Babbacombe to Exmouth

Che dropped me at the spot where she picked me up yesterday. The coast path is quite up and down in the first part of this section and I like it. This isn’t the ‘like’ that appears in my love affair with South Devon from Wembury to Dartmouth, St Ives to Penzance and Fowey to Looe. But it’s a decent like.

Anywhere that intersperses national and county flags deserves a like.

Even here the switch to sandstone cliffs has started, as has the aftermath of terrible trembling and tumbling. Alliteration city Arizona.

Breakfast in a box was provided by a cafe only accessible via the coastal path, hanging above a small beach. It was great.

Looking further up, the coast was really good.

And I passed the most prolific fig tree I’ve ever seen!

It’s not a bad coast at all, although my preference is behind and ahead of me. And the cliff route round to Teignmouth is good, with this view looking across the Exe estuary towards Lyme Regis and Chesil Beach, but a few days away yet.

The ferry across to Teignmouth bounced in the breeze and wet us all. Twenty four people huddled like refugees in the small boat across the narrow bay.

When the real refugees bounce twenty miles across the English Channel they must be terrified, soaked, hungry and hypothermic. Poor little buggers. And then scumbags meet them at the shore and shout and scream at them. The inhumanity of this situation does upset me. But it angers me as well. From the beauty of the British coastline my mind wanders to ugly things. Now it’s wandering back.

Mais souviens toi.

Dawlish was the next port of call, with a massive railway running along and above the beach. Providing a flat section of the path.

The path becomes a pavement and I was able to race round to the Exmouth ferry. Horror of horrors, it was cash only, six quid and I only had two. There were no cash points. The lads let me on. Cheers my dears.

And Che was waiting on the other side to take me to a new campsite in Uplyme. What a gem of a sis.

I’m lucky. Very lucky.

Night night.