After the rain there is another hot summer day so I can get up Salcombe Hill and walk for a while.
I have a map of the area and noticed that there is an interesting looking footpath that I haven't walked up yet, so locating the road on the other side of Salcombe I walk up what appears to be a small private track that leads to a farm. As I get closer I begin to get the impression that the place is a bit run down as there are abandoned cars scattered around. The farm turns out to be a cabin near a large chicken shed. I am expecting that at any moment a dog will start barking but all is deserted. The lane should turn into a footpath somewhere. I walk around the perimeter of a long electrified fence but cannot find any trace of the footpath; every direction leads to a dead end and I am starting to wonder if the path is obstructed, but eventually I notice what looks like a good footpath on the other side of an electric fence and a hedge. I can't get to the path without damaging the fence and it begins to dawn on me that I have misread the map and I am in fact in completely the wrong place. I scurry myself back out again slightly thankful that it was deserted. A good lousy piece of map reading on my part.
I have a map of the area and noticed that there is an interesting looking footpath that I haven't walked up yet, so locating the road on the other side of Salcombe I walk up what appears to be a small private track that leads to a farm. As I get closer I begin to get the impression that the place is a bit run down as there are abandoned cars scattered around. The farm turns out to be a cabin near a large chicken shed. I am expecting that at any moment a dog will start barking but all is deserted. The lane should turn into a footpath somewhere. I walk around the perimeter of a long electrified fence but cannot find any trace of the footpath; every direction leads to a dead end and I am starting to wonder if the path is obstructed, but eventually I notice what looks like a good footpath on the other side of an electric fence and a hedge. I can't get to the path without damaging the fence and it begins to dawn on me that I have misread the map and I am in fact in completely the wrong place. I scurry myself back out again slightly thankful that it was deserted. A good lousy piece of map reading on my part.
I get around the corner, closer now to the edge of the cliff which has good views back towards Sidmouth and eastwards up the coast towards Beer, (it being the last white cliff in the photo's)This is the quietest place that I have been for a while.
There are no roads within hearing distance, and I can hear nothing mechanical of any sort, in fact I can't really hear anything apart from the sound of the wind blowing through the grass. Farther along there are some birds and then a few sheep, pottering away in the late afternoon, but the silence here is striking.
When I first came to Devon as a child one of the first things that I noticed were the unusual bright red puddles in the red earth. Back home, earth was usually a dark brown colour, or could sometimes be a bright rusty orange clay. The red surprised me and it took a few years to properly appreciate these alarming red puddles.
