Carolynn and I are sitting in a nice warm dry pub in Braunton, Devon having lunch and a drink. Outside the precipitation is both persistent and wet. We know this because, as the windscreen wipers we’re working double time, they were having no effect; the road was no longer visible as the rain drops formed a barrier that the tyres didn’t appear to penetrate. But most of all we knew because the short journey from the car to the pub door was only achieved by a record breaking 50m dash!

Andrew and Caroline are running late due to an accident on the M4. I’m thinking it’s not yet late enough to walk if they arrive before dark, although Carolynn and I are perfectly happy sitting watching the Masters golf tournament, blissfully uncaring of the weather conditions outside. But they do arrive before dark, therefore Part Three of the SWCP will begin!

I have always been a fair weather walker. I’ve driven to North Wales and then straight home again as the weather was not conducive to dry walking. For me rain tends to spoil the enjoyment I get from walking, so if possible I avoid it… especially starting in it. Time, however, is limited, holidays are precious so with only 924.3km to go all four plus Lottie set off, in the RAIN!

There is something about a seaside resort in the rain that is somehow depressing, almost haunting and Saunton Sands is no exception. A washed-out beach, with just a few hardy surfers, dog walkers, runners and four very optimistic walkers and a dog, who’s face tells it all!

There isn’t much to report on the walk itself. It was along a hard sandy path, with Braunton Burrows Biosphere Reserve, the largest protected dune area in the country, on one side and flat pastoral meadows on the other. 

The view was limiting and the walking straight forward. The one highlight was Crow Point. From there we could see the town of Instow, our goal for the end of Day Ten and it was just 3km as the crow flies. I’m certain that we’ll be cursing that estuary that has forced us to walk an extra 40km before the end!  

Heatwave. Brings back memories of my teens with songs like ‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘Always and Forever’, but this is a different sort of heatwave, one which saps your energy and your will to live, rather than makes you want to dance. Anyway, we start this day with a full complement: Andrew’s ankle is feeling tickety-boo, great news, ‘Five are together again’! The day starts with the SWCP running adjacent to Woolacombe Sands, a beach famous for its surfing and even at 9am it was packed. As we walked away from the car park you soon realised that it’s only packed at the northern end; if you could be bothered to walk just 10 minutes down the beach, you’d have it to yourself! The scenery was singular in nature, as the path wound its way through the deep dune, restricting the view to sand and more sand.

We slowly rise above the beach and head out over a peninsula to Baggy Point, a place used by the Americans during WWII to train for the D-Day Landings. There’s also a strange white pole stuck into the ground with no apparent use… ah but a little digging and everything becomes obvious:

‘The pole was installed by the Coastguard in the 1930s as a training tool. Coastguard volunteers would fire their ropes towards the top of the pole, simulating firing ropes up towards a ship that had been grounded on the rocks. Once attached to the pole the ropes would be used to slide a “breaches buoy” over to the ship so that stranded Mariners could be winched to safety’.

These days though, the pole is used for climbing practice by passers-by, it seems.

For some reason we splintered into four groups at this point, that means we each went our own way, as there are only four of us! I went down to take a closer look at Baggy Point, Andrew and Caroline stopped for a rest and drink, whilst Carolynn carried on along the upper path looking for shade. Caroline followed the SWCP towards Baggy Point and the lower path, as did I, whilst Andrew followed Carolynn along the upper path…  it seems that the high road and the low road do, eventually meet, doesn’t mean to say the people walking on either path will, though! Carolynn found her shade, just not where the rest of us expected and it took us some time to locate her. She, though, was oblivious as she sat calmly waiting in that precious shade!

Next stop Croyde and lunch at a cafe where no one appeared to speak much English. Getting a drink was challenging, to say the least. Carolynn’s fervour for ordering pints seemed to have come to an end and she ordered two halves instead – apparently, there is a difference; I’m struggling to see it, myself! We hit Croyde as it was preparing for its very own Glastonbury-style music festival… shame we couldn’t stop! Carolynn and I walked along Croyde Bay on the hard wet sand whilst Andrew, Caroline and Lottie struggled over the thigh aching dunes as Lottie wasn’t allowed on the beach. Guilt troubled my every step, thinking of the three of them struggling, two steps up, one step back in the loose, steep, sun-baked dunes… mmm maybe not!

The rest of the afternoon’s walk was both tedious and hot and the car couldn’t come soon enough. The day finished at the beginning! With a pint at the same local hostelry as the previous day. Then homeward bound, to return again in July. 100km walked, I think a wonderful achievement from a lady that would never walk more than five or six kilometres and that had to be on a canal path.

We start today from our Airbnb and re-join the path near Ilfracombe harbour, an easy start, walking through the old town and past the two cooling towers of the Landmark Theatre. Suddenly we were out of the town and rising steeply to the Seven Hills, which afforded a view across Ilfracombe onwards past Great Hangman

Again, there is only the three of us and Lottie; Andrew’s ankle is still swollen and hopefully he will join us at lunchtime. The walk from the Seven Hills is straight forward I would go as far as to say, downhill all the way to lunch; however, two other people on the walk might tell me that my recollection is too rose tinted, anyway I can’t remember any strenuous uphill sections! Lunch was in the picture postcard village of Lee. Although a little busy, it wasn’t too busy for such a beautiful setting. The village, though, had obviously seen better days with a closed down sea front hotel and a pub that hadn’t been updated since the late 40s, but the houses and gardens were a dream. Chocolate box perfect, in fact. I can only assume the demise is because tourists demand beaches to be sandy and not rocky as Lee’s is. It’s a place to dream and to forget about the mad, miserable, and selfish place that our world has become…  bit too serious, sorry.

Andrew, as promised, joined us after lunch and we embarked on one of the most trying, but picturesque sections so far. Up only to go down and down only to go up, to me it’s the law of nature, to those that like their walking flat, it’s a pain in the a…  The walk to the lighthouse at Bull Point and Morte Point (we’d been past a few Points today, Flat Point, Shag Point, Breakneck Point. None of them seemed to live up to their names…  I was particularly looking forward to Sh.. Point, I mean Flat Point) was undulating, is I think the best way of describing it. The heat meant the afternoon was best suited to swimming rather than walking. Swimming, though, would not get us to Woolacombe and that well-earned drink with my new pint drinking wife!

The day eventually came to a welcome end and at last, I can say that the day finished as all good walking days should, with a pint in the local hostelry.

My thoughts are straying to Kilimanjaro as we walk this section. It’s suddenly dawned on me that it’s only two months away. I have to say that I’m enjoying this walk with Carolynn and two very good friends; it’s different and makes me realise that greater ranges aren’t the be all and end all…  but they still have a pull that I’m unable to resist and hopefully Kilimanjaro will be the first of three trips to those greater ranges over the next couple of years.

At the car park near The Glass Box three persons… trying to be politically correct, I promise it will be the only time… and their dog went to start the walk – the intelligent amongst you know that should read ‘four persons and their dog’. We appear to be a man down. All that back slapping and self-conscious laughing that Andrew and I did when he fell yesterday didn’t stop his ankle from swelling and making normal walking painful. So, today it’s three of us and Lottie that start the second day.

Today we tackle the highest point of the South West Coast Path (in future to be called SWCP), Great Hangman Hill. As the crow flies, a very straightforward walk from our starting point, in reality though, geography had a different insight in how ‘the crow flies’ is interpreted. A crow, as you know, can fly, however, for some reason we struggled to get any real or imagined lift. It seems a crow is better adapted at this flying lark than we are. It soon became apparent that walking up inland valleys, back to the coast, down and then steeply up again would be the only way to reach Great Hangman’s Hill. I strongly suspect that anyone sentenced to be hanged there died of exhaustion long before the summit was reached or maybe they only ever reached the lesser summit of Little Hangman Hill. I suppose it might have depended on what sort of view you wanted during your last throes of life! Or as Monty Python suggested, ‘Always look on the bright side of death’ and with the exceptional view gained from the summit, I’m sure the penitent did.

We met up with Andrew at Combe Martin and had lunch in the coolest place… in the shadow of a wall in a public car park. Yes, I was using the word coolest in its original form as the heat was becoming quite oppressive. The afternoon was spent leisurely walking along a beautiful section of coast, up and over small bluffs, in and out of inlets and peeking down into hidden coves. The sting in the tail was Fort Hillsborough, a 100m climb from sea level only to descend 100m back to sea level in Ilfracombe. Again the day didn’t finish as all walks should, instead it finished at our lodgings, where I have to admit the warm bath nearly went down as well as a pint.

Talking about pints, Carolynn has never in the thirty odd years I’ve known her, been known to order a pint. Well, pick me up, slap me around, hang me by my feet and make me sing Bye Bye Baby by the Bay City Rollers, did she order a pint of lager shandy! I was dumbfounded. I thought I’d married a lady, not some roughen from Nunsthorpe! I had to share this revelation as I think it will become one of those pivotal moments in my life, a day I’ll remember, the day my wife became my drinking partner!