Cake and sunshine - South Devon

Over the last week, on the three sunnier days, we walked a bit more of Path along the south Devon coast.

Along a stone wall built into a cliff on Bolt Head. Can you see Sheryl?

This is Salcombe, a rather posh town with lots of recreational boaties. It sits on an estuary that it not really an estuary. There is no major river arriving at the sea, just a few creeks flowing into what was once a valley until the rising sea levels after the end of the last ice age flooded it. The entrance looked rather rough even on a calm day.

We lunched on the terrace at Overbecks, an Edwardian family home used as a hospital for WWI soldiers, 15 of whom married local girls. It overlooks the view above as well as having views further along the ocean cliffs outside the harbour entrance. It belongs to the National Trust and is  known for its tropical gardens which include gum trees. There are a lot of gum trees in gardens and parks in this part of England.

Afternoon tea was at the Walkers Barn. Set up by a farmer, it runs on an honesty system. You make your own tea or coffee, select a slice of cake from half a dozen home baked choices and pop the money into a tin. Divine. Getting here did involve a detour from the path and climbing over a locked gate as we went the wrong way, but it was so worth it!

Torcross sits at one end of a large sandbar called Slapton Ley. The big concrete sea wall was opened in 1982 by Queen Elizabeth and is designed to prevent the village being washed away by the waves. The sandbar has a large fresh water lake on its inland side and one of the busy A roads runs along it. The road was closed during the first half of this year while it was rebuilt following winter storms that dragged half of it into the sea. One day the sea will take it and probably flow into the fresh water lake, changing it irrevocably too.

Behind the village there is a WWII US Sherman tank that was retrieved from the sea offshore a few decades ago. It was one of many sunk there along with ships that were torpedoed by the Germans during D-day training. Over 700 men died.

Our Path took us between the lake and road but we did cross over to check out the beach.

It wasn't really sand, more like fine pebbles.

After more than an hour a rainbow welcomed us to the end of the beach.

We then did a bit of a roller-coaster walk over incredibly green fields and through a couple of villages.

This is Dartmouth, a lovely town on the mouth of the River Dart, overlooked by the Royal Navy college. On a previous trip we went to Agatha Christie's house just around the bend of the river. Who did it?

Vehicle ferries working non-stop.

Our home this week - a thatched cottage in a village called Chillington. We felt quite chilled, chilling out in Chillington. The cottage was not chilly at all. It was very cosy.