Tuesday: 23rd May: Weather: 9°C to 16°C: Overcast, hazy, cool. No rain but a slight north wind
Bigbury-on-Sea to Salcombe: 21.0k walk: 7hrs 45mins: 8.45am to 4.30pm: 3 x 30min stops: Ascent: 720 metres
Accommodation: Suncot Apartment Shadycombe Rd, Salcombe
Hazy cool start on wide tracks
Hope Cove at Inner and Outer Hope
Bolt Tail and 300BC Iron Age Fort
Coffee near Bolberry Down
Back to Dodman Point & Rame Head
Track to Bolt Head
Lunch past Bolt Head
A scramble around the cliff edge
Around the corner is Salcombe
Digging worms on North Sands Beach
View of Salcombe from apartment
Highlights of our day 10 were the cliff walks between bolt Tail and Bolt Head, with hundreds of walkers enjoying the wonderful cliff walk on a cool 16°C Day. Then arriving in Salcombe to our mini apartment with beautiful views over Salcombe Harbour.
We are awake at 6am and have the usual early morning cup of tea. Packed and ready to go, we wait for breakfast to arrive. Breakfast at teh hotel started at 9am, too late for us on a 20k day walk, so the night before we ordered a simple breakfast tray of Muesli, toast and marmalade dropped outside our door between 7.30am and 8am. It arrived at about 8.15am and the bread was cut so thick it wouldn’t fit in the toaster, but it was so fresh, we had it untested, lathered with butter and marmalade, together with another cup of tea.
It’s 8.45am when we start and follow the public footpath to Thurlestone, a small village on the hill behind Bantham. We get a bit lost. Shortcuts tend to get you lost! And we weave our way around the gold course to rejoin the SWCP near Milton Sands Beach. The track is good and wide with no overgrowth, so we don’t need to look at our feet all teh time and can enjoy the panoramic views.
We pass through the twin villages of Inner Hope and Outer Hope, on either side of the pretty little Hope Cove. There’s lots of walkers on this track today and one elderley gentleman tells us that last week, a woman died when she chased her dog and both her and the dog fell off the cliff at Outer Hope. There's no fence around these cliffs and apparently there’s a lote of accidents, many caused by tom foolery, off the cliffs of Devon and Cornwall. We’re soon at Bolt Tail where there an Iron Age Fort from 300BC is buried beneath the turf and looking for a place for coffee out of the cool wind.
It’s almost midday when we find a sheltered seat at Bolberry down, half waye between Bolt Tail and Bolt Head. There’s many walkers coming from all directions to admire the wonderful cliff views, some have come by car to Mast Carpark.
There’s a steep 100 metres down and up into Soar Mill, before wandering around to Bolt Head for more views along the coast to Dodaman Point and Rame Head where we were several days ago. It’s 2pm when we find a bench seat for lunch with views acorss to Prawle Point where we’ll walk tomorrow. Lunch is a bread and cheese sandwich with a cup of tea.
It’s a bit of a scramble up the next cliff face with iron railings safeguarding cliff edges, and soon we see a sihn that says 1 mile(1.6k) to Salcombe. After walking up and down for another 3k past South Sands and North Sands, we think the sign meant to the edge of Salcombe. It’s almost 4pm when we wind our way along Cliff Road to a string of shops and finally at the end of teh inlet we find teh Co -Op store we have been looking for. We leave with a bag full of dinner goodies - Porl steaks, beer, lettuce tomatoes, peanuts, capsicum, cream (for teh coffee tomorrow), A bottle of McGuigan’s red Shiraz and a 4 pack of Madri beer.
Google maps tells us it’s only 300 metres (up hill) to Shadycombe road where our booking.com apartment called Suncot is located. We’ve been told teh key is in teh door and it was. The apartment is fabulous with a view over Salcombe - views come with uphill walks. Time to sit on teh balcony with a beer and crisps courtesy of Helen our host at Suncot, which is rated 9.5 i=on booking.com.
After a shower and some washing we cook our pork and sit on teh balcony with our pork and salad dinner and a glass, or two, of shiraz. It’s quite a cool night at 12°C and for teh next week it’s the same forecast - 10°C to 18°C with no rain. We can’t believe our luck to be walking in such fabulous weather. Bed at 9pm