My Favourite Walk

I guess most of us have a favourite, a go to place, even walk it in our mind when we need to find refreshment.

My Favourite Walk

 

My favourite walk, is the coastal path that leads up ever steeply eastwards away from the thatched Sea Shanty, at Branscombe Mouth, East Devon, which according to a local clergyman, is heaven!

 

A 2nd WW pillbox guards the spot, then 93 steps and not one more, past grazing cattle, coconut perfumed gorse to the downy, flinty chalk top of East Cliff with a view down the coast and back into picture-postcard Branscombe nestled in the combes. St Winifred’s Norman church lies in the centre of this elongated village, safely out of sight of sea invaders. The Fountain Head. Masons Arms, Forge and Old Bakery tea rooms await the day’s customers and up on top unexpectedly lies an airfield and world-renowned Donkey Sanctuary.

 

 I follow the grassy, flat top field past grazing sheep with jet black crows keeping a keen eye and twittering larks ascending.  Greeting the odd walker or runner and past the remains of a 1920s steam powered winding wheel, I come to the Lookout Tower. Now an upmarket retreat, it has been inhabited for centuries, originally as an early warning signal station built for the Napoleonic war in the late 1700s, later as a station to combat smuggling and coastguard in the 20^th C. Beer Head is just beyond, site of a Napoleonic gun battery, and a favourite launch site for para gliders. Beer itself, a quaint Victorian tourist fishing village, lies hidden around the corner, with its chalk flint cliffs, and rubber mats to traverse the pebbles where you can enjoy a cuppa and crab sandwich at the beach café. Beer Head affords views of Seaton, the Axe Estuary with its wetlands, tram railway to Colyton, and Golden Cap towards Lyme Regis, its summit glinting in the sun- the highest point on the South coast of Great Britain, a mere 191metres.

 

Protruding out from the lie of the coast is the unique, other worldly finger of the Isle of Portland, of BBC shipping forecast fame, and home to young and adult offenders with its ‘nail’ at the Bill, a striking red and white lighthouse. This was the setting for the sailing events of the 2012 Olympics, whilst Portland’s famous stone has been carved out into cliff sculpture, and together with stone from Beer Quarry, dressed the Houses of Parliament, Tower of London, palaces and cathedrals throughout the land.

 

This is the stunning Jurassic Coast, stretching 95miles from Exmouth to Old Harry Rocks at Swanage, England's only natural World Heritage site because of the outstanding universal value of its rocks, fossils and landforms. It is also an AONB with SSSI status, home at Branscombe to the scaly cricket no less! A moment to stop in the quiet and take in the vista, timeless, surely one of the finest anywhere, as it arcs round Lyme Bay, hosting the largest mussel farm in Europe, with Normandy, Guernsey and Brittany laying beyond the horizon. Looking west, white chalk gives way to earthy sandstone red cliffs at regency Sidmouth, stretching on down the English Riviera. 

 

If I take it as an evening walk, this is where the sun sets, the golden ball disappearing over Dartmoor, the sky developing from minute to minute, cerulean to cobalt, yellow to ever deepening orange, the sky on fire, clouds painted in another masterpiece and reflected on the sea. The coastal communities in Torbay begin to flash and twinkle like a string of night lights at Dawlish, Teignmouth, Babbacombe, Torquay, Paignton, Brixham, and finally the lighthouses at Berry Head and Start Point. Soon it is dark, the night sky takes the stage, the moon lights a path over the deep, there is the sound of the sea, owls begin to hoot and badgers are on the move.

  

But now a new day, fresh, salty air, exercise, a place of renewal, space to think, pray, give thanks, sky and cloud an aerial canvas with Summer sun rising above the Cap, grasses bending in the breeze. Blackberries, sloes, hips and haws are coming as sure as Autumn is around the corner, swallows and martins darting, keen to get their fill before departing for African skies, crying gulls, oyster catchers, the moustachioed peregrines perched on the white chalk stack of Hooken contemplating their next meal, the sound of the ever-changing sea constant against the rocks below.

 

Pathways across the sea are carrying traffic- fishing boats on daily missions, tankers, cargo ships- remembering the stricken MSC Napoli beached in the bay with cargo washed ashore and looted, the village overrun; cruisers and military craft, an early kayaker makes progress against the tide. I imagine again that night in March 1790 when a 40,000 metres square tract of cliff separated, and slumped to form the undercliff, locals hearing the sound feared for the end of the world. As usual I greet Jenny Stolzenberg, an engraved memorial seat 'sharing her favourite spot with the world'.

 

On the descent my eye searches out a cave entrance set high in the chalk cliff, but accessible by scramble and rope to the adventurous. Some locals know it as Jack Rattenbury’s old smugglers cave in the early 1800’s, connecting through to Beer Quarry Caves where the ‘Rob Roy of the West’ kept the contraband. I prefer to call it Lazurus’ Cave due to its shrouded stone figure in the entrance- I declare, 'Though He dies, yet He shall live' for this is indeed a path of challenge, beauty, hope, renewal, as it twists steeply down through into the sub-tropical like undercliff, finding birdsong echoing in the hushed space. Feathered remains of a recent peregrine or sparrow hawk meal lie on the path, wild honey suckle and the white mist of old man’s beard line the hedgerows. The rare purple gromwell had crowned the Spring display, supported by a white haze of may, herb robert, germander speedwell, red campion, yellow archangel, bugle, bluebell, common birds foot, ransom and stitchwort to name but a few. I make a point of stroking a smooth, tactile overhanging branch, suddenly cut back by the National Trust Rangers, I miss it.

 

Soon i come to a short path to the left and could drop onto and return via the beach, enjoying the closeness of the sea; to check on and embrace its mood, keep an eye out for an elusive  pod of dolphins, seal or even basking shark; to look for what had been washed in on the tide, to see how the beach landscape has changed.  A line of white bait, chased in by the mackerel, old boat engine parts, plastic, Portuguese man o war, mussel weights broken free from tethers, even a dolphin suffocated by entangled fishing line have all found their way here. When the storms come along the Jurassic there is a wild beauty reminding me of the awesome power of the sea, and how it leaves its mark with a new rockfall.

 

 

 

The point of entry to the beach is what i call Tom Scriven -a memorial that was close by consisting of driftwood, flags, photos and messages remembering a local loved one, but now washed away. Today, however i continue on the main path, and what is officially the SW Coast Path 633miles from Minehead to Poole. I often meet walkers on their next section, like Catherine and i have done, or admirably are doing the whole thing in one go!

And so, past the remains of a lime kiln, and a thick gangling ancient ivy wrapped around a carved-out rock. A fawny feathered kestrel hovers overhead looking for its breakfast surveying the undercliff at various points before suddenly dropping like a stone out of sight.

 

 

 

I conclude the circular route, on the flinty wooded path, watching my step being slippery in the wet, and a place for basking adders in the sun, skirting the pebbled shore that exposes sand at low tide, with glimpses of the sea, and there, a darting cormorant skimming the surface, just as the crabbing boat Branscombe Pearl II returns with its catch. Little under an hour, and i too return to my 'home by the sea', a small community of lodges, static caravans and beach chalets tucked in the cliffs, to ‘Little Plat’ so named after potato plats used to be tended here, ready for a pre breakfast swim if the sea is kind, and the day ahead.