Sunday 15th April: Weather: 8°C to 14°C cloudy, misty rain, some sun then rain
Croyde to Barnstaple: 24.9k walk: 7hrs 45 mins 9.45am to 5.30pm: 430m Ascent/Descent
Accommodation: The Rolle Quay Inn
Route map of our walk today
Cold stuff hanging out the window
Goodbye Combas Farm
Looking across windswept surf
Baggy Point
High tide of 9 metres
Morning tea in Croyde
Croyde Beach with beginner surfers
Saunton Beach with beginner surfers
Saunton Holday Park for lunch
Tarka trail, Taw River to Barnstaple
Rolle Quay Inn
Highlight was deciding to do an extra walk to Baggy Point in the morning before our real walk to Barnstaple began. A beautiful cliff walk looking back to Woolacombe, and watching the surfers in the freezing cold water.
We’re awake at 6am, but breakfast at the farm isn’t until 8.30am so time to phone home to the family, pack and our dried washing. It’s misty and raining outside and a hand through the open window reveals its windy and cold. The view of the farm from our bedroom window is masked by our cold shopping bag of cheese and butter dangling by a piece of string tied to the inside window handle.
Breakfast is muesli, fruit and home made yoghurt plus the traditional English breakfast which we’re now very adept at stashing in a container for lunch/dinner. The milk on the table for our cup of tea is skimmed milk but they don’t have any full cream milk except for UHT sachets. Yes thanks, that’s better than paint thinners.
It’s a late start at 9.45am but by now the rain has stopped. It’s cold and windy as we walk 1k back the way we came to meet the path out to Baggy Point. The views back across the beach to Woolacombe are wild, with surfers braving the 9°C water, a tad cooler than yesterday. There's not much surf but the board riders seem happy to be in thick wetsuits just sitting on their boards looking the part.
Getting to Baggy Point is relatively easy with no steep ups and downs, and for the first time there’s someone else on the track at a strategic point so Ian and get them to take a joint photo. At the start of the walk to Baggy Point, we'd met up with two Englishmen walking the SWCP to St Isaac and walked the track with them. They have back packs smaller than mine. Surely they don’t have a change of underwear! The track circuitously returns to Croyde where a sign on the beach indicates the tide today will be 9 metres high. Our UK friends stop for a coffee at a little Cafe whilst we elect to give this beach path a miss and walk through the village of Croyde where we spy a table and chairs in the village park just perfect for our billy boiled morning tea. Around a busy road to the next beach at Saunton where there’s even more beginner surfers trying to catch 3 foot waves rolling in from a long way out. We follow the signs to Braunton Burrows, a National Trust sand dune system through which the SWCP passes. It’s 12k around and we’ve already decided to cut this walk short to 7k. It’s an “interesting” walk through a golf course and around a military training area with no views to the ocean. It’s cold and starting to rain and by 2pm we’re looking for a seat for lunch when we come across the Saunton Holiday Park. It’s closed except for the caretaker’s hut and won’t open til summer, but it’s the perfect place for lunch with a seat out of the wind. The care taker walks by ust jas we’re finishing off lunch with a hot cup of tea and pretends he doesn’t see us. We’ll be gone in 10 minutes we tell him. And we are.
The track returns towards Braunton then turns onto the Tarka Trail. This trail is 163 miles in a figure-of-eight through landscapes little changed from those described by Henry Williamson in his classic 1927 novel Tarka the Otter, after which the trail was named. The section we followed is from Braunton to Barnstaple and tomorrow we’ll do another section from Barnstaple to Westward Ho! The trail is perfectly flat with many walkers and cyclists enjoying a Sunday afternoon outing. It’s about 8k into Barnstaple along the River Taw.
The walk is easy but windy and cold and dark clouds are looming behind us headed our way. The Rolle Quay Inn is not far from the end of the track in Barnstaple and just as we turn off with 1k to walk, the rain buckets down. We’re wet and cold by the time we reach the Inn, and have a "warm" Cornish Tribute beer in the lounge downstairs. I don’t mindit warm but Ian prefers it cold. The waitress shows us to our room upstairs and informs us there’s a two for £10 deal for dinner except the faggots are off the menu - good I think.
After a hot shower, and demolishing our bacon and eggs leftover from breakfast we’re downstairs again ordering a hamburger and chips with salad. We thought we were still hungry after a long 25k walk today, but half way through this second course we’re full and call it a night. The room is comfortable but the floor boards slant so the bed head a a bit lower than our feet - not enough to stop us having a good nights sleep.