Our verdict
The honeypot it looks like, and still worth it — go early or out of season, skip nothing, and finish along the river to the mill. If you'd rather not pay, Grabbist Hill and the Giant's Chair loom free next door; but the garden terraces on a warm afternoon are hard to begrudge.
A thousand-year-old castle on its wooded tor above Dunster's medieval yarn market, with terraced subtropical gardens, the working eighteenth-century watermill, and riverside walks along the Avill under giant redwoods and handkerchief trees.
National Trust castle, garden and parkland. Castle and formal gardens are ticketed; the wider river and parkland walks keep longer hours. Dogs on leads throughout.