The best national parks in Britain, according to 15 writers
Thanks to our parliamentary system, the process of passing laws in Britain can be either a sea of tranquility or a riot of raised voices and duelling wordplay. As the recent debates over assisted dying demonstrated, the latter is often the case. But sometimes, there are nods of agreement all around the Commons, as a good idea becomes a formally held one.
This second state of affairs was in evidence in 1949, when the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act was making its way towards the statute books. Introduced by the then-Labour government led by Clement Attlee – part of a raft of measures to reconstruct the country in the wake of the Second World War – it proposed protected status for some of the nation’s key beauty spots. A palpably excellent (and overdue) suggestion, it passed with all-party support, receiving royal assent 75 years ago today (on December 16 1949).
The positive effects of the Act are splendidly visible today. In its initial scope, it created 10 national parks. Four of these came into official existence almost immediately, in 1951 – with a further six being added by 1957. Another five have since followed (the most recent being South Downs National Park, which had its status conferred in 2009), making for 15 fully protected spaces in total – 10 in England, three in Wales, and two in Scotland.
Which of them is the greatest?
In some ways, this is an unnecessary question. How, for example, are you to compare the epic scenery of the Lake District with the low-lying beauty of Broads, or the peaks of the Cairngorms with the wild space of Exmoor? And what would you gain from the process?
But in other ways, it is a very pertinent question. These are places – glorious outdoor playgrounds – which mean a great deal to a great many people, and on a subjective basis.
Here, 15 of Telegraph Travel’s regular contributors make an individual case for one of the 15 national parks, arguing for its relative greatness in comparison to the rest. You may agree. You may well not. In which case, tell us your own opinion in the comments box…
England
Peak District National Park
Inaugurated: April 17, 1951
This, fellow outdoors lovers, is a no-brainer. The history of the Peak District – along with its epic landscapes and 1,600 miles of walking trails – puts it in a class of its own. On April 24 1932, the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass brought the issue of access to the country’s top beauty spots into public consciousness. In 1951, it became the UK’s first national park. There are now 15 and the Peak District is godfather to them all.
The Peaks are a combination of dramatic gritstone edges (Dark Peak), steep limestone dales (White Peak) and rolling hills and farmland (South West Peak). The Pennine Way, Britain’s oldest long-distance walking trail, starts in beautiful, ancient Edale and climbs Jacob’s Ladder to the Kinder Scout Circuit, with its stunning views around Mam Tor. Easily reached from Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham and Derby, it’s also our most accessible national park, attracting more than 13 million visitors each year. I rest my case.
Richard Madden
See our pick of the best hotels in the Peak District.
Lake District National Park
Inaugurated: May 9, 1951
“The loveliest spot that man hath found.” The Lake District National Park wears this badge of honour – proclaimed by local champion William Wordsworth in 1802 from his home, Dove Cottage, in Grasmere – with pride. And rightly so.
Originally the playground of poets and authors, then early climbers and ramblers including the Everest pioneer George Mallory and fell walker Alfred Wainwright, the Lakes now welcomes 18 million modern-day visitors each year. Its status as our most-visited national park admittedly comes at a cost, but it’s possible to avoid the crowds that flock by the coachload to Bowness Bay or the summit of Scafell Pike – consider instead the shores of Crummock Water or the Borrowdale fells, for example.
When it comes to food, the region holds the most Michelin stars of any besides London – enquire about the length of the waiting list at Simon Rogan’s L’Enclume in Cartmel and you’ll understand its culinary prowess. Its pubs are walking-boot-friendly and flag-stone-floor affairs, where muddy paws mix with locals and in-the-know visitors alike – a pint by a roaring fire at Langdale’s remote Old Dungeon Ghyll is a must.
It is the wilderness beyond the big attractions that draws me to the Lakes. Walking the high paths above the Langdale Valley, watching the Crinkle Crags turn a dusty pink as the sun sets, swimming in the bracing waters of an inky tarn or climbing the crags of the Great Gables – this is where I long to be, lonely as a cloud, embracing the very best of the nation’s loveliest national park.
Lucy Aspden-Kean
See our pick of the best hotels in the Lake District.
Dartmoor National Park
Inaugurated: October 30, 1951
After 25 years living in Dartmoor National Park, I’ve come to realise its greatest quality is an intangible understatedness that rewards those who absorb its moody weather and broodingly dark landscapes. There’s not so many places to stay, nor twee honeytrap villages. Just gritty landscapes of protruding knuckles of granite tors and squelching Baskervillian bogs where small hill farms dovetail with ancient cists and stone-circles on the wind-whipped moorland.
For a perfect introduction to Dartmoor’s hilly treeless expanses, head to the accessible tors, such as Hound Tor or Haytor. Climb them, I dare you, because on blue-sky days you’ll see much of Devon. Meanwhile, flashes of Dartmorian life dwell in pretty Widecombe-on-the-Moor, with its dark stone, 14th-century church. And from the remote Two Bridges Hotel, hike to Wistman’s Wood’s ethereally misty and mossy temperate rainforest, before returning for a Devonshire cream tea. Proper job, we’d say.
Mark Stratton
See our pick of the best hotels in Dartmoor.
North York Moors National Park
Inaugurated: November 29, 1952
While the Yorkshire Dales National Park is all comely villages, soft dales and gurgling rivers, the North York Moors is the more unruly sibling; bolder and wilder. The moors – awash with purple in August as England’s largest area of heather moorland – are gorgeously windswept while its deep-riven valleys reveal unexpected gems: a Norman crypt beneath the church at pretty Lastingham or a tiny two-room pub at Beck Hole.
Weaving its way across, trailing nostalgic plumes of steam, is the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, as heart-stirring as the Bridestones – fantastically weathered pillars of rock near Dalby Forest – or Roseberry Topping, the comically cone-shaped mini-mountain in the north. There’s beauty, too, the soaring ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, or the sheep-grazing village of Hutton-le-Hole.
Its trump card is the coastline, a riot of precipitous cliffs, tottering villages, beckoning beaches and wildlife – with sightings of minke whales and dolphins not unknown. An unremitting rollercoaster should you choose to walk it. But you’ll feel marvellously energised.
Helen Pickles
See our pick of the best hotels in North Yorkshire.
Exmoor National Park
Inaugurated: October 19, 1954
Sure, Wordsworth wandered lonely as a cloud in the Lakes – but only because his poet mates were off getting Romantic in Exmoor. Coleridge, Southey and Shelley: all waxed lyrical in and about this widescreen epic of windswept heath, wooded combes, secret coves and soaring crags.
No other national park rivals its scenic and natural diversity. Its sea cliffs, peaking at the 318m Great Hangman, out-soar the North York Moors. Its free-roaming herds of native ponies arrived many millennia before Dartmoor’s or the New Forest’s. Its regal red deer outnumber those in Peaks and Lakes combined, topping 3,000. Its Saxon and Norman churches (Culbone, Winsford, Porlock) are comelier, its thatched villages – Allerford, Selworthy, Dunster – chocolate-boxier.
None of that’s why I adore it, though. My love can be measured in feet – two of them, tramping 600-plus miles of glorious trails. Delve into magical Horner Wood, amble across the medieval clapper bridge at Tarr Steps, or trace the goat-grazed, waterfall-striped, brine-scented coast path between Lynton and Heddon’s Mouth, and you’ll fall headlong for Exmoor, too.
Paul Bloomfield
See our pick of the best hotels in Exmoor.
Yorkshire Dales National Park
Inaugurated: November 16, 1954
I have a long, intimate relationship with the Yorkshire Dales National Park that is more storied than I sometimes admit to myself. I did part of my teacher training at Giggleswick and lived on site at the school there. I took pupils on hikes around Fountains Fell, in fog and snow. My favourite English place of worship is the Quaker meeting house at Brigflatts near Sedbergh.
I love trains and have admired the UK’s grandest line, the Settle-Carlisle, and the Ribblehead viaduct it crosses, since my first ride on it, in 1990. I repeated the journey this last summer on a glorious day of sunshine and blue skies, and bought a 2025 charity calendar showing the line’s female staff at work, minus their clothes.
I can see Penyghent and Ingelborough from my kitchen window, but not much of Whernside, the highest of the Yorkshire Three Peaks. I live right on the pre-1974 border, near Clitheroe, having moved back to my home county just three and a half years ago – after a 37-year hiatus. When I came home from Argentina, after a decade, my first big walk was a long section of the Pennine Way. So, there it is – a life, woven in and out of a national park. It is beautiful, big, welcoming, and on the doorstep.
Chris Moss
See our pick of the best hotels in the Yorkshire Dales.
Northumberland National Park
Inaugurated: April 6, 1956
Were there such a thing as a National Park Factory, clever people in white coats would suck their pencils and design something that looks like Northumberland. If you want big skies, dark skies, high-sided valleys, untamed rivers, wildlife, picturesque villages breaking up a landscape otherwise devoid of human habitation, then Northumberland ticks every box. And if those white coats tapped into AI, it would probably suggest throwing in an extinct volcano. Northumberland has one, it’s called the Cheviot.
Northumberland is the Cinderella to its northerly neighbours the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales; but neither of those can boast Hadrian’s Wall. And while the Lake District and the Dales seek to hog the walker’s market, Northumberland will modestly point to more than 1,100km of footpaths and 72 per cent of the park classified as open access. You are spoilt for choice here.
Mark Rowe
See our pick of the best hotels in Northumberland.
The Broads National Park
Inaugurated: April 1, 1989
OK, technically the Broads isn’t a national park. But this interconnected ooze of man made waterways – Britain’s largest protected wetland – has the same status. And it fully deserves to be heralded in the same way. I grew up on its edges and its lazy tempo, swaying reeds and enormous skies are somehow sunk into my bones.
It doesn’t have the high drama of the Lakes or Snowdonia. But it’s fitting for our times: a place to log off, and go slow. Well, you have to: speed limits for boaters are never more than 6mph. Exploring at water-level makes sense, by cruiser, SUP or canoe – the Canoe Man offers overnight camping trips.
For an overview, climb the stairs and ladders up the tower of Ranworth church, aka the Cathedral of the Broads; it has the country’s best rood screen too. There are plenty of waterside pubs, but a fresh ale at the Fur and Feather, near Salhouse Broad, gets my vote – Woodfordes Brewery is right next door.
Sarah Baxter
See our pick of the best hotels in Norfolk.
New Forest National Park
Inaugurated: March 1, 2005
The New Forest appeared in your textbook at a relatively early juncture if you studied history according to the English school syllabus of the 1980s. It was the setting for the sort of incident that always captures classroom imaginations. The strange death of a king.
In this case, we are talking about the untimely demise of William Rufus – the third son of William the Conqueror, but his father’s successor on the throne, in the aftermath of 1066 and all that. His was a relatively short, largely unremarkable reign (1087-1100), mainly notable for the way it ended: on a summer day (August 2), while hunting for deer through the dense Hampshire treescape. The arrow which pierced the king’s lung was probably fired by the nobleman Walter Tyrrell, possibly in error – although possibly also in service to Rufus’s younger brother Henry, who picked up the tumbled crown with indecent haste.
Whatever the truth – and if you want a closer perspective, you can visit the purported site, which is marked by the “Rufus Stone”, near the hamlet of Minstead – the shooting of William II remains a compelling tale. But it is the location as much as the dearth of hard known facts which bestows air of mystery: the branches thick around the royal hunting party; the hot sun’s rays struggling to breach the canopy; the scratchings of animals and birds, unseen in the foliage, adding an eeriness.
It is an image not so far removed from the New Forest as you will find it in the present day, even with roads running across it, villages in its midst, and ponies roaming at will. It is a gloriously pastoral slice of the English landscape, and if you pause on the trail as you hike through it, close your eyes and absorb the silence, you might just hear a cry between the trunks, that the King is dead.
Chris Leadbeater
See our pick of the best hotels in the New Forest.
South Downs National Park
Inaugurated: November 12, 2009
The South Downs may be the youngest of Britain’s national parks (initiated into the club in 2010), but this is an ancient landscape of Iron Age hillforts, Roman villas, medieval castles and a national trail that has been stomped for more than 6,000 years.
Sure, it doesn’t reach the heights of Snowdonia nor the depths of the Lakes. But this is a rambling, rolling chalk landscape – a playground for rare butterflies, paragliders and chittering skylarks – that offers a first taste of the great outdoors for so many southerners. Some 117,000 people live within its bounds, but another 5 million live within three miles of the national park.
From the cliff-top walks of the Seven Sisters, to the artistic farmhouse at Charleston, to the operatic eccentricity of Glyndebourne, to the handsome ponds of Sheffield Park and the wetlands at Arundel, this is a national park of high-quality attractions at every turn. And come nighttime, the entertainment continues. The South Downs is a dark sky reserve, and one of the best places in Britain to see the milky way.
Greg Dickinson
See our pick of the best hotels in the South Downs.
Wales
Snowdonia/Eryri National Park
Inaugurated: October 18, 1951
Snowdonia (Eryri), Wales’ original national park, has been the playground for family holidays since my childhood. I keep returning to the juxtaposed landscape of craggy mountain ranges and wave-washed coastline, sprawling outwards from the summit of Mount Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), the highest piece of rock in Wales and England at 3,560ft.
Zip World sites now dominate since the adrenaline-adventure boom, but the park has history, too. I’m always ready for lunch at the historic Pen-Y-Gwryd Hotel at the foot of the Llanberis Pass. The base for Hillary and Tenzing’s first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953, their signed memorabilia keep the memories alive.
Snowdonia can be saturated. High-summer coach groups jostle for the Snowdon Mountain Railway, the precipitous Victorian track to the Snowdon summit. Yet, just minutes away, a woodland trail emerges to reveal the lonely mountain vigil of Dolbadarn Castle. Built around 1220, it survived the campaigns of Edward I and was only later captured in watercolour by the artist JMW Turner, who eulogised its “majestic solitude”. And therein lies the secret to Snowdonia: embrace the wildness.
David Atkinson
See our pick of the best hotels in Snowdonia.
Pembrokeshire Coast/Arfordir Penfro National Park
Inaugurated: February 29, 1952
Cornwall gets more fuss, but the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park fulfils similar Famous Five fantasies, its ragged coastline indented with turquoise bays, seaweed-ensnared coves and dune-flanked beaches backed by rocks around since dinosaurs walked the earth. The clincher? The 186-mile coast path, which skips joyously over stile and kissing gate, through fern-flecked woods and flowery meadows where skylarks trill, and along gorse-clad cliffs that nosedive to the booming Atlantic. Every few miles brings you to a cute village like Solva, Porthgain or Newport, where you can listen to the rumble of the sea over a pint in a salty seadog pub and a platter of boat-fresh seafood.
There’s a lot to love in this knockout of a national park. Chuck on walking boots to stomp to wind-battered, soul-stirring viewpoints like moody Strumble Head, follow in the footsteps of Celtic saints and pilgrims to coastal honeypot St Davids, topped off by the country’s most mesmerising Norman cathedral, take a heart-pounding leap into the ocean coasteering with the pros at TYF, or hang out with puffins in their thousands on Skomer Island.
The heathery moors and tors of the Preseli Hills ripple inland, diving deep into prehistory and mystery, with Bronze Age cairns, standing stones and legends of King Arthur. And when the lights go out, the stars blaze in some of Britain’s inkiest skies, best appreciated at eight Dark Sky Discovery sites.
Kerry Walker
See our pick of the best hotels in Pembrokeshire.
Brecon Beacons/Bannau Brycheiniog National Park
Inaugurated: April 17, 1957
Rugged enough for the SAS to use as their training base, and with the loftiest land in southern Britain (Pen y Fan, at 886m) thrown in for good measure, the Brecon Beacons (Bannau Brycheiniog) baits hardcore adventure-lovers a-plenty.
Outdoor action here happens around a series of summits shaped like waves paused at breaking point, and the interconnecting tracts of moor. But the park’s gentler side – sessile oak-blanketed river valleys, cookie-tin towns like Crickhowell, fairy-tale castles as at Tretower and Carreg Cennen and even Michelin-starred dining at The Walnut Tree near Abergavenny – is the charming counterbalance that helps make this such a diverse destination.
Visit where Wales’ Industrial Revolution began at Blaenavon World Heritage Landscape, chug in a narrowboat along the leafy Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal or go chasing waterfalls in the spellbinding southern valleys and you’ll discover a region that’s not merely wild, but culturally fascinating and just plain mesmerising too.
Luke Waterson
See our pick of the best hotels in the Brecon Beacons.
Scotland
Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park
Inaugurated: April 24, 2002
Go to any Scottish wedding, Hogmanay party or international football match and you won’t hear revellers or fans singing about Loch Ness. The tune on their lips is Loch Lomond – or The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond, to be precise – and the song is as much a championing of melody and spirit as it is of geography. I love the song, but not as much as I do the place.
It’s the astonishing range that strikes you first about Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. The peat-brown mountains that roll as far as the eye can see. The beach-haloed islands and rhododendron forests on the largest stretch of freshwater in Britain. The blooming glens, the serpentine sea lochs.
It is not as wild as the Cairngorms, that’s true, but the landscape is far more varied than Scotland’s other national park. If you’re in the mood for a tiny but untamed break, nowhere else in the UK comes close.
I have plenty of favourite places I’d recommend. Like the gorgeous farm turned boutique hotel Monachyle Mhor, overlooking Loch Doine and down the single-track road from Balquhidder, past Rob Roy’s grave. Or the ridge of Ben Lui, a mountain so granite-faced it wouldn’t look out of place in the Himalayas. Perhaps, though, the best place to get a sense of the national park’s splendour is on Loch Katrine, sailing on the deck of Steamship Sir Walter Scott in atmospheric light on a clear winter’s day. Sheer bliss, if you ask me.
Mike MacEacheran
See our pick of the best hotels on Loch Lomond.
Cairngorms National Park
Inaugurated: January 6, 2003
Scot John Muir – father of America’s national parks – famously declared, “The mountains are calling and I must go.” The call of the Cairngorms, the grandiose granddad and largest of the UK’s national park family, is irresistible. Only finally recognised in 2003, the Cairngorm Mountains are an elemental landscape scarcely changed since the end of the last Ice Age.
The unique, sprawling mountain plateau is the nearest thing Britain has to the Alps: home to six of the isle’s ten highest mountains. It’s a wildscape alive with wildcats, capercaillie, pine martens and the UK’s only wild reindeer herd, patches of rare timewarp Caledonian Forest too.
The well set-up resort town of Aviemore is rightly world-renowned for mountain biking, hiking and climbing. Skiing, snowboarding and ice climbing take over during Arctic winters you cannot experience in any other UK park. There is another Cairngorms too, a cosy oasis of trim granite villages and whisky distilleries. Blend both sides together and the Cairngorms offer accessible, engaging grandeur on a jaw-dropping scale that no other national park in these isles comes close to.
Robin McKelvie