This beautiful seaside town has gorgeous coastal walks and plenty to see
09:57, 13 Oct 2026Updated 09:59, 13 Oct 2026
This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more
This gorgeous spot is perfect for autumn(Image: Tom Meaker via Getty Images)
As the summer throngs start to thin out, late August and September offer an ideal opportunity to discover Devon’s coastline, with less crowded beaches, gentler temperatures and beautiful walks just waiting to be enjoyed. A delightful seaside town nestled between steep hills and the Bristol Channel has been crowned Devon’s finest seaside destination by Which?, placing it squarely on the map for an idyllic West Country escape.
Lynmouth is the sort of spot that appears almost impossibly picturesque, with its lovely riverside location, striking coastline and classic village appeal. Perched on the fringes of Exmoor National Park, it’s encircled by breathtaking scenery and is frequently dubbed “Little Switzerland”.
The region is a paradise for ramblers, with the South West Coast Path and Tarka Trail winding through the village and providing numerous routes to discover. Tourists can trace the River Lyn upstream to Watersmeet, a striking wooded gorge looked after by the National Trust, complete with riverside paths and a tea garden.
Among Lynmouth’s standout features is the renowned Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway, which has linked the twin villages since 1890. The 260-metre railway holds the title of the world’s highest and steepest water-powered railway, with travellers enjoying panoramic coastal vistas as they journey between the two settlements.
Those looking to transform their visit into a romantic getaway, River View is a second-floor flat positioned directly alongside the river in Lynmouth. The property boasts a furnished balcony with views over the bay, and on a clear day, guests might even glimpse the Welsh coastline in the distance.
Within, the flat provides a cosy open-plan lounge and kitchen space kitted out with everything required for an uncomplicated self-catering break. A king-size master bedroom with an en-suite shower room delivers a peaceful retreat in which to relax after a day discovering the coastline.
The balcony proves a particularly beautiful location for a morning cuppa or an evening tipple, with vistas across the river and the neighbouring village. There’s also no need to fret about preparing every meal, with numerous cafes and eateries nearby for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
For a different setting, Ilfracombe sits less than 20 miles away, celebrated for its selection of restaurants and historic harbour. Guests can also catch sight of Damien Hirst’s eye-catching ‘Verity’ statue positioned at the harbour entrance before returning to the tranquil environment of Lynmouth.
For even more striking scenery, holidaymakers can make the 1.5-mile trip to the Valley of Rocks, where soaring cliffs and distinctive rock formations form one of Exmoor’s most spectacular landscapes. The area is also home to intrepid goats and some of the highest sea cliffs in Britain, making it a memorable spot for a coastal walk.
If a large group gathering is in the pipeline, the area is additionally home to Lynhurst, a spacious, impressive property just a brief stroll from the historic village of Lynton. Nestled within stunning gardens and natural woodland, it boasts a games room with a slate pool table and dart board, alongside an outdoor table tennis table for abundant entertainment.
Visitors who have previously enjoyed a stay at River View have posted glowing reviews online. One guest said: “Lovely apartment. Perfectly situated with everything we needed. A real ‘home from home’. We love Lynmouth and will be back.”
Another added: “A wonderful location for walkers as several spectacular river and coastal walks from the door. Great for visitors with dogs, close to the promenade for walks and meeting lots of other dogs.”
A more in-depth review explained: “A small but well-equipped and comfortable flat with beautiful views over the river to the sea. Good location to explore the area. Luckily found a temporary parking spot initially on Riverside Road in order to unpack, as the flat entrance is on a pedestrianised street.
“Parking permit was £25 for the week at the nearby Upper Lyndale car park. Tesco delivered groceries without difficulty. Walks locally and some National Trust properties made it a very enjoyable week in a lovely location.”
One guest pointed out, however, that “the two flights of steep stairs would need to be taken into consideration by anybody perhaps not a 100% fit”, while another revelled in the scenery, commenting: “We had the door open all the time and could listen to the water and the wildlife, which we really enjoyed.”
RAPPER AJ Tracey has secretly tied the knot with his stunning girlfriend in an epic ceremony.
The Ladbroke Grove hitmaker, 32, has said ‘I do’ to model and influencer Liva, also 32, who is also known as Yung Peppermint on social media to her hundreds of thousands of followers.
Rapper AJ Tracey has secretly tied the knot with his very glam girlfriendCredit: GettyAJ and Liva have secretly dated for years – but have kept their romance under wrapsCredit: instagram
No expense was spared on the big day with a source telling The Sun that AJ, whose real name is Che, went all out to impress for the occasion.
Sign up for the Showbiz newsletter
Thank you!
The pair, who have aimed to keep their years-long romance under wraps, shunned the usual tradition of splashing photos from the big day online and ensured that all their guests were under strict instructions to not share any footage of the nuptials.
An insider told The Sun: “It was an epic wedding day fit for one of the UK’s most popular rappers.
Liva has been secretly romancing AJ for years with the pair getting married earlier this monthCredit: InstagramAJ and Liva aimed to keep their wedding day under wraps – and instructed all guests to keep quietCredit: RedfernsThe model is best known for her array of social media contentCredit: InstagramAJ described himself as the ‘luckiest man alive’ on the big dayCredit: Getty
“AJ and Liva quietly got engaged earlier this year and then wasted no time on planning an incredible wedding celebration.
Our source continued: “AJ and Liva have always aimed to keep their romance out of the public eye and have rarely ever shared snaps of one another online.
“They asked all their guests to keep news of the wedding under their hats and insisted that no photos were to be shared.
“Despite being one of Britain’s most recognisable rappers, AJ has always been keen to keep his home life under wraps.
“But he had the most fantastic day marrying Liva earlier this month and was telling his pals he felt like the luckiest man alive.”
The Sun first revealed that AJ and Liva were dating earlier this year.
The couple had managed to keep their connection quiet for years before Liva gave a rare glimpse into one of their date nights on her social media page at the time.
They are understood to have first connected after both being signed to the same modelling agency years ago and romance very quickly blossomed.
Our source said at the time: “AJ’s known for being a charming man in the industry so it’s no surprise he has swept Liva off her feet.
“Everyone is really happy for them and their pals hope the romance continues to go the distance.”
His 2019 hit Ladbroke Grove became a platinum hit and reached number three on the UK Singles Charts.
The star’s second album, Flu Game, became his biggest success reaching number two in 2021.
His track, Crush, featuring Jorja Smith was nominated for Song of the Year at this year’s MOBO Awards.
Last year, he also transitioned into television appearing alongside his cousin, TV presenter and chef Big Zuu, in their own Sky Max travel series titled Big Zuu and AJ Tracey’s Rich Flavours.
Meanwhile, Liva has built up her own following with the German-born model having developed a lucrative career as a social media influencer after moving to London after the Covid pandemic.
Katie Price has made a spectacular return to London Fashion Week—over a decade since she last walked the runwayCredit: GettyKatie showed off her enhanced chest and array of tattoosCredit: Getty
Showing off her newly enhanced chest, Katie wore a black waistcoat and black satin shorts with white ruffles on the back.
Speaking to the press before strutting her stuff, Katie told The Sun: “I’m so excited to be walking in the Natasha Zinko show.
Sign up for the Showbiz newsletter
Thank you!
“I’ve always been someone who believes in being unapologetically yourself, so this feels like a really natural fit for me.
“Fashion is about having fun, expressing yourself and feeling confident in your own skin, and I can’t wait to bring a bit of my personality to the catwalk.”
Taking place at Collins Music Hall in Islington, North London, the show marks the first time OnlyFans has joined London Fashion Week.
Speaking about the collaboration, Keily Blair, CEO of OnlyFans, said: “This collaboration brings together two brands with a shared belief in individuality, creativity, and fierce self-expression.
“OnlyFans has always been a platform where people can define themselves on their own terms, and Natasha Zinko brings that same spirit to fashion.
“Our London Fashion Week debut, which features OnlyFans creators, is a celebration of the communities behind both brands, and of the confidence to express yourself unapologetically.”
Meanwhile, Natasha added: “This limited capsule collection felt like a natural fit from the very beginning.
“We both share the same values: love, freedom of identity, inclusivity and body positivity. It’s about celebrating people exactly as we are.”
‘I think my boots are falling apart!” shouts Nigel just as we hit the pinnacles, a whole range of them jutting up and out from the mountainside, all thrillingly tall, spiky and knobbled. Through them we painstakingly step, fingers aching in gloves, heads sweating in helmets – squashing up narrow chimneys, squeezing through mighty boulders and inching along slender ledges on a twisting path that’s only just discernible through swathes of sharp white scree.
I know how Nigel’s boots are feeling: the going is far harder than I was expecting. This is only the first day of our annual trip to the Dolomites, a vast range of breathtaking sawtooth peaks in northern Italy, but my head’s already full of the thought I have every year as we start out: “If only you’d got fitter.”
But it should be worth all the scrapes, bumps, scares and sweat. Somewhere up ahead, hopefully not too far, is Rifugio Passo Santner, or Santnerpass Hut, a spectacular mountain refuge that, as everyone who sits near my desk at work knows, has been obsessing me ever since I first saw a picture of it eight months ago.
Allowing you to stay deep in the mountains for days on end, the high-altitude Dolomites huts we overnight at all have their charms, from hearty food to giddying views to a generous way with the grappa. But in terms of appearance, they tend to fall into two not particularly pulse-quickening camps: stone block or cuckoo clock. Although you’re almost always overjoyed to see them, none could ever pass for a Bond villain’s lair, however much grappa you’ve had.
Yet that is exactly what Santnerpass Hut resembles. Perched on top of a sheer cliff, this elongated triangle encased in a gleaming wrapper of galvanised steel looks like a giant Toblerone still in its foil – an eyepopping hit of modernity, originality and innovation in a place where tradition usually dictates more of the same.
After one final push, the five of us scramble up on to the summit and there it is just ahead, side on and glowing silver in the late afternoon sun, like a star that has touched down on Earth to enjoy the stunning views of the surrounding peaks with the rest of us, up at the bracing height of 2,734m.
“Welcome!” says the bartender as we enter. “You made it. Well done!” With the customary relief – if not actual jubilation – that follows a tough climb finally ending, we ease off our backpacks, gloves and boots then look around, slowly realising that Santnerpass Hut isn’t just a treat for the eyes from the outside.
Inside, what you first notice is the unbroken parade of huge windows wrapping around the refuge’s front and flanks. This doesn’t just turn every spot of the roomy ground floor into a light-filled observation point. It also means the hut achieves passive heating since it’s effectively one big solar collector. So there’s no need for log-devouring stoves. That’s quite an achievement at ground level; at more than 2km up, with no road access, it’s verging on miraculous.
‘Santnerpass Hut was built in 1956 but was taken over, closed and rebuilt, finally opening to the eager climbing public in the summer of 2023.’ Photograph: Andrew Gilchrist
Then there’s the wood. It’s blond and everywhere. Guests are basically cocooned within a spellbinding timber tapestry that casts everything in a warm yellow glow, quite a novelty to anyone used to the dingy two-watt corridors and bedrooms of most refuges.
The flooring is larch, the restaurant furnishings maple and the load-bearing A-frame spruce, its hefty angular joists exposed on the sundeck, where we soon find ourselves sinking well-earned ice-cold drinks and marvelling at this beacon of sustainable architecture.
There are other things to marvel at. Off in the distance, piercing up through an immense blanket of cloud, the lofty peaks of the Latemar group are catching the last rays of the sun, turning pink, orange and purple in a ravishing Dolomites phenomenon known as the enrosadira, triggered by calcium and magnesium in the rock. “This place is incredible,” says Donnie, sipping an Aperol spritz. “I’ve never been anywhere like it in my life.”
Santnerpass Hut was built in 1956 but in the last decade or so was taken over, closed and rebuilt, finally opening its generous glass doors in 2023. Designed by alpine specialists Senoner Tammerle Architects, the new refuge is not just meant to please the eye: the shape lets it shed thick snow and deflect howling winds.
There are more surprises when we take our pre-dinner showers. Not only does the wood here give way to zesty yellow laminated panels that wouldn’t look out of place in a chic nightclub, the showerheads also actually stay pointing at your body for the full three minutes of hot water a token gets you.
Dinner, however, may have been the biggest surprise of all. It was completely vegetarian – a shock for all of us and a treat for veggies Sam and Nigel. No goulash, no ragu, no pork chops. Instead, out of the kitchen came herb-sprinkled lentils with asparagus, radish and onion, pea and mint soup, then beetroot dumplings on a rich bean, tomato and yellow pepper broth, washed down with superb local wine in actual wine glasses and finished off with creme brulee.
“A delicious and nutritious meal,” said Sam, running his spoon round his plate. “What an eye-opener. A win-win for hiker and planet.”
Curfew was at 10pm but the restaurant was clearing out anyway. This may have been due to the fact that, in high spirits after our action-packed day, we had taken the hut’s guitar off the wall and treated everyone to that Proclaimers Alpine classic Sunshine on Leith, managing to get a singalong going with the very up-for-it, very international audience.
‘Made it’ … the writer on the summit, nearing the refuge. Photograph: Donald Livingstone
The refuge sleeps 4o in 16 rooms. Ours was a spacious affair with bunkbeds, a dainty dormer window and two large cubbyholes each, one for your bag, the other for your stuff – so much more useful than the usual pointless wardrobes and drawers that no one ever unpacks into, since you’ll be gone in a hurry at the crack of dawn.
We reached Santnerpass Hut via the König Laurin cable car, 22 miles (35km) from Bolzano, gateway to the Dolomites. After that, it’s a rising, fairly straight line to the refuge, a two-to-three-hour hike through loose scree, then boulders and pinnacles. But be warned: the last section is a via ferrata, meaning there’s a metal cable for you to clip your harness to, and grab hold of as you reach trickier, more treacherous passages. It’s not for beginners.
I’d heard, though, that there was another route and, keen to take it back down to the cable car, asked at reception. “Yes, there’s another way,” said Romina Huber, who co-owns and runs the hut with her husband (and chef) Michel Perathoner. “It’s not a via ferrata and it’s super beautiful.”
She wasn’t kidding. First it took us past the Vajolet towers, dramatic spires that lure climbers from all over the world. Then we swung right on to a winding path of fine white scree that rises sharply through meadows full of edelweiss, saxifrage, dwarf pine and boulders, leading to bulging cliffs and eventually the Coronelle Pass, an astonishing vantage point at 2,360m.
“Well, that was a walk and a half,” said Mac as we descended in the cable car 30 minutes later, exhausted after the final knee-popping trudge down from the pass on timber-pinned switchbacks. “My boots,” said Nigel, lifting his feet to let us see a rip in one and a sole flapping off the other, “have completely had it.”
Santnerpass Hut starts at €105pp per night, including breakfast and four-course vegetarian dinner
Hutiquette: the mountain hut code
Mountain huts may occasionally be rather luxurious these days, but their original function, still relevant, is survival. There are, as you might expect, several very sensible codes that make great use of words like “respect”, “other users”, and “environment”. My own code is no less worthy and comes from hard-won experience.
No complaining Huts are not hotels. If there’s a problem, go sort it out. Certainly, never complain about snoring, even when you are convinced it is about to trigger an avalanche. I once did, only to be informed, rather too forcefully, that is was me doing the snoring, an outrageous lie that triggered grunts of approval from other grumpy insomniacs. Gel ear plugs work well.
Share It’s sometimes hard to drop the urban habit of self-assertion to ensure survival. One night in a Corsican hut with a shared sleeping platform, an obnoxious Brit in a down bag shoved all the other sleepers into a pile at one end of the bench, claiming later that he was “dreaming of being pushed”. I pray never to run into him again.
Clean up after yourself … and take your rubbish home. The British Mountain Bothy Code has a good reminder on this point. I’d go even further and say, try to leave absolutely no trace at all. Visiting one treasured wild swimming spot recently, I found the scorch mark of a campfire. Whoever it was had not left any rubbish, and there was nothing to mark their visit, except that dreaded black spot, as if Blind Pew had delivered a death sentence.
The hut is for everyone I once cycled to a remote Icelandic hut and found it blissfully empty of people. Lighting the fire, I prepared my simple meal, and apart from wishing I had packed a beer, looked forward to a night of splendid isolation. Then a large group of locals arrived. I felt my heart sink. My solitary bliss was gone. They sat down, gave me a beer, and two hours later, after helping to eat their huge delicious feast, I felt like I’d joined a tribe. When a hut generates that kind of gang conviviality, it’s uplifting.
Look after others In Scandinavia, this is a social habit that is deeply embedded. You turn up in a hut in winter and there are logs because the last visitors left them for you. You cut your finger and they all have the plaster that you forgot to bring. The Norwegian Mountain Code has a list of essential reminders. Kevin Rushby
