Red rocks & burbling water
PLYMOUTH TO SIDMOUTH 116 MILES (186KM)
Sheltered from Atlantic gales, the South Devon coastline is more about defence than shipwrecks. Mountbatten’s summit tower was built during the Anglo-Dutch Wars, Saxon shoreline churches at Wembury and Revelstoke were defensive stockades against Viking raids, and Tudor blockhouses and castles at Dartmouth and Salcombe protected against French attack – perhaps wisely, given the battle fought against French raiders on Blackpool Sands. In 1944, American forces training for D-Day were decimated on Slapton Sands in an exercise that went tragically wrong. In stark contrast, the rush-fringed lake at Slapton Ley is a tranquil sanctuary for waterbirds and warblers, as well as pike, and the otters and herons that feed on them.
Torbay is a Geopark for its vivid red sedimentary rocks carved by wind and weather and thrown up against grey fossil-rich limestones. Torquay’s dramatic London Bridge rock arch is almost as spectacular as the Thurlestone arch near Bigburyon-Sea, where a sea tractor trundles across to Burgh Island when the tide's too high to walk. Red cliffs tower among trees at Maidencombe and march along the coastline through Shaldon and Teignmouth, where the Devil changed a wicked parson and his clerk into red rock stacks. Across the Exe at Budleigh Salterton, pitted and seamed red cliffs have pebbles embedded the size of potatoes, and low red cliffs channel the River Otter through a nature reserve where the air is full of birdsong, and dragonflies flit through willows weeping into peacefully burbling water.
TRY THIS WALK: Follow the beach from the lifeboat station at Exmouth to the stunning desert rocks at Orcombe Point. Steps lead up from here to the Geoneedle sculpture and the Coast Path. Turn left for an overall three-mile saunter, or walk a mile or two to the right (big sea views) before heading inland to Littleham, with a leisurely stroll along the route of the old railway line back to Exmouth, which has full facilities including buses and trains.