The final day for this week and it promised to be challenging!. To begin with I misread the start point and so after another interesting drive along narrow country lanes and then through East Portlemouth we ended up at the NT Mill Bay car park. I should have listened to Justine who said she had seen a SWCP sign half a mile further back where there was a coffee shop which as it turned out was where the ferry from Salcombe arrived so, having already got our boots on, we drove back and stopped for a morning coffee admiring the view across to Salcombe ...
It was a beautiful sunny morning and the walk to Prawle Point was straightforward taking about 2.5hrs. It was here where David A was going to meet up with Fiona who had made her way to the inland village of East Prawle. There is a village green with car parking, a pub and a shop/cafe where they had a pasty for lunch.
Again, as we had 8.3mls of difficult walking to get to Torcross, Justine and I carried on along an easy path for the first mile or so past Maelcombe House after which the path started climbing and became very uneven, heavily strewn with rocks which made swift progress difficult. Eventually, after Great Mattiscombe Sand we approached Peartree Point and started climbing a rocky path ...
In front of us now were two women and a man who were peering closely at the rocks below where there were a number of seals playing in the water. Lots of photos were being taken until I realised that we were now standing on a narrow path with a sheer drop causing me to have one of my moments and so I quickly scrambled further up the path to safety!
That was not the end of it though because the path almost disappeared as it went around the top of Peartree Point. The two women had negotiated the corner but the man appeared to be 'resting' before making the attempt so we were obliged to go on. This was not my finest moment as firstly, in panicking to get a hand hold, I grabbed a small gorse bush growing out of a crack in the rock face (me and gorse bushes have history on the SWCP!). After removing the prickles, negotiating the corner involved cautiously feeling for foot and hand holds whilst trying to remember to breath until eventually the path reappeared without the sheer drop!
After all that, the route up to Start Point was a doddle ...
... and then finally we were able to see the whole coastline through Hallsands and Beesands to Torcross ...
Like on the previous day we got a sense that we were nearly there but Torcross was 3.6mls away, so on we went.
The first point of interest was Hallsands, the site of a tragedy caused by the removal of 650,00 tons of shingle from the the sea bed needed to build a new section of Plymouth dockyard starting in 1895. This took away the natural sea defences at Hallsands and the village of 30 houses, a shop, post office and pub were severely damaged by storms in 1903 and 1917 after which the village had to be abandoned and over 160 people lost their homes. The remains of the last house is still visible and there is a viewing platform with a very detailed set of information boards - well worth a visit.
After reading about the Trout sisters (see the SWCP Walking Guide #52) we pushed on over another hill to reach Beesands where there were toilets, the first we had spotted since the start at Mill Bay!, and a small kiosk where Justine got her hot chocolate and cream fix and I an ice cream. Pushing on up yet another hill towards Torcross we climbed steps after steps until our hearts dropped when it looked as if the way ahead round a corner was blocked by a tape across the path. Justine then spotted that there was a lady leaning on a gate whilst her dog on a long lead was round the corner and it was the lead that I had mistaken for the NO ENTRY tape! It turned out that the lady and dog were somebody that Justine had met in the toilets and together with her ex-assistance dog 'Valiant' she was walking the South West Coast path and collecting sponsorship for the Dogs for Good charity.
We wished her well and continued over the hill and eventually arrived on the promenade at Torcross where Fiona and David were there to welcome us with a drink in the only establishment open in the village. A long and arduous day but a very satisfying conclusion to a very interesting and enjoyable week.