The Cheesewring & The Hurlers, Bodmin Moor

Minions is the highest village in Cornwall and the moor above it packs three subjects into one short walk: the Hurlers stone circles, the abandoned Phoenix United mine engine houses, and the Cheesewring itself — a wind-carved granite stack teetering on the rim of a flooded quarry. Orbits of the Cheesewring with the quarry lake behind, and top-downs of the triple stone circles, are genuinely distinctive shots you won't get anywhere else in the South West. This is open access moorland with no Dartmoor-style drone byelaw, no nearby FRZ, and usually only a handful of walkers, so it's about as low-stress as UK flying gets. The gotchas are environmental: at 300 m elevation the wind is almost always stronger than the forecast for Liskeard suggests, and there is next to no shelter, so small drones get worked hard. Ponies and cattle graze freely — TOAL well away from livestock and don't push them. Ground-nesting birds use the heath in spring, so keep height over rough ground March to July. Clear winter days after a front are magic; summer evenings give long shadows across the mine ruins.