Beyond the Lake District: five of the UK’s less-visited national parks

Ask most people to name a British national park and they’ll probably plump for the Lake District or the Peak District. But there are 15 parks in the UK, most of which receive far fewer visitors than those famous names. Here, we explore some of the best.

Bannau Brycheiniog (formerly Brecon Beacons)

Bannau Brycheiniog (the peaks of Brychan’s kingdom) national park is the highest ground in Britain south of Snowdonia and forms the centrepiece of the 519-square-mile region formerly known as the Brecon Beacons.

The Bannau, as they are known locally, have been a vital lung and escape for generations of miners and their families in the former coalmining valleys of south Wales since the last century, and the vast majority of the park’s 4.4 million annual visitors still come from there.

are the finest, including the beautifully named Sgwd yr Eira (“spout of snow”), which forms a dancing curtain behind which you can walk without getting wet.

is a mysterious, hidden lake cradled by the huge sweeping precipices of Bannau Sir Gaer (749 metres), one of the highest points of the Black Mountain (Mynydd Du), in the wild west of the park.

The legend of the Lady of the Lake concerns a young farmer’s son from the nearby village of Myddfai who, as he rested by the rocky lake shore, was amazed to see a beautiful young girl emerge from the lake. He immediately fell in love with this vision of loveliness and vowed to marry the fairy princess. However, she warned the lad that if he struck her without cause three times, or touched her with cold iron after they were married, she would return to the lake. Inevitably, that’s what happened.

dominates the skyline for miles. The earliest castle was probably the work of a Welsh prince, but the imposing ruins you see today were built by a later marcher lord named John Giffard as a demonstration of his wealth and influence.

on the A479 near Crickhowell. At its centre is Tretower Castle, built around the beginning of the 12th century in motte and bailey style and eventually replaced by the existing circular stone shell keep. Next door is the magnificent Tretower Court, a fortified manor house famed for its exquisite woodwork.

in the remote Vale of Ewyas in his haunting 1982 novel On the Black Hill, a story about two bachelor brothers that Chatwin wrote after a stay on a local farm.

Capel-y-Ffin was also associated with two more enigmatic figures. Inspired by visions of the Virgin Mary, self-styled Father Ignatius was a 19th-century Anglican monk who built a short-lived monastery here. The monastery, now a private house, was later the home of the controversial artist and typographer Eric Gill.

(doubles from £149 B&B) in Crickhowell is a 15th-century coaching inn with restaurant and 35 rooms.

Northumberland

The great Whig historian GM Trevelyan once described his native Northumberland as “the land of far horizons”, and there are few places left in England where you can gaze across great vistas of beautiful and uninhabited countryside with just the sounds of nature for company.

Northumberland national park has been described as England’s Empty Quarter, and with only about 2,000 permanent residents within its boundaries, it is the most sparsely populated park in the country and one of the least visited.

on the Scottish border.

marching camp, about 15 miles from Alwinton.

Built around AD80 on the Roman Dere Street, the camp was a staging post for imperial troops marching north. You’ll need a bit of what archaeologists call “the eye of faith” to imagine what it must have looked like when thousands of legionnaires were encamped here, because all that is left is a series of low grassy ridges and ditches, best seen in morning or evening light.

at the foot of the Simsonside Hills above Rothbury. This is the best-preserved prehistoric landscape in the national park, featuring an iron-age hillfort and one of the finest collections of cup and ring rock carvings found anywhere.

, on the banks of the River Coquet near Harbottle, takes its name from its mysterious Lady or Holy Well. This tree-embowered pool with a much later Victorian Celtic cross marooned at its centre is thought to be an early Christian site where Saint Ninian baptised his converts. Ninian was a Scots-born saint credited with bringing Christianity to much of northern Britain, long before the later missionary campaigns of Saints Columba and Cuthbert.

. This lace-like nine-metre cascade – “linn” is the local word for waterfall – is the perfect place to listen out for wood warblers and redstarts.

has to be the most fascinating. Grouped protectively round its extensive village green, Elsdon has a 14th-century parish church dedicated to Saint Cuthbert, Northumbria’s patron saint; a classic fortified pele tower dating from the days of the reivers (borders outlaws); and a perfectly preserved Norman motte and bailey castle at the grass-covered Mote Hills across the Elsdon Burn.

(doubles from £125 B&B) in Otterburn has 25 rooms, some with four-posters.

Exmoor

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, these now fairly insignificant mounds represent a linear cemetery for long-forgotten chieftains who lived 4,000 years ago.

, west of Lynton, is an Exmoor oddity. This little dry valley running parallel to the coast is ringed by jagged outcrops of Devonian rock, and feels as if it belongs more in Skye or the Highlands of Scotland than sleepy Devon. This is especially so when you see the flock of bearded feral goats scampering across the crags.

It is believed to have been created by the coastal erosion of a former extension of the East Lyn River, which now meets the sea at Lynmouth. The valley retains some of its original character, but the addition of a cricket pitch and car park has robbed the area between the crags of some of the primeval wildness it once possessed.

clapper bridge across the River Barle near Withypool. The 55-metre bridge has 17 spans crossing the Barle, and although it is certainly of an ancient design, it is known to have been rebuilt several times after the massive slabs were swept away by flood water.

runs down through thickly wooded cliffs to a lovely little waterfall that empties into the sea.

is thought to be the smallest parish church in England. It is unusually dedicated to the seventh-century Welsh saint Beuno. The original church probably dates from those Saxon times, but it has a 13th-century porch and a late 15th-century nave. The total length of the church is 10.7 metres and the nave is just 3.8 metres wide.

(doubles from £180 B&B) is a 17th-century hostelry with nine rooms and award-winning food.

The Cairngorms

Britain’s largest national park is also the coldest, highest and one of the least visited. The 1,748 square mile park receives nearly 2 million day visitors a year, a similar number to Exmoor, which is less than a sixth of the size. So if you really want to escape the crowds, this is the place for you. The lofty central Cairngorm plateau encompasses more land higher than 1,000 metres above sea level than anywhere else in the country, and in winter is the closest Britain comes to Arctic conditions.

, below Ben Macdui (Britain’s second-highest mountain), give a real taste of the semi-Arctic Cairngorms. At more than 900 metres above sea level, Loch Etchachan is the highest lake in the UK, and chilly enough to put off any but the bravest wild swimmer.

was apparently one of Queen Victoria’s favourite picnic spots when she stayed at Balmoral. It’s where the infant River Dee is channelled through a narrow cleft in the rocks via a series of crashing waterfalls on the Mar Lodge.

If you are as lucky as I was on my last visit, you may witness glistening, silver-sided salmon leaping and twisting their way up the foaming waterfalls on their incredible, and ultimately final journey to their spawning grounds upriver. It’s a sight to thrill the senses.

“granny pines”, because some of them are more than three centuries old. And they are nothing like the spindly pines of the south: these venerable giantesses are what’s left of the ancient Caledonian Forest, with wide, spreading crowns and a beautiful, salmon-pink bark that glows in the setting sun.

They are home to a cornucopia of wildlife, including the rare and elusive capercaillie (a Gaelic name that translates as “horse of the woods”), with its guttural, almost alcoholic-sounding, popping-a-cork call; the red squirrel, which finds a stronghold here among the protective “grannies”; and a rare finch, the Scottish crossbill, high up in the spreading branches.

, near Abernethy, is a great Cairngorm success story. They had been extinct in Scotland since 1899, but a Scandinavian pair was seen nesting atop a dead tree by Loch Garten in 1959, and the RSPB decided the best way to protect them from egg thieves was to use the public as watchdog wardens. So it set up an observation centre about a quarter of a mile from the nest, but with a clear view of it, aided by CCTV cameras. There are now thought to be between 250 and 300 breeding pairs of ospreys in Scotland.

, alongside the B970 between Kingussie and Drumguish. Following the uprising of 1715, this former clan stronghold was converted into barracks for 120 troops and 28 horses in 1721, in an attempt to subdue the rebellious Highlanders.

(doubles from £120 B&B) in Nethy Bridge has 11 rooms and a restaurant for residents only.

North York Moors

The high shoulder of the North York Moors, midway down the east coast of Britain, is usually among the first to be hit by winter snowstorms as they funnel down the North Sea from the Arctic. But in late summer, the bleak expanse of the high moors is replaced by a royal-hued purple sea of rolling heather – the finest display of this hardy moorland plant in the country. Heather moorland covers about 35% of its 554 square miles, and was one of the main reasons for its designation as a national park in 1952.

. This 120-metre-deep cauldron was created when springs welling up from the hillside gradually undermined the slopes above, eroding the rocks.

, near Goathland, is the highest and prettiest waterfall in the national park, and a short walk from the village. This 21-metre slender cascade in the West Beck is carpeted with lush mosses and lichens, and set in deep ancient woodland.

, which is surrounded by some of the wildest moorland in England, is renowned for its springtime display of wild daffodils. The three-mile walk between the two hamlets of Low Mill and Church Houses on the banks of the River Dove is a delightful stroll through those golden-trumpeted harbingers of spring.

Five of Europe’s best national parks – with all the beauty but none of the crowds

, near Kirkbymoorside thus: “Some churches are a challenge to the faithful. Lastingham is a challenge to the faithless.” The mainly 11th-century building is remarkable for its unique, cell-like crypt, which has two Romanesque aisles, a chancel and an apse. Whatever your religion or lack of it, it’s a place where it seems the very air you breathe is redolent with ancient sanctity.

. The explorer’s parents would later build a cottage in the village, which was dismantled, shipped across the world to Australia – perhaps Cook’s most famous “discovery” – and rebuilt in Melbourne in 1934.

(doubles from £129) in Ainthorpe is a 16th-century inn offering 10 bedrooms and a restaurant.

Roly Smith’s latest book is Short Walks to Curious Places (Conway/Bloomsbury, £20). To order a copy guardianbookshop.com

• This article was amended on 8 June 2024. An earlier version referred to Great Ayton as James Cook’s “birthplace”, when childhood home was intended. Cook was born in 1728 in the village of Marton about five miles away. It has also been clarified that the cottage rebuilt in Melbourne was the home of his parents; it dates from 1755 when Cook had already gone to sea. It was further amended on 9 June 2024. Chew Green marching camp is not a short walk from Alwinton but about 15 miles away.