Short answer: The Walkers' Hut at East Soar is an honesty-box tea barn in the middle of coastal farmland. Watersmeet's National Trust tea room sits where two rivers meet. Both are earned by walking to them, which is rather the point.
The Walkers' Hut at East Soar, on National Trust coastal farmland near Salcombe, is the one people remember — an honesty-box tea barn doing cream teas in the middle of nowhere, with well-defined paths leading to it and dolphins sometimes visible from the cliffs.
You help yourself and leave the money. It works because of where it is.
The National Trust tea room at Watersmeet, near Lynmouth, sits where the East Lyn and Hoar Oak Water meet in a wooded gorge. The walk down is straightforward; the walk back up is the part people underestimate, which means you have properly earned it.
Bring cash — the nearer car park takes coins and the phone signal is patchy.
Ullacombe Farm on the Haytor road near Bovey Tracey is a farm café and shop with indoor and outdoor seating, and goats and alpacas to feed for £1 a bag. Not a tea barn, but the right sort of stop after a walk.
Bellever Forest has a coffee trailer and toilets by the car park — basic, but genuinely welcome on a cold day out on the high moor.
Chagford has two cafés on its medieval square: the Old Forge Caffè, the breakfast stop after a moor walk, and the Birdcage, whose scones get singled out. Both are a minute apart, which matters in Dartmoor weather.
Cream on the scone first, jam on top. Getting it the other way round on Dartmoor will be noticed.
Moorland cafés and tea barns reduce hours sharply between January and February, and some close entirely. Ring rather than assume.
Pick a town and plan the day around who's with you.
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