8km along the coast and 7.9km inland. About a third of section 52 in the SWCPA handbook.
For the next part of the walk, we found a small car park in the centre of East Prawle. This is a surprisingly big village (or maybe even a town, a number of road names suggest so) quite close to Prawle Point. From here we took a series of minor roads and bridleways which took us back to the car-park at Start Point. So down the incline back to the Coastal path near Great Mattiscombe sands.
Although it had started a little drizzly, the sun came out and showed off the colours of the sea and the beach. A fairly good path leads to Lannacombe Beach, where there are a couple of houses and a very small honesty carpark. We stopped for coffee on the beach – we had brought our own as were not expecting to find anything along this stretch of coast in the winter.
There continues to be a good, and mostly level path generally close to the sea and low down, to past Maelcombe House, with its rather unwelcome signs. However just a little further along a bridleway lead down to the beach and this provided some shelter from the increasing Westerly Wind and a place to stop for lunch.
The good path on a raised beach continues for a bit before a steep ascent, past a row of “Admiralty” houses to Prawle Point. This is the most Southerly part of Devon and there is now a “Coastwatch” lookout and a small visitors centre that gives a history of the lookout here (Prawle is Old English for lookout)
From here the Coast becomes dramatic and the path more difficult, with rocks to climb over and a severe drop to the sea on the left. We continued to just beyond Elender Cove, where a steep path and then a bridleway lead back to East Prawle.
