By: Blonde Two
South West Coast Path walks are a delight, even if you only walk short coast path sections at a time. I have never added up how many miles of the Cornwall and Devon SW Coast Path I have walked in short sections, but it would be nice if, one day, I found out that I had walked all of it (if not necessarily in the right order). There is, I imagine, a law somewhere that states that National Trust beaches (there are many along the South West Coast Path) have to meet certain strict criteria. Mr B2 and I visited Devonshire’s very beautiful Man Sands (me for the first time) yesterday, which I think met all of them. To my mind National Trust beaches have to be:
Stunningly beautiful – Man Sands definitely achieved this in low, wintery sunlight.
Almost empty – another tick, we counted about 10 people and it is a longish beach.
Image Fuzzy Fella Rides (Instagram)
Surrounded by interesting rock formations – definitely, we found tiny caves, caves you could walk (or swim) through, exciting strata and fascinating rock pools.
Down a slightly uneven but definitely walkable lane/set of steps/footpath – we walked down the typically Devonshire, Woodhuish Lane (more about the word ‘huish’ tomorrow.
Occupied by at least six eccentric people – again yes, we saw two men filming a pile (very impressive) of stones, two naked swimmers and two people eating pork pie on a rock (oh, that was us!)
We had a lovely walk, enjoyed exploring and now want to investigate this (particularly steep) part of the South West Coast Path further.
Time for the Tide: St Michael’s Mount and the South West Coast Path
I too had bought a pie come sausage role at Dartmouth Castle on my SWCP walk last year. I had been looking forward to it for my lunch and sitting on the cliff tops somewhere above your Man Sands beach, much later in the day, I set about it. From my journal:
“Back to me lunching on a panoramic viewpoint high above the sea. I took a bite of my sausage roll. It turned out to be sickenly, and violently currie flavoured and the thick surrounding pastry was like soggy cardboard, almost impossible to bite through. I stood up and in true baseball style threw the dam thing as far as I could over the cliff, and I’m pretty sure it went into the sea.”
Great memory but it was a long way to the next bakery. I am sure the seagulls enjoyed the sausage roll!
But don’t forget the mineralization and mining history (http://ougs.org/southwest/local-geology/crab-rock-point-136/), the skeleton that turned up on the beach a few years ago when part of the sea defences fell down (thought to be someone who had died at sea, the practice was to bury if possible on the next bit of land the ship landed at) and the swallows that nest on the cliffs over by those caves that you can indeed swim through.
A skeleton sounds most exciting… what a place!