Hill Pond Caravan and Camping Park

If you’re after coastal walks, Exmouth makes a good point to join up with the South West Coast Path: take it all the way round to Poole if you’ve got the time and energy, or do shorter, more digestible day trip sections, such as round to the mouth of the River Otter at Budleigh Salterton (25 minutes by car). For a wilder kind of landscape, climb the moss-covered Haytor Rocks (30 minutes), with views right across Dartmoor, or make the 50-minute trip to Berry Head National Nature Reserve, where a working lighthouse crowns a promontory full of guillemots and peregrine falcons, white rock roses and orchids, with harbour porpoises often spottable out at sea. If you like your creatures more exotic, Paignton Zoo (40 minutes) obliges with elephants, orangutans, red ruffed lemurs and a Jungle Express train to visit them, while those in search of Devon’s extinct wildlife will love a tour of the fossil museum in Lyme Regis, especially if they top it off with some fossil hunting of their own on Charmouth beach (both 45 minutes). In among all that tooth and claw, make time for Torquay, (40 minutes) where you can take spins on the English Riviera Wheel, tour the 12th-century abbey and its gardens and go back further in time in the prehistoric cave network of Kents Cavern.