Leaving the taxi at the exact spot we left the path on Brixham harbour, we spied the Golden Hind that used to be in Plymouth when I was a child; no time for sight seeing!
Expecting a day of flat seaside promenades we were pleasantly surprised to climb through dappled woods around the headland passing several lovely swimming coves enjoying views of Torbay with its parked cruise liner. The first of Torbay‘s concrete esplanades and beach hut clad, seaweed strewn, sandy beaches, lead to another climb along the meadow following the steam trains before descending to the next at Godrington. A brief stretch of concrete then relieved by more steps and another pretty headland.
On reaching Paignton we walked along the concrete esplanade of yet another reddish, seaweed strewn, sandy, tripple and quadruple layered beach hut clad beach. The hot concrete continued interspersed with roads as we edged the bay to Torquay harbour; interesting architecture, imagining the riviera in its heyday. Flagging we ground to a halt under the Ferris wheel for a coffee.
Negotiating roads, fortunately cooler and cloudier, we returned to woods, steps and parched headlands for the latter half of the day. We snacked overlooking Thatchers rock, before deserting the cruise liner and following the rocky coast past Hopes nose and a steep detour to down to Anstey’s cove. Thoughts of swimming abandoned, succumbing to stomach ache, I ate ice cream!
Uphill across parched Babacombe downs, more steps, down and up took us to a very steep road to the BnB.
Official SW Coast path: 11miles
Official running total: 496miles
Apologies wifi and signal insufficient to upload photos again! Sorry I thought the English Riviera would be OK. I have now uploaded but not yet sorted or labelled, turns out Starcross is not much better.
If you would like support our walk for Alzheimer’s the two charity just giving pages are
And
You can also find me on instagram; search for paulas.mad.adventures
Thank you
Paula
We stayed at Coast Guard Cottage BnB Babbacombe on 15 & 16 June; www.babbacombebandb.co.uk
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