North Devon

SIXTY years ago, the minister for Local Government approved an 82-mile footpath from Minehead, Somerset, to Marsland on the Devon/cornwall border; it was to be the first, stiff phase of the now well-trodden South West Coast Path. ‘Caution and care are necessary lest adjectives such as superb and sublime, splendid and serene, majestic and romantic be overworked,’ opined J. D. U. Ward (Country Life, March 30, 1961). ‘Yet is there anywhere in England that a similar length of coast combines so much unspoilt natural beauty with so much variety?’

In 1924, writer Margaret Dobson had suggested that there was no more exciting coastline in England: ‘Everywhere there is charming perspective: one time primitive rockland; another, long, low, sweet vistas’

(Country Life, September 6, 1924).

The writers’ hyperbole is not misjudged: the coastal stretch of this slender 66 square mile AONB is one of boundless, enthralling contrast, as well as ecological importance: it includes 13 SSSIS and two Special Areas of Conservation. One of these is the Braunton Burrows dune system with its 400-plus plant species and encompassing the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. All views lead to Lundy Island, a rock in the roiling Atlantic.

Steep, secretive, oak-wooded inlets contrast with Woolacombe’s sandy stretch; the hamlet of Bucks Mills, painted by Turner, is all quiet against the honeypot of Clovelly; there are the expansive, bird-dotted mudflats of the Tawtorridge estuary, where Ann Cleeves has set a new detective series, and the rare culm grass of Hartland Point, christened the Promontory of Hercules by the Romans. ‘To landward, all richness, softness and peace,’ wrote local author Charles Kingsley, ‘to seaward, a waste, a howling wilderness of rock and roller.’