I have been off air
because I have had a spell at home. The weather has turned and the
clocks gone back and I have been moving along the south coast in fits
and starts. I had great weather along
the Devon coast: it was so beautiful, the sun shining and the horizon
indiscernible between the blue of the sky and the sea. The village of
Aveton Gifford, close to where I met the swan man, is charmingly
Devonian – I half expected to see Miss Marple come strutting round
the corner.
From
there the road to Hope Cove leads down to a sweet narrow bay with two
beaches protected by a headland called Bolt Tail. In the village shop
I bumped into the people from Poole I'd had coffee with at Burgh
Island who, like me, felt the urge for an icecream. (This is an urge
I have had for too often as I have driven around Britain – it has
become a problem!)
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| The Kingsbridge estuary, Salcombe |
There
is a carpark above Salcombe but I had been advised that I would
probably be able to get into the small one in the centre of town and
that it was opposite a pub with wifi. That was all true, it's right
by the water, and I had to shoe-horn Baa into a tiny space next to
another campervan. I walked around the town which is lovely and
has a large water frontage up the west side of the large
Kingsbridge estuary. I just caught the end of the holiday season –
mainly 'seniors' and young couples with toddlers.
Salcombe
is very middle class - women with loud voices talking to men in
shorts the colour of bricks - and shops like the Salcombe Coffee Co,
White Stuff, Fat Face, Jack Wills - they're all there!
When
I came back to collect my laptop from Baa I was alarmed to see that
the camper I had hemmed in had a disabled badge in the windscreen,
but by then Baa was hemmed in on the other side. I went to have tea
in the pub and use the wifi... and when I came back an hour later,
the camper next to Baa had gone. I did some nifty reversing in order
to extricate myself and a woman waiting for the space (at a safe
distance) congratulated me on my efforts!
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| Blackpool Sands, South Devon |
I
was heading for Dartmouth and had a wonderful drive alongside Slapton
Sands. It's a stunning
stretch of coast – apricot sand with clefts in the cliffside
dropping down to sandy coves - a lovely beach called Blackpool
and the prettiest Devon village called Stoke Fleming.
