Sunday: 21st May: Weather: 12°C to 19°C:
Plymouth to Wembury: 16.0 0k walk: 5hrs 45 mins: 9.30 am to 3.15pm: 2 x 30min stops: Ascent:440 metres
Accommodation: Noss Mayo barn Middlecombe Lane, near Wembury
Leaving Admiral MacBride
Jenny Cliff sign 175 miles to Poole
View back to Cawsand and Plymouth
Coffee above Bovisands
Buy beach at Wembury
Excess baggage from 3 Capes
Excess baggage from 3 Capes
Excess baggage from 3 Capes
Highlights of our day 8 were th ferry ride from The Barbican across Plymouth Sound to Turnchapel, then a glorious walk along the low cliffs looking across to Rame Head, Cawsand and Plymouth, an interesting ferry ride across the river Realm with Billy, and finally our wonderful self contained Air BnB at Noss Mayo.
It’s a beautiful sunny day looking out of our window over Plymouth Sound from the Admiral MacBride Hotel. After our home made breakfast of yoghurt, banana and muesli, we pack and wander up to teh Co-Op to buy pre cooked Meatballs, cheese and bread for dinner tonight, as we know the Air BnB is a self contained converted barn a long way from any shops. Ian had already bought a bottle of Mateus Rose yesterday which I poured into my two water flasks.
Back down to the harbour to wait for the 9.15am Barbican to Mount Batten ferry (cost £2.50 each). There’s only 6 people on the small ferry including another woman from Brisbane who is hiking the SWCP solo. Plymouth Sound is awash with boats - it’s Sunday. The ferry trio takes 5 minutes we start walking at 9.30am. The track shows signs of dried, caked mud, and for the next two weeks there's supposed to be no rain. Unbelievable. We haven’t used our raingear nor our warmest clothes.
The track around Jenny Cliff is quite stunning on a clear blue sky day, with lots of vantage points to look back to our path yesterday around Rame Head to Cawsand. At 11am, it’s time for coffee on the cliffs above Bovisands Holiday Park - another multi cabin site for holidaying Brits. Then an easy cliff 2 hour walk to Wembury with more swimmers crowded on the grey sandy beach. Therse’s a SWCP sign stating we have 206 miles (330k) to go to Pool (Bournemouth). There’s also another sign that the ferry across the Yealm River operates between 10am and 4pm, and it’s now 1pm. But with low tide right now, we’re afraid it might be another phantom ferry like yesterday, so we keep walking another 2k to the ferry terminal which is a set of concrete steps down to the muddy estuary.
There’s a hinged sign at the top of the steps that says fold down if you want the ferry and fold back up when it comes - very sophisticated. But it worked, and within 10 minutes Billy, the ferryman turns up in his 6 person flat bottomed boat from Newton Ferrers on the other side. Swing your legs around he says as we clamber from the mud on to the boat with our back packs. And in five minutes we reach teh other side at Noss Moya. The ferry operates between three points, Warren Point on the Wembury side, Newton Ferrers and Noss Moya, all about 100 metres apart across the junction of the Yealm River and Newton Creek.
In five minutes, we’re at the Noss Moya slip way. The cost is £4 each, cash only. I’d been prepared prior to leaving the steps to dig deep into my back pack for some cash, so I hand him a £20 note but he takes one look at it and says "sorry, I can’t take that, it’s old money” and drags out his own £20 note to show they are different sizes. I’d brought a heap of cash with me that was left over from our last UK trip in 2018, but in the meantime the UK government had switched to slightly small plastic notes. It was still legal tender but Billy being from the West Country wasn’t taking any chances on it being legal. Oh!
Tell you what he said, when you walk past the Swan Inn just up the road, buy two pints of beer and tell them it’s for Billy, the ferryman. Deal! So we swing our legs off the boat on to the mud and off we go down a pretty lane, then across a stone footbridge over the Newton Creek which you can walk over on low tide, to teh Swan Inn. I ask the barman who is tending to two customers if he knows Billy the Ferryman, and they all chuckle. So I pay for two pints of Madri lager to add to Billy’s tab and we leave thinking that Billy tells all his ferry customers that the cash money is either old, or he doesn’t have change or whatever, and that’s how he pays for his beer at the local pub.
It’s 2pm when we leave the Swan Inn and we’re famished. So we sit down beside the old mill stream next to the Noss Moya church to have fresh bread, tomato and cheese. The walk along Middlecombe Lane was typical of any English country lane - quiet and narrow with two metre high hedges looming on both sides. We’re looking for Oliver’s barn with three doors. Over the past few days we had been communicating with Oliver about he exact location of the converted barn we are staying in tonight, and after much twoing and frying we found a goole maps picture of the farm barn from the street with it’s three doors.
We arrive at Slade Barn at 3.15 and used the code for the locked key box. When we open the door we are amazed how nice this place is. A full kitchen, lovely big bathroom, and upstairs in the attic is a large bed and lounge room with a TV. First up is to have a cup of tea, then strip off everything to do a weeks worth of washing. Most nights we get to wash socks and undies but that’s about all. We’re licky it’s a warm sunny day and our four loads of hand washing are soon drying on a clothes racj we found under the stairs. Our hosts Deborah and Oliver appear from their farm house and we chat for a while before showering and cleaning up our back packs.
After sorting photos, we retire to a beautiful garden setting to soak in the last of teh suns rays over the hill while having a Guiness and nuts, then back to the kitchen for dinner. The menu is dried mushrooms and dried mashed cauliflower (left over from the 3 capes walk), tomatoes, onions and pr-cooked pork meat balls washed down with a Mateus I carried in my two water flasks. Almost better than a pub meal.