The title says Devon but this walk was actually in Cornwall. I'd arrived at my parents place in Devon the day before – Christmas this year was to be with my parents and brother, who'd flown over from Australia. We all enjoy going for a good walk and so it was a cold, blustery and damp day that we found ourselves lacing our hiking boots for this circular walk.
It started off just above the fairly epic Sandymouth Beach (more on this later), with the path winding across fields near the cliffs. This walk took us along a section of the South West Coast Path, so it was all pretty stunning scenery, that kind of cold and wild beachy look that England does really well. We said hello to a few of the sheep nearby and kept walking uphill.
Of course, the only problem with walking uphill is that, at some point, you need to go down again. We started edging our way down slowly - it was so muddy and slippery, there was no other way to do it.... well, or so we thought. We'd all made it to the bottom of a dip when along came these crazy runners with mud all up their legs. They didn't seem to care that the mud was sucking them down in places and just kept powering on. Crazy. Unfortunately, just after they passed us, my Mum lost her balance and slipped into the mud. No harm done, just some muddy hiking trousers and gloves. We finally made it to drier ground and kept going.
There was another hill ahead that we had to go down, but thankfully it wasn't quite as boggy. Then we continued along the path to Coombe Valley.
The path picked up on a muddy bridleway, meandered across a few sheep fields, with some very curious sheep, and past a farmhouse or two before looping back in the direction of Sandymouth Beach, where the car was parked. On the way back, my brother made friends with a highland cow, who seemed to want to join our walk. But it was too slow to keep up and we kept on squelching our way back to the beach.
When we got to the beach, we went to have a look. It might look different in the summer, but in winter and this weather, it looked like something out of a novel. It was deserted, the rock formations were incredible, and there were waterfalls cascading down to the pebbles of the beach below. I mean, definitely not somewhere you'd really go swimming, but it was just beautiful in its own right.
After our 11km walk in the mud, it was time to go back to Devon to clean up and warm up. But this walk will go down as one of my favourites!