Why the South West is unlike anywhere else in England - and the numbers that prove it

It isn't modesty that stops people from making grand claims about this corner of the country. It's that the facts do it better.

There is a tendency, when writing about the South West, to reach for the obvious words. Stunning. Breathtaking. A hidden gem. These words have been applied so many times, to so many photographs of Durdle Door and Kynance Cove and the view from Dunkery Beacon, that they have ceased to mean anything at all.

The better approach is simply to state what is true. And what is true about Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Cornwall turns out to be rather remarkable.

The darkest skies in England

On a clear night on Exmoor, you can see the Milky Way with the naked eye. Not as a faint smear, but as a broad, textured band across the sky. Exmoor is an International Dark Sky Reserve - one of only a handful in the world - and holds the distinction of having the darkest skies anywhere in England.

Photo by Keith Trueman

This is partly geography. Exmoor sits between the Bristol Channel and the Exe Valley, far from any major city, with relatively low road density and a farming landscape that generates little light pollution. It is also partly the result of deliberate effort: local authorities, farmers and National Park planners have worked together for years to manage outdoor lighting across the moor.

The Exmoor Dark Skies Festival runs each autumn, drawing stargazers from across the country. But you don't need a festival to see what Exmoor offers at night. Park anywhere on the high moor after dark and simply look up.

The second largest tidal range in the world

At Burnham-on-Sea, on the Somerset coast, the tide goes out so far that the sea disappears entirely. On a spring tide, the water retreats more than a mile from the shore, leaving behind a vast expanse of sand and mud that belongs to neither land nor sea.

The Bristol Channel has the second largest tidal range in the world - up to 12 metres between high and low tide - second only to the Bay of Fundy in Canada. The cause is the shape of the channel itself: a long funnel that narrows and shallows as it pushes east toward Avonmouth and the Severn Estuary, compressing each incoming tide until it has nowhere to go but up.

The effects of this are felt all along the Somerset and North Devon coast. They shape the towns, the fishing traditions, the timing of work and leisure. At Watchet Harbour, boats that were afloat at noon are sitting on mud by late afternoon. At Porlock Weir, the return of the tide is as reliable and dramatic as any clock.

This is not a curiosity to be noted and moved on from. It is one of the most significant geological and tidal facts in the British Isles - and it happens, quietly and twice a day, on the Somerset coast.

The longest county coastline in England

Cornwall's coastline measures 422 miles. To put that in context: if you walked the entire South West Coast Path along Cornwall's shores without stopping, you would walk for the better part of three weeks.

No other county in England has a longer coastline. Cornwall manages this partly through its geography - it is almost entirely a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean and the English Channel, with only the River Tamar marking the border with Devon - and partly through its extraordinary topography, which creates hundreds of coves, inlets, headlands and sea stacks that add miles to any honest measurement.

Those 422 miles contain more than 300 beaches. But the figure that matters more than the total is the variety packed within it: the Atlantic-facing surf beaches of Newquay and Bude bear almost no resemblance to the sheltered coves of the Helford River, twenty miles to the south. The cliffs at Land's End are nothing like the low, sandy shores around Hayle. Cornwall's coast is not one thing. It is dozens of distinct environments, each shaped by different rock, different weather and different history.

More listed buildings than anywhere outside London

The South West holds 24 per cent of England's listed buildings - the highest share of any English region outside London and the South East.

This is a statistic that takes a moment to sink in. One in every four protected historic buildings in England stands within a handful of counties on the south-western peninsula. Some of this is explained by the survival of medieval architecture in towns and villages that were not industrialised and were not bombed. Wells Cathedral, Lacock Abbey, Montacute House, Launceston Castle, the Georgian terraces of Bath - these are the headline entries. But the bulk of the 24 per cent is made up of farmhouses, barns, mills, market crosses, church towers and cottages, spread across thousands of settlements.

The listed building is, in a sense, a measure of continuity - of a landscape that has not been entirely remade. The South West, for all its coastal erosion and economic volatility, has held onto more of its built past than almost anywhere else in England.

The highest point in southern England

High Willhays stands at 621 metres on the northern edge of Dartmoor, about five kilometres south of Okehampton. It is not a dramatic summit. There are no sharp ridges, no visible cairn visible from miles around, no sense of arrival that announces itself clearly. The moorland simply rises to a gentle plateau, marked by a few low outcrops of granite, and then begins to fall away.

What it is, quietly and factually, is the highest point in southern England - the tallest ground south of the Peak District. From the summit on a clear day, you can see the coast in three directions: the Bristol Channel to the north, the English Channel to the south, and sometimes, on the clearest days, the Atlantic glitter to the west.

It sits within one of Dartmoor's military danger zones, which means access is occasionally restricted. But most days, it can be reached from Okehampton on a walk of a few hours across open moorland, through a landscape of bog cotton, heather, granite tors and the particular emptiness that Dartmoor does better than anywhere.

60% of England's Heritage Coast

More than half of all Heritage Coast designated land in England falls within the South West. The Heritage Coast designation is applied to stretches of undeveloped coastline that are considered to have exceptional natural beauty and scientific importance - coast that is actively protected from development and managed for public access.

That the South West holds 60 per cent of it is, again, a figure that rewards thinking about. It means that if you walk the coast path from Minehead to Poole, the majority of what you walk through is not just beautiful but officially recognised as among the most irreplaceable coastal landscape in England.

The Jurassic Coast - England's only natural UNESCO World Heritage Site, running 96 miles from Exmouth in Devon to Studland in Dorset — is the most famous of these designations. But the heritage coast extends far beyond it: the North Devon coast, the Hartland Peninsula, the Penwith coast in far west Cornwall, the chalk cliffs of the Isle of Purbeck.

What the numbers add up to

Taken together, these figures describe a place that holds, within four counties and roughly 3.65 million people, a disproportionate share of what makes England worth caring about: its wildest nights, its most dramatic tides, its longest undeveloped coast, its most intact historic fabric.

The South West is not a pleasant corner of the country to retire to, or a nice place for a summer holiday. It is, by almost any measurable standard, one of the most geologically, historically and ecologically significant stretches of land in Britain.

It happens also to be where you can get a proper crab sandwich, a pint of farmhouse cider, and a walk that ends at the sea. The statistics are compelling. The evidence, as ever, is best gathered in person.

This is partly geography. Exmoor sits between the Bristol Channel and the Exe Valley, far from any major city, with relatively low road density and a farming landscape that generates little light pollution. It is also partly the result of deliberate effort: local authorities, farmers and National Park planners have worked together for years to manage outdoor lighting across the moor.

The Exmoor Dark Skies Festival runs each autumn, drawing stargazers from across the country. But you don't need a festival to see what Exmoor offers at night. Park anywhere on the high moor after dark and simply look up.