Exmoor Family Walking Holiday: A Step Back in Time That Actually Works
Let me be honest about something: getting children excited about walking holidays is not easy. So when I heard about HF Holidays’ family walking trips in Exmoor — a setup with communal dining, guided walks, and a distinctly old-fashioned British charm — I was curious whether the formula could win over reluctant kids. Four days and four walks later, I had my answer, along with a few tick bites, a ceilidh dance, and a 12-year-old son who told me on the drive home that he preferred this to any beach holiday we’ve ever taken.
The Setting: Holnicote House
The trip is based at Holnicote House, near the village of Selworthy in Somerset. It’s a Victorian property that has operated as an HF Holidays base since 1952, with 32 rooms — 14 of them singles — sleeping up to 50 guests. During our stay, there were roughly 40 of us. The rooms are simple but spacious, with sash windows and built-in cupboards that feel straight out of another era. My three children — aged 10, 12, and 14 — and I shared two rooms.
Everything about the place has an Enid Blyton boarding-school quality. Morning briefings happen in the boot room. There’s pre-dinner hula-hooping on the lawn. You tick boxes to order packed lunches. Evening briefings let you choose the next day’s walk. Brown paper bags carry your snacks. It all feels like 1956, and that’s not a criticism — it’s part of what makes the experience work.
The Company: A Cooperative With Deep Roots
HF Holidays is a cooperative that has been running since 1913, founded by Lancashire pastor Thomas Arthur Leonard as the Holiday Fellowship. His original mission was to give working people access to countryside walking holidays. More than a century on, much of that spirit is intact: communal dining tables, organised walks, evening entertainment, and a shared sense that everyone has agreed to leave modern life behind for a few days.
The Walks: Four Levels, Five to Six Hours
Each day, walkers choose from four graded options. Level one covers about 3 miles; level four runs about 10 miles with the steepest ascents. We were out for five or six hours daily, and the pacing was excellent — snack stops, paddle stops, tree-climbing stops, and the promise of ice-cream at the end kept even my most reluctant child moving.
The walks are largely circular and cover genuinely varied terrain: buttercup fields with noisy sheep, pine forests, and cliff paths. One standout route started with a two-stop ride on the West Somerset Railway steam train and ended at Dunster Castle, which rises fairytale-like from a deer-filled field. That combination of steam train, walking, and a National Trust property at the finish line was the highlight for my children.
Our guide, Mary — a former geography teacher — brought the landscape to life. She had us counting rings on felled trees to determine their age and guessing which leaves belonged to which species. With borrowed binoculars, we identified the white belly feathers of a buzzard and picked out a cargo ship far out in the Bristol Channel. My youngest started asking questions about trees and flowers on her own, which is not something that happens on a beach holiday.
The Social Side: Solo Parenting Without Loneliness
I travelled as a solo parent — my husband, who has partial paralysis, stayed home — and I was never lonely. Long conversations on the trail led naturally to shared meals and drinks in the evening. The children gravitated to “kids tables” at dinner, which forced the adults to mingle, and that turned out to be a quiet stroke of genius.
I shared one dinner with a father who’d brought his youngest while older children stayed home to revise. Another meal was with a woman travelling with her grandchildren — under-11s stay free with a paying adult, up to three of them. Nearly everyone I met had been on an HF Holiday before; many first came as children themselves and were now returning with their own families.
The Food: Better Than You’d Expect
The food was a genuine surprise. Nightly three-course dinners were well above what I’d anticipated from a group walking holiday. My son loved the soups, my eldest daughter went for the salads, and my youngest — feeling too grown-up for the children’s menu of burgers and nuggets — chose fish with couscous and chicken with potato gratin instead.
The History Beneath The Surface
There’s a deeper history here that deserves attention. During the Second World War, Holnicote House became Britain’s first mixed-race orphanage, established for children born to Black American GIs and white British mothers — at a time when many of those children faced open hostility and rejection. My children, who are mixed-race, were the only mixed-race kids on the trip, and while that didn’t define our experience, knowing this history added a layer of meaning to staying in a house that had once sheltered children not so different from my own.
The holiday ended with a live ceilidh band and dancing. The final song told the story of a woman named Sally walking down an alley and meeting a man from Tennessee. Sitting there, watching my daughters line-dance with pensioners, I thought about those young English women and their American GI lovers, and I felt grateful my children are growing up in a different era — and that this house, with all its layers of history, is still a place where families come together.
The Ticks: A Practical Note
One thing worth flagging: ticks are a reality on Exmoor walks. My son found one buried in his torso one evening, and we made a nighttime trip down the corridor to Jill, one of the guides, who cheerfully produced tweezers and removed it. It was handled calmly and efficiently, but if you’re travelling with children, pack tick-removal tools and check thoroughly each evening.
The Verdict
My son’s verdict on the drive home — that he preferred this to any beach holiday, despite the ticks — told me everything I needed to know. The combination of peer company (other children on the same walks), expert guidance, old-fashioned communal living, and genuinely varied routes made this work in a way I hadn’t expected. I came looking for a new walking buddy among my children, and I think I found one.
Practical Details
The next four-night Exmoor Family Walking Adventures run on 17 and 24 August, priced at £909 per person, with under-11s free. The package includes full board and daily guided walks. Discounts of up to £172 per person are available for Easter, August, and October 2027 departures if you book ahead.