The South Devon Coast

The little headland enclosing the western side of Hope Cove forms the eastern horn of Thurlestone Bay, and as you rise the neck of land dividing the two, you see the strange roc...

It is quite a narrow passage across the Kingsbridge River to Salcombe, and shut in majestically by dark rocks and a winding channel. The little town dabbles its feet in the deep...

Distances in and around Plymouth are most remarkably deceptive, and the local geography is full of surprises. The famous Plymouth Sound is from two to four miles wide, but the c...

The little coach that runs daily from Dartmouth to Kingsbridge has a steep climb up out of Dartmouth. Here the pedestrian certainly has the advantage, for, tracing his coastwise...

The name of Beer is famous in smuggling annals, for it was in the then rather desperate little fisher-village that Jack Rattenbury, smuggler, who lies in Seaton churchyard was b...

There are winding walks as I have said, down to Babbacombe, but for all their circumbendability (what a lovely word that is!) they are so steep that by far the easiest way to de...

Mothecombe is a place where explorers and visitors of any kind are severely discouraged, the local landowners, the Mildmays of Flete, a magnificent modern mansion whose park ext...

The further West you go, the more distinctly religious you find the people, and the stronger you find the hold of Dissent upon them. Religion is a very real thing in the West, a...

The eight miles steamboat trip up or down the Dart is one of the finest things Devonshire has to show, for the river Dart is rightly thought the most beautiful of rivers. The Da...

Undoubtedly the best way of obtaining the fullest general idea of the size of Plymouth and its satellite towns of Devonport and Stonehouse—to say nothing of the newer towns of S...

Coming into Sidmouth, you see at once that you are arrived in a Superior Place, and, before you are perceived, make haste to brush the dust off your boots, put your headgear str...

Excursion steamers in summer take thousands of visitors from the Hoe Pier out to the Eddystone, and so in many minds renew the moving story of that fatal reef. The existing ligh...

The statue of Dutch William makes the background of Brixham Harbour picturesque, and the fishing-fleet and the houses climbing up, tier above tier, confer a nobility upon the st...

But the coast really does not reach to Exeter. Let us take boat across from the picturesque waterside of Topsham, and then follow the western bank of Exe down to the sea. It is...

At the point, just where the river and the sea meet, off the toy lighthouse, is the noblest view of the Ness, the great red bluff that turns a jagged front to the sea, and lifts...

The uncanny-looking Start has impressed itself upon the imaginations of most of those who have seen it. Polwhele, the historian of Devon, led to the thought by the fantastic sol...

At the summit of High Peak is the common of Muttersmoor, whence the way goes steeply down into the valley of the River Otter, at length reaching the village of Otterton, down th...

Close by the border-line of the two counties, as you make from Lyme Regis, across the pleasant upland meadows to Uplyme, which is in Devonshire, is Middle Mill. The mill has see...

Budleigh Salterton lies at the foot of a steep descent. Only within quite recent years has it been connected by railway with the outer world, and so has not yet quite woke up an...

Along the curving shores you come, past Tor Abbey Sands, Livermead, and the little red knob of Corbyn’s Head, with a hole in the rock like an eye, to Paignton. The reason for Pa...

In this quiet and wooded nook near Kent’s Cavern, tucked away from the octopus arms of Torquay, is Ilsham Grange, a chance survival of those old times when Tor Abbey ruled the r...

Teignmouth is the “second largest watering-place in South Devon” and the most entirely delightful. It was more delightful when it was smaller; but that is a fact known only to p...

Dawlish looks its very best from the railway station; not the least doubt of it, and looks best of all to passengers bound elsewhere. From the train you have on one side the blu...

The cheapest ferry in England is that which takes you across from Kingswear to Dartmouth. In point of fact, there are two: the pontoon-like affair that plies from the ferry-slip...

The landing was completed in three hours, without a hitch and was followed by divine service on the beach, concluded by all the troops singing the 118th Psalm, which is at once...

It is, of course, up-hill out of Beer. One has not been long, or far, in Devonshire before recognising that almost immutable law of the West, by which you descend steeply into e...

Down there lies Seaton, looking very new, along the inner side of a shingly beach, with the strath of the river Axe running, flat and green, up inland to the distant hills, and...

If the map of Devon be measured across in a straight line, it will be found that, from Lyme Regis, where it joins Dorsetshire, to King’s Tamerton on the River Tamar, where Devon...