Alaska Amazon Australia Brit. As the sky blushes a deep purple, the Teign River can be heard gurgling across the Gidleigh Park Hotel's 45 acres of green hills. Enticing smells from the hotel's award-winning restaurant begin to waft through the bedrooms.
Isolated farmhouses ringed by low stone fences speckle the bleak landscape of the moors.
The hotel's expatriate American owners, Paul and Kay Henderson, are two of the many hoteliers across England who have turned old manor houses into luxurious inns, providing their guests with personal service, five-course meals and beautiful surroundings but at a cost of several hundred dollars a night. Despite the desolation and often inclement weather, Dartmoor's vast expanses of wild purple heather and rounded hills topped by granite outcrops known as tors lure many of Gidleigh Park's guests onto the moors for all-day hikes. Guests can take the train from London's Paddington station to Exeter, a town about a 40-minute drive from the hotel, or fly into the Exeter airport. Rental cars are available in Exeter, or the hotel will arrange to have a taxi pick you up, at your expense. Equipped with compasses, maps and backpacks filled with cheese, fruit and cookies provided by the hotel, they wade through knee-high grass and wet bogs.