The River Exe runs under a three-arched stone bridge in the middle of Exford, and the village arranges itself around that crossing and the green beside it. Most of what you need clusters around the green and bridge: two hotel-pubs, a store with a Post Office, a tea room, a play area and the bus stop.
The Exmoor White Horse Inn sits right on the river, a 16th-century coaching inn with oak-beamed bars, log fires and tables out along the bank. The kitchen leans local — an Exmoor venison pie with red-wine, onion and juniper gravy, a steak-and-Exmoor-Ale pie, West Country Camembert, smoked salmon with prawn and samphire — with a mushroom stroganoff for anyone who wants it and a traditional carvery on Sundays. Four changing cask ales, usually from Exmoor Ales, come off the pumps, and the long bar carries something like two hundred malt whiskies. Dogs are welcome.
The Crown Hotel, a 17th-century coaching inn in the village, has a country bar, a lounge, log fires and three acres of garden behind. The food is locally sourced, with curry night, grill night, and roast beef, chicken, pork or a nut roast on Sundays. Exmoor Gold and Exmoor Ale are the regular beers. One diner described "a calm and sociable atmosphere, with friendly service." Dogs are welcome here too.
For everyday basics there is Exmoor Stores and Post Office — groceries, bread, milk, newspapers, postcards, small gifts — and the Exford Tea Rooms on the green, doing breakfasts, light meals and pizzas. A riding and rural-clothing outfitter completes the small run of shops, which tells you something about how people here spend their time.
That something is horses. Exford is home to the Devon & Somerset Staghounds, an association the parish traces back to at least 1855, and hunting, shooting and farming still shape the place. The present Exford Bridge was rebuilt in 1930 on a medieval crossing, with three semicircular arches and cutwaters set against the current.
St Mary Magdalene, up from the green, is a Grade II* church with a mid-15th-century tower and a south aisle dated 1532 to 1542; the nave and chancel were largely rebuilt in 1867. Inside are a Perpendicular arcade with vine-leaf capitals, an octagonal font and a Sir Ninian Comper organ with painted panels. Its finest object came from somewhere else: a fan-vaulted 15th-century screen, rescued from the demolished medieval church at West Quantoxhead and reassembled here in 1929. The church was once dedicated to St Salvyn. When the Domesday commissioners reached the manor in 1086 they counted five households.
The walking starts at the green. An easy-to-moderate circular of 3.8 miles follows the Exe before climbing into farmland and open moor; the serious version, eleven miles and four to five hours, climbs to Dunkery Beacon at 519 metres, the high point of Exmoor, with views towards Devon and South Wales. Tarr Steps, a 54-metre clapper bridge of seventeen spans across the River Barle, is nearby.
Getting here means the B3224 across the moor, where livestock may be encountered on the road; Taunton is the nearest mainline station, and the AtWest 198 bus runs Monday to Saturday between Dulverton, Wheddon Cross, Dunster and Minehead. John Marius Wilson, writing in the 1870s, called the parish a country of "deep vales and romantic hollows." From the bridge on a still evening, with the pubs' lights on the water, it is hard to argue.