Encounters with scenic views and low-flying objects on our walk from Thurlestone to South Milton Sands
Our trip to South Devon has started with a series of pleasant surprises. Firstly, the trip from London was a lot shorter and more convenient than I had expected, clocking in at roughly three hours.
I had always assumed that “the West Country” was roughly as far away from London as America, in terms of “felt distance” at least.
But while that argument may be made for Penzance on the western tip of Cornwall – a whopping six hours by train – Plymouth is actually as easy to reach as Manchester or Liverpool. You board the train, you read your paper, and when you have come to the sports pages, you are nearly there.
Secondly, not only had the Thurlestone Hotel, our host in South Devon, given us a great room with a wonderful view, it turns out that it’s the very same suite they use as their showpiece on the hotel’s website – albeit minus The Woman In White.
Mrs. Easy Hiker graciously volunteered to take over the part, but insisting on her own interpretation (and a more lifelike pose).
The third surprise for us, having left behind an unseasonably cold capital with spring weather straight from the Siberian plains, was the sunshine and the balmy temperature.
Not knowing how much we could trust the tongue-in-cheek assurances of the locals that the weather “was always like that in South Devon”, we decided to take advantage of the perfect conditions as much as we could – and set off straight away to explore the very stretch of the beach that we could see from our window.
Our First Impressions of the South West Coast Path
Which is – like any stretch of the coast between Minehead in the Bristol Channel and Poole in Dorset – part of the South West Coast Path.
This coast really delivers “what it says on the tin”, and – unlike many coastal paths around the Mediterranean – allows you to keep in touch with the sea at all times, never taking you on long detours through the hinterland. Even where this poses some tricky problems.
Take Thurlestone, for example. There is a golf course right by the coast, established in the 1890s, and they could have made life difficult for hikers, perhaps even insisted on keeping them out altogether, but they did not and allowed them a right of way on a narrow path through their land.
Now, hikers and golfers are not the easiest of bedfellows (once a ball landed only a few feet from us on the grass, with a clearly audible thud.) The warnings in certain spots, to “cross the area quickly” are certainly not there for nothing.
At any rate, you should always have an eye on the players who are about to tee off. Just by watching them swing, you may, after a short while, feel confident enough to identify those who are most likely to be spraying a few foul balls into the stands. (Observed: not everybody on the course has the perfect follow-through motion of a Tiger Woods.)
Originally, golf course and hiking trail were much further apart, but circumstance has brought them together: several metres of the coastline have crumbled away over the years, and this process of erosion is, of course, far from finished.
This is something to think of, too, the next time you feel tempted to step right on the edge of the path for that unique view of the cliffs underneath you.
After little more than a mile, we reached South Milton Sands and its monumental stone arch …
… a great introduction to the many beauty spots of the South West Coast Path.
Having made the last part of our way down by the beach …
… we decided to return on the trail proper – which led us through the South Milton Ley, a nature reserve run by the Devon Birdwatching and Preservation Society.
Thanks to the (excellent) website of the South West Coast Path, we had been prepared for great coastal views and panoramas over the ocean, but that was an added bonus for us – our final surprise of the day, so-to-speak.
