Like beer gardens and black pudding, the winter pub walk is a very British pleasure. You won’t find the French drawing back their curtains on a frosty December morning and saying, “Fantastique ...

Où sont les bobble hats?”

It’s also an easy thing to get wrong. It shouldn’t be far – you want a mazy meander, not a route march, so two hours is about right. And you want your rustic inn waiting at the finish, not halfway round – with fizzing fires, bump-your-head beams and a hearty menu featuring as much suet and sponge cake as possible.

This is our favourite dozen, with a snug bedroom on the premises, or very near, in case you overdo the refuelling.

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1 THE ROCK INN Haytor Vale, Devon

The Rock is in the quintessential Dartmoor setting, high and heathery and sort of flyaway. Inside, though, it’s a million miles from the “Slaughtered Lamb” stereotype, all crackling logs and crackling conversation. There’s a restauranty feel at night, but the landlord, Chris-topher Graves, is happy for you to march in off the moor, looking windswept and interesting, for a pint of Dartmoor Best. It’s even better when the weather’s grisly: they’ve some cottagey bedrooms, so feel free to settle in for the duration.

The walk: the Rock started life in 1750 – built to sustain the quarrymen of the moor – and a four-mile circuit to Haytor, with its twin towers of cracked granite, takes you to their former digging ground. Setting off along the Wide-combe road (the B3387), you soon bear right on a grassy path to the tor. It’s hard to resist scrambling up to survey the vast views of rippling peat and sky. Aim northwest around the old quarry and pick up the granite tramway the miners built to cart their stone.

Today, it is redolent of the strange, bouldery boundary lines scattered across Dartmoor by prehistoric man. Follow the rails west to tumble-down Holwell Tor, where a rough track leads back to Haytor and the village.

You’ll need OS Explorer map OL28. The Rock Inn (01364 661305, www.rock-inn.co.uk) has local pork and leek sausages with redwine gravy for £9; doubles start at £78, B&B

2 THE WOOKEY HOLE INN Wookey Hole, Somerset

It sounds like something out of Beatrix Potter, but the Wookey Hole Inn is full of surprises – folksy outside, funky within. The noticeboard offers Chinese healing and conker contests, while the bar offers eight Belgian beers. The menu is Mediterranean; rooms have Japanese beds and a “cult movie” collection.

The walk: a wander through the pixieish realm of Ebbor Gorge. Turning left out of the inn, take a left on the West Mendip Way to Arthur’s Point, a wooded knoll with views of Wells and Glaston-bury Tor. Zigzag down to Lime Kiln Lane, then bear left on a track through Model Farm. Climb on across the fields, turning left after a mile: the path drops you into the Ebbor Gorge nature reserve. The track runs through the rocky gully, once the lair of cavemen and mammoths, back to Wookey Hole.

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