The South Hams of Devon Paignton to Dartmouth – 10th September 2019
We are in holiday mode, which means a long breakfast and late start. Yesterday we walked north from Paignton station to Torquay, so our initial thinking is that today we will drive to Paignton and walk southward – from Paignton to Dartmouth. However, Betty has a bit of a back problem which appears to get worse whenever spending long periods of time in the car. This makes the relatively long drive to Paignton unattractive. So we hatch a cunning plan and decide to drive to nearby Dartmouth, catch the ferry across the River Dart to Kingswear and then take a bus or train to Paignton. From here we’ll be able to walk back to Kingswear and make the return ferry journey to Dartmouth and home. Genius!
We arrive at Dartmouth, which is overflowing with the grey pound.
Walking sticks, Zimmer frames and wheel chairs abound, whilst the tell-tale whiff of mint imperials fills the air. The grey masses cram the pavements, the shops, the cafes and even queue up to board ferries that go up, down and across the Dart. These people are everywhere – like rats in Hamlin town, but why is there never a pied piper when you want one?
Dartmouth Harbour and quayside – both rammed
We quickly realise that parking will be astronomically priced and impossible, with every available space apparently filled by a Honda Civic, fitted with crocheted seat covers and cushions.
Of course we too fit into the grey pound category, but have no intention of spending our grey currency in the ‘tat and tea’ shops of Dartmouth. We must be the worst kind of person – in the eyes of the Dartmouth Chamber of Commerce. I suppose you might label us the ‘grey non-pound’.
We are going to have to improvise regarding parking. We decide to do what most of the tourists here would consider unthinkable. We are going to drive into suburbia, park for free and walk into town.
However, before we do Betty insists that we fix the exhaust, which is hanging by a thread. I volunteer to find a hardware shop and buy some garden wire to fix it. With the help of Mr Google I miraculously find a hardware store. Five minutes later we are parking in an area of town without double yellow lines. Alas this is almost a mile from the ferry and several hundred feet up the hillside.
Out of town parking
I grovel under the car for 10 minutes and effect a suitably secure repair, lashing the tail-pipe to the sub-frame, before we are marching off down slopes you are more likely to find on Ski Sunday than in a quaint English seaside town. 20 minutes later, thighs and knees aching from the effort, we realise why most people just pay for their parking. Still it provides a good warm up and reminds Betty that she needs to find a toilet.
Fortunately we discover an acceptable one tucked away in the corner of the market. Bladders discharged and comfort restored, we look around the market and discover why Dartmouth is so popular – it is a lovely little town. We decide against having a coffee break until we have guaranteed that we will make the next bus to Paignton. This requires us to make Kingswear on the opposite side of the River Dart by 1pm.
Promising ourselves that we will return to sample Dartmouth’s charms in the relative quiet of the evening, we board the small ferry across to Kingswear. South Devon does a roaring trade in ferry crossings This is in part because it is such a popular place for tourists, but also because so many of South Devon’s rivers were flooded at the end of the last Ice Age. In fact the whole of Southern England has been sinking for thousands of years, but South Devon gives a good indication of how the rest of the south might appear as current sea levels continue to rises.
£1.50 buys a single across the river, a journey which barely lasts 5 minutes, as the boat shuttles back and forth from 7am until 10.30pm every day.
Dartmouth actually boasts 3 ferries across the river and several more taking visitors up and down to visit Totnes or places even further afield. It feels a bit like Venice.
Dartmouth and the Dart Estuary with Dartmouth Naval College overlooking (top left)
On reaching the other side, the atmosphere changes completely. Very little traffic and far fewer tourists are to be found at Kingswear. The other benefit is that you get spectacular views of Dartmouth, which seems to encrust the opposite hillside. Upstream is the imposing edifice of Dartmouth Naval College, where Britain’s ‘senior service’ trains its officers in readiness for whatever conflicts may come our way in the future. With the world showing a decline in stability, I fear that many of these young men and women will soon see active service around the globe. My ex-father-in-law was a graduate, so it is interesting to see where he spent his early years.
I check on the price of a ticket to Paignton at the Paignton and Dartmouth Railway ticket office only to discover the cost is over £13 each, whilst the same journey by bus will be a fiver. No competition then. The double decker bus arrives and we regress over half a century, to our childhoods, as we climb the stairs and position ourselves on the front row of seats.
The driver then treats us to a white-knuckle-ride down narrow lanes, brushing overhanging branches and threading the tiniest of gaps on our way to Paignton. The bus screeches to a halt outside a holiday camp, where a couple of blonde haired ladies climb aboard. As they climb the stairs and settle into the remaining 2 seats at the front of the bus, I notice that one is significantly larger than the other. The ensuing conversation between them is conducted in two distinctly different octaves – one a soprano, the other a deep baritone. One of them obviously has a significantly higher testosterone count than the other. Transgenderism is becoming much more acceptable in the UK, with the South West noticeably more tolerant than our own little corner of East Sussex.
We eventually alight at Torbay Leisure Centre and make our way to the Premiere Inn, where we started our coast walk to Torquay yesterday. The beach is occupied by young children, too young for compulsory education and having the time of their lives playing in the bright orange sand, whilst mum and granny look on approvingly. As we commence walking we discover that the flat coves are interrupted by headlands of resistant sandstone, forcing us to climb up and down steps. It is hard-work and I settle into a kind of trance as I drive myself along.
View across Tor Bay towards Brixham
Convinced as to the correct route, I turn off and it takes me 10 minutes to realise I’ve taken the wrong one. What is more I’ve lost Betty. As I retrace my steps she comes into view and gives me a bollocking for leaving her. I bridle at the rebuke, but it has the required effect. Eventually we find the correct turn-off at Broadsands, a very pretty bay, followed by the tiny Elbury Cove, which is topped with white pebbles on its storm beach. A strange looking ruin sits forlornly at the far end of the cove. We debate what its purpose might have been, but it turns out to be the ruin of a bathhouse built in the 18th century for Lord Churston, who loved sea bathing, but not under the watchful gaze of the general public. He therefore built this three-storey structure, whose ground floor flooded at high water allowing him to swim out and preserve his dignity. It has a chimney and some metal machinery sitting abandoned to the elements, which are all that remains of his hot bath room.
The tranquillity of Elbury Cove –
the ruined bath house and woodlands beyond
The Bath house
Beyond we rise up into the woods which tumble down the cliff side and find ourselves mercifully walking along mostly level ground. The dense shade, from the afternoon sun, is much appreciated, with the woods indicating their antiquity by the presence of butchers broom. This low, evergreen shrub is always a surprise to me, bearing bright red cherry fruits in the middle of its small, dark green, sharp-tipped leaves.
As we emerge from the woods and descend down to Churston Cove, we encounter a large and rather elderly lady struggling to get down the precipitous steps, cut irregularly into the side of the hill. We help her down, step by step, with her all-the-while apologising for the burden she is being. It seems she started her walk a mile or two back, having no problem climbing up the cliff side, but her shot knees refuse to cooperate on the steep steps down to the cove. Even the most ardent of walkers has to accept their limitations eventually. Hopefully her anticipated new knees will give her a new lease of walking life.
Our elderly charge escorted down to the cove, we abandon her as we climb back up the other side. Hopefully she will not be marooned there – like an elderly Robinson Crusoe – just a few hundred yards shy of Brixham.
We decide to stop for lunch at Battery Gardens, which overlooking Brixham Harbour, presents us with an excellent view across Torbay and beyond to the pale cliffs of the Isle of Purbeck. The Battery was an important defensive position in the Second World War, with World War One naval guns guarding not just Brixham Harbour, but the whole of the adjacent coastline, from the ever-present danger of Nazi invasion.
Coming into Brixham
Brixham Harbour with every available bit of land utilised
Lunch completed, we walk through Brixham admiring the mix of pleasure craft, dinghies and trawlers. Brixham has a long fishing tradition, which it continues to this day, with its fleet of modern trawlers, fish market and associated food processing facilities. We unexpectedly come across the Golden Hind, which Betty is certain was on the South Bank of the Thames last time she was there. Big signs tell us all about Francis Drake and the Golden Hind’s exploits, inviting tourists to come in and enter this floating museum. Nowhere can we find any mention of the fact that this is a replica of the one on the South Bank. I’m sure many are taken in by this crafty piece of marketing.
The Golden Hind (a replica)
William of Orange (also a replica)- be-topped by a non-replica Herring Gull.
The famous figures appear to be queuing up on the water-front, with now a statue of William of Orange. His granite visage looks shoreward to his newly conquered kingdom, albeit a bloodless one (conquest and statue that is). Nothing is said about his good wife Mary, the rightful successor to the British throne, although it does make a big deal about him saving Protestantism from the Catholic King James III. The statue would probably have greater significance to the good people of Belfast, than to the hordes of English tourists milling around the quay, ice creams in hand, most of whom I suspect have never heard of him. The Herring Gull on top of his head is a nice touch though.
Brixham is littered with interpretative boards informing us of the town’s proud history. Even the FA Cup gets a look in, with a local vicar having written the Cup Final anthem, “Abide with Me”. The Reverend Henry Francis Lyte would have had no idea that almost 100,000 of the faithful would annually gather at Wembley and give voice to his words.
Most of the toilets in the Tor Bay area appear to charge a great deal more than the proverbial penny. Yesterday, in Torquay it cost 30 pence for a single-person-pee (using my contactless credit card – very hygienic under the circumstances). Baulking at the charge, I must now confess to both of us passing through the turnstile as one. Betty however, was terrified that I might finish first and exit leaving her stranded within.
I am therefore delighted to discover that the public toilet in Brixham is free. The only real problem is that the gents is locked. Undaunted, I try the disabled toilet – which to my joy is unlocked. We have all been in the predicament of finding ourselves post-poo, without toilet paper. I know one should always check first, but I forgot. Fortunately I know I have tissues in my back pack, although finding them proves quite time consuming.
Ten minutes later all is ship-shape and Bristol fashion as I exit. Alas Betty is nowhere to be seen. I think that perhaps she has decided to leave me and find a less incontinent, younger model. Fortunately she appears from around the corner, where she had been waiting outside the gents for the last 10 minutes for her apparently incapacitated husband. We fall into each-other’s arms, reunited at last.
Leaving Brixham, we climb to Berry Head – but opt to give the Napoleonic Fort a miss, in the interests of getting back to Kingswear in time for the last ferry to Dartmouth. The South West Coast Path takes us to the east of Brixham past St Mary’s Bay and then south along a route which ascends and descends the 100 metre cliffs several times, before we find ourselves at the Second World War Brownstone Battery at the mouth of the Dart Estuary. We reckon we have climbed the equivalent of a Munroe in the process – some 900-1000 metres. I suspect whoever devised this part of the South West Coast Path had a sadistic streak to them, but I gather the real reason is historic. Apparently the path evolved when excise-men inspected the coast for smugglers and had to visit every single one of these coves at sea level, before returning to the cliff top.
Scabbacombe Head from Sharkham Point
The sun starts to dip
‘Moon-lighting’ at Brownstone Battery
Although we are only 2 miles from our destination, we are now in total darkness, except for the encouraging presence of the moon. The ensuing 2 mile hike through dense woodland and a few more cliff climbs is memorable, if a little daunting. Each time we think we must be close to civilisation, another flight of steps stretches up the hill in front of us. This is not the first time we have been forced to finish a walk in the dark and it is fortunate that the torch function on my mobile phone casts such a powerful and wide beam. Technological advances may be great for communications, but it is the other applications that I am most grateful for on this walk – torch, camera and pedometer.
Somehow we eventually emerge onto a tarmac road which brings us out at the ferry at Kingswear, where we stand alone looking longingly across to Dartmouth on the far side. A sign instructs us to press a button, which in turn sets off a flashing light to summon the ferry. Alas, he obviously has better things to do and it is a good fifteen minutes before he ‘heaves-to’. A few passengers alight and it is obvious why a local authority subsidy is essential to the survival of this vital local transport service. Without the ferry, life on the Kingswear side would be very different.
Alighting at Dartmouth, we have a choice between the pub, or a climb to our waiting car. We are torn. We are desperate for a drink, but realise that sitting in a pub with a foaming pint will not help propel us up the hill on rested legs that will find any excuse to stiffen up. Reluctantly we drag ourselves a further half mile and 100 metres of ascent to our waiting car and the best drink of bottled water I have had in many-a-year.
Twenty miles and 1200 metres of climbing – I think tomorrow will be a rest day!