Prawle Point to Dartmouth

28 October 2018 /

South West Coast Path

After a slightly rainy night and an extra hour sleep due to the clock change, we woke up to clearer skies.

It's now lighter in the morning, which means earlier wild-camping starts. This morning after an efficient pack down (likely due to the freezing wind) we were walking by 7am.

We saw other wild campers for the first time this trip, who hadn't risen so early.

We were reasonably sheltered from the wind until we passed Start Point. This book describes the following section as exposed. I thought it meant a cliff edge, but it actually meant to the elements. The lighthouse was built in 1836 after several ships were wrecked within one blizzard.

We passed the ruined village of Hallsands. This is an interesting story, in short; offshore dredging for gravel to build an extension to the Keyham Naval Dock undermined the beach, causing the village to be washed away in a storm. There is a lot more to it than this including some dodgy dealings and the villagers getting very little compensation.

We passed through the new Hallsands and then Beesands where we had some breakfast. We were lucky to get in at the Cricket Inn as a couple who came in 5 minutes later were told the kitchen was closed! After breakfast we headed along the bay to Slapton.

Slapton Sands is famous as it was the location of operation Tiger. This was a large scale rehearsal for the D-day invasion of Normandy (WWII).

Communication and coordination problems resulted in friendly fire deaths, additionally an exposed allied convey was attacked by a Nazi fast boat. The loss of life was greater in the rehearsal than in the actual D-DAY invasion. The Sherman tank which was raised from the sea bed in the 1980s is a memorial to all those that lost their lives in the exercise. The tank was designed to float and could move from sea to land. However something went wrong and the crew abandoned it after it began to sink shortly after deployment. It remained in the sea bed until discovered by a local fisherman.

We continued along the long stretch of beach until rounding a couple of headlands before entering the picturesque town of Dartmouth.