Cliff walk at Dunscombe to see the Elder

A walk along the clifftops today, seeing as it's summer and the view is good. One of the reasons for walking about in June is to see the Elders in flower, as this is the time that they make themselves visible and we can play spot the Elderflower. Elderflower makes good wine and later on there will be Elderberries too. Pick them while the sun is shining.

This walk is partly along the South West Coast Path, which you can walk along for about 630 miles if you have the time. This particular stretch is graded as severe to strenuous and the ground can be very flinty so this walk is not for the faint of heart. One of the things that I like about the path is that in these days of over enthusiastic health and safety (unless you are a large corporation in which case no law seems to apply) the path brings you within a foot or two of the edge of the cliff in some places, so you have to be pretty careful around here and watch for sudden gusts of wind or wet and slippery ground. People do fall off these cliffs on a fairly regular basis and depending on where you fall you either end up very quickly down on the beach about 500 feet below, or you get stuck in a tree or bush and you might get rescued. These parts of the walk always give me the heebie-jeebies anyway.

The days are long here now, with it starting to get light after 3:30 and getting properly dark at around 10. In the winter it gets light after 8 in the morning and will be dark again just after 5, so lots of daylight to enjoy at the moment. In the next part of this walk we will get to Salcombe church, which is very nice indeed if you enjoy that sort of thing. It's certainly peaceful there, as there is hardly any traffic on any of the lanes. There is a bench in the first photo where we can take a rest and enjoy the view for now.

after the rain

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 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.

Walk to Dunscombe

Another good walk which is very close to the edge of the cliffs in places is the walk to Dunscombe, just up the road from Salcombe. Most of this walk is nice and flat and the large hills can be avoided mostly, if you don't enjoy walking up large hills.


It is quite busy up here as again it is part of the South West Coast path and I meet many people along the route. There are a lot of rare butterflies and it is good to see the butterfly hunters armed with expensive cameras these days instead of the nets of old. I also saw a very bright bird with a yellow head and a red body, not a goldfinch although we had three of those in our garden for twenty five minutes the other day, eating seeds from the plants, a rare sight here.

There is some fine ancient earthworking on the edge of Dunscombe cliffs, not even marked on the maps, but some beautiful serpentine shapes covered in lovely long grass. I always dislike the fact that when you visit an old site in the UK they are always titivated and tidied to take all the romance out of the place and turn them into a site for cream teas and giftshops. The English seem obsessed with cutting grass and turning the country into a manicured lawn. I will go back and photograph some of these workings for you at a later date.

It is intensely hot here at the moment which is odd for the middle of summer, as usually it is raining and chilly about this time of year, we almost don't know what to do with it but we enjoy it as much as possible as we know that it is all too brief.

A large storm is coming across from the west and I think it wise to head for home. I hear the sound of approaching thunder from where I am in the woods and make it home just as the first raindrops start to fall, good timing for once.

Tragic though Michael Jacksons death surely is, on the plus side it has pushed Iran out of the news here as much as is possible and so hopefully buys them a bit of time. People here don't give a shit about Iran and the election but we are having it shoved down our throats in the news everyday, Iran is evil blah blah, doesn't it remind anybody of anything? People have really short memories here, they do however care about Michael Jackson, so good on you Michael.