Salcombe – Torcross
Not to get all dramatic on you, fellow lopers, but the past week wore me out.
More than once I’d pondered the purpose of pushing myself so hard when it was clear I should have been snuggled up in bed with a medicinal hot toddy or three.
Walking the swcp was supposed to be fun. I still saw the beauty, and felt the satisfaction of getting from place to place purely by strength of mind and body, but some of the joy had gone out of it.
– time to re-evaluate the plan –
I looked in detail at the remaining path I had left to cover, and my accommodation bookings that would take me to Dartmouth.
If I continued on, six days a week, it’d be a struggle to finish within the time available, but it would be possible. Plus, I will have reached my intended goal – hard to underestimate the value in that.
If I stopped at Dartmouth I’d have walked 765 km of the 1014 km swcp. That left 250 km to go – a nice round number. I could come back one future summer when the ferries are running and the days are long.
This was what I’d been agonising over late into the previous night (in truth I’d been on and off agonising over how to finish the path since skipping a day in Plymouth, and I was beyond tired of the indecision), so it came as a rude and premature awakening when elephants started trampling over head at 6.30 in the morning. Ridiculously early. Turns out the breakfast room was the room above mine. Huff. Time to get up, I guess.
Geared up, I strode out into a gorgeous, crisp, semi-sunny morning. After a week of soggy grey, the sparkling blue reflecting off Salcombe Harbour boosted my spirits and the solution seemed suddenly obvious.
Life’s far too short to stick to a plan that’s no longer joyful.
If I hadn’t already walked the path over two years, splitting it further into three probably wouldn’t have occurred to me. Now, it just seemed obvious.
I jumped on the ferry crossing to Passageway, and made the snap decision to leave the path.
Wanna know what I chose to do with the time I would now have free? Patience, dear loper 🙂 all will be revealed…soon.
By the time I left the ferry stop in Passageway, it was going on 11 am. The seven hours of light I had left to walk the 20.3 km ‘strenuous’ stretch to Torcross would have to be enough.
Good thing it was searingly beautiful.
Soon after winding through the narrow lanes past Small’s Cove and Mill Bay, where you get a great view across to North and South Sands…
….I came to the edge of town where this gate (that has a curved post in the style I like of as Devonian) felt like the true beginning of the day’s path.
Still in the Salcombe estuary, I wound up through the woods to Hipples (awesome name) and Limebury Point, where the path turned east.
There’s not much in the way of landmarks along Portlemouth Down, but it’s awfully pretty.
After passing below this sweet little hut at Gara Rock,…
…I got a happy surprise at Abraham’s Hole.
If you look really closely, inside that ring of rocks near the foreshore, you can see the white baby seal.
It’s mama seal is dark grey. She looks a bit like a rock, but is smoother and moves location between these pics. Can you spot them?
A bit further on, I climbed up and over Gammon Head…
…to the noise of these speedboats racing toward Prawle Point.
I love these slate/shale (?) stones used for fencing. Depending on the angle you look at them, they either look like headstones or a giant’s teeth.
The coast watch lookout station at Prawle Point gave me a welcome opportunity to get out of the cold wind and have a snack. From somewhere in The Beast came half an oat bar that revived my flagging energy.
At the very tip of the point is a weirdly located chimney. I jokingly thought it seemed like I was standing on a hobbit house.
Prawle Point was actually only about a third of the distance I would have to walk, and pushing 2 pm, I had to get a wriggle on. Luckily the second third – from Prawle Point to Start Point – was relatively easy.
New to me was this table-like step in the shore line. Every now and then a spring would cause the path to dip, but for the most part it was smooth going.
Except maybe for this last scramble through The Benches and The Warren – steep rocky slopes that end at Start Point.
From the length of these shadows, you can see that the sun was well past its zenith. I still had about 6 km to go to get to Torcross, and then I needed to catch a bus inland to my B&B in Chillington. The last bus was due to leave just before 6 pm. This put a bit of urgency in my step.
On the other side of the headland…
…a stiff breeze and the loss of the warming sun also quickened my pace.
To be honest, I was stressing out a bit at the distance I still had to go. I was tired, and every effort felt doubled. On the map this stretched looked relatively easy, but I could see the climbs ahead of me.
I walked the pebbled beach at Hallsands, then up and over the headland to Beesands (sorry, didn’t take a pic), and then I was facing the last rise of the day – climbing steeply up and around the disused and now heavily wooded Beesands Quarry.
From the top I quickly looked back to the west and the sands below, wishing I could linger a little longer in all these lovely places.
I scampered down the hill to Torcross, with ten minutes to spare, looking avidly for the bus stop. I’d be back here at the same spot in the morning, so there was no sense in taking the time to explore Torcross and potentially miss the bus.
When I did find the stop, however, it threw up more questions than answers. Contradictory notices claimed the regular service both was and wasn’t running. And there was another community bus that could also be running at different times. Puzzle!
A couple feeding ducks at the Slapton Ley Nature Reserve across the road…
… claimed the bus had just passed by not that long ago, which didn’t match any of the timetables. This was a quandry. Do I wait for the bus in the encroaching darkness, or start the 2 km walk to Chillington in what light I had?
Luckily, I was doing all this thinking out loud and the next thing I knew the couple had offered to drive me all the way to my B&B in Chillington. Problem solved 🙂 and such nice people. I talked their heads off the whole way.
Here’s a view from my haven for the night, shining with beautiful golden evening light.
Stats: 31329 steps; 173 floors; 21.76 km
PenLoper 