Responsible Visitors Charter

Do you want to make your Dartmoor stay even more sustainable?

When you stay with us at Wray Valley (Riverside B&B and Wray Valley Camping), you’re already making a real contribution. The money you pay for your stay helps to pay for our ongoing conservation work. But if you want to do even more, here are a few ideas for how you can be a responsible visitor…

Support local businesses – when you eat in the pub, use the local shops or visit local attractions you’re boosting the local economy and that keeps Dartmoor and Devon the place you wanted to visit. See our see and do pages for places to eat, great days out and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for local events.
Take a car free day out – why not leave the car behind for at least one day? Take a look at our see and do pages. You could go for a walk or cycle ride or try the Devon Explorer Bus across the moor.
Leave the car behind completely and arrive on foot, cycle or by public transport. Take a look at our sustainable transport options.
You could cut back on your food miles as well as your holiday miles. The energy used to get food to your plate makes a really substantial contribution to climate change. We produce our own apple juice and preserves here at Wray Valley. Our chickens produce a limited supply of eggs and in season we have salad crops for sale. If we don’t have any left there are always some in the local stores and farm shops. You can go further, and order a venison box from Wild Hart and beer from Black Tor Brewery for delivery. Find out more under local producers on our Sustainability page.
Our tap water comes from our own borehole and is treated in the shed on the campsite. It is chlorine free, hasn’t been bottled in plastic and distributed by lorry across the county. It doesn’t produce the plastic waste either. Check out www.refill.org.uk to find out where you can top up your bottle tap water for free when you are out and about.
Shorten your shower. Because our water comes from our own supply it is not unlimited so you can make a real difference by keeping your shower as short as possible. If you are on the campsite this will make you very popular with the next person in the queue too! We mainly use solar energy to heat the water in the tank so it is not hot water on demand. It can take a few minutes to heat up if the last person used all the hot water.
Waste less (and save yourself some money) – please don’t put any food in the bin! If it’s really not fit for consumption take off the wrapping and put it in the food waste caddy or give it to a member of staff. If you don’t want to take it home at the end of your stay it’s fine to leave it in the fridge in the B&B or hand it to a member of staff. If you are camping you can leave non-perishable items in the campers’ kitchen. It might save the next guest/camper from buying another bottle of ketchup. Apart from anything else, all of Wray Valley’s waste will be hand-checked for recycling. Mouldy bread, milky cereals and baked beans in the bin make that a horrible job!
Unwanted toiletries can be left in the shower block for use by campers who have forgotten theirs. Just leave them by the microwave.
Recycle – it’ll only take a moment and you’re joining an effort that’s sending most of ‘waste’ back into the useable resource stream. If you are camping, you’ll see the boxes for glass, tins and clean plastic in the recycling area behind the shed in the campsite. Please give all the recycling a rinse – not only is the recycling hand sorted, mouldy yoghurt containers and dirty meat trays will attract the kind of wildlife we’d rather not support. Paper and cardboard are very useful for lighting your campfires but we also have a box for that if you have too much. Log nets should be returned for reuse. All the B&B bedrooms have a recycling box too. If you are unsure just ask or give it to a member of staff.
Take your camping gear home – We all know that camping equipment can fail but please take it home with you for disposal. We’ve lost count of the number of airbeds and broken chairs left beside the bin!
Turn off things you’re not using – like lights. Please turn down the heating in your B&B room rather than opening a window, and please turn things off when you go out for the day. Yes, the cost of electricity is included in your stay and it’s renewable, but the broader picture is that we all need to reduce our consumption because it’s costing the Earth.
Donate to Dartmoor Help the National Park to look after Dartmoor so that the story of this stunning landscape – home to so much and history of so many – can continue to be loved for years to come.