The two requests arrive worded almost identically. Open English country, no streetlights, somewhere to walk in daylight and something overhead after dark. Both are national parks, both hold internationally recognized dark sky status, both are moorland in the sense that the high ground is treeless and the weather crosses it without meeting anything. If your picture of the week is a bare ridge, a narrow road, and a sky with the Milky Way visible in it, Exmoor or Northumberland both deliver that, and the photographs from either would be hard to tell apart.
What the request usually leaves out is the shape of the days between the nights. Nobody asks about square miles, about the distance from the bed to the observing site, about how much of the week is spent in a car, or about what happens on the four evenings out of seven when the cloud does not clear. Those are the things that separate these two, and none of them show up in a photograph.
The two halves, set on the same axes
exmoor
Exmoor covers about 267 square miles against Northumberland National Park's 405, and the whole of it sits within a 40 minute drive of the coast; the moor's high point, Dunkery Beacon, is 1,705 feet, and the coast path between Lynmouth and Combe Martin climbs about 4,900 feet across 13 miles; the nearest rail station is Tiverton Parkway or Taunton, both about a 45 to 60 minute drive from Porlock, so the transfer is short; and prices sit around $1,990 for six nights against a Northumberland week that runs longer on the road in every direction.
from $1,990 per person
northumberland
Northumberland is roughly nine times the land area of Exmoor National Park, so the driving is real: 55 miles from Bamburgh to Hexham, about ninety minutes each way. Nothing in it climbs above 2,676 feet, and the coastal walking is flat sand rather than combe and hill. It sits on the North Sea, not the Bristol Channel, which puts July daytime highs near 65F rather than the low seventies. Its dark sky park covers 572 square miles, the largest area of protected night sky in Europe.
from $2,040 per person
Two figures set beside each other are two facts about two different trips of different lengths, run by different companies, in different seasons. Neither figure is offered as the better value and this office will not say that one is. What each covers is listed on its own page.
Two hundred sixty seven square miles against five hundred eighty
Exmoor National Park covers about 267 square miles across the Somerset and Devon border. Northumberland National Park covers about 405, and the adjoining forest that carries most of the dark sky infrastructure adds roughly another 250, so the practical area you are working in sits near 580. That difference is the whole trip.
On Exmoor the moor sits between the coast and the farmland below it, and the villages are threaded through it rather than around it. From most places we put people, the high open ground is a fifteen to twenty five minute drive, and several starting points are walkable from the door. A week there can be built with the car used three or four times.
In Northumberland the distances are real. From the villages near the wall to the forest and the water at its center is commonly forty to sixty minutes each way on single carriageway roads, and the observatory sites are further again. Nothing about that is difficult driving, but it is driving, and it happens at night in both directions. Two trips a day at that length is a different week from one where you park once.
The cold, the coast, and everything else on the list
267 square miles, most points reachable inside half an hoursize
roughly 580 square miles counting the forest, one hour each way is normal
around 41F on the high groundtypical clear night low in October
around 34F on the high ground, with frost from late September
Atlantic weather arriving off the Bristol Channel, wet more often than fiercewind
open to the north and east with no shelter on the ridge, the reason layers get specified
34 miles of coast path, deep wooded river valleys, small harbor villageswhat else is there
the Roman wall, a reservoir with boat access, two castles inland
Tiverton Parkway or Taunton, then 40 to 60 minutes by roadnearest station
Hexham, on the Newcastle to Carlisle line, then 20 to 45 minutes by road
seasonal bus links the main villages, roughly hourly on the busiest routegetting around without a car
a summer bus follows the wall corridor, otherwise taxis by arrangement
reserve status covering the whole park, unstaffed sites, no admissiondark sky arrangement
park status plus two staffed observatories running ticketed sessions
When neither of these is the trip
A regular share of the people who write in about these two have described a different holiday without realizing it. The tell is usually in what they want the nights to deliver.
Both figures on one sheet
We are not going to tell you which of the two to take, and we are not going to imply it by ordering them or by leaving one of them thinner. They are different weeks, and the person who knows which week they want is you. What the desk will do is take your dates, price both trips against those exact dates with the same rooms, the same number of nights and the same inclusions, and put the two figures next to each other on a single sheet with the driving times and the observing arrangements written under each. Then you can read them together and decide.