesque landscape of granite hill country. Tavistock is the Queen of Dartmoor, a fine granite-built town on the Tavy. Exeter, the county town, stands on the River Exe, a mixture of mediæval and modern. Plymouth, standing between the mouths of the rivers Plym and Tamar, has been a major naval port since the days of Elizabeth I. There is rolling agricultural land to the north and in the east of the county, particularly along the Exe and Culm Valleys. The northern coastline is remarkable for steep thickly-wooded cliffs between Lynmouth and Ilfracombe, while beyond the Taw and Torridge estuaries there is again magnificent coastal scenery around Clovelly (itself a jewel of a village), and from Hartland to the Cornish border.