6.9 km along the coast and 10.9 km inland including going down to Stoke Bay. Part of section 49 in the SWCPA handbook.
We stayed at an Air bnb house in Newton Ferres, although not quite on the path, well worth a detour for a visit. So drove the short distance to the car-park at Mothecombe – I had looked this up on the internet and after 1st April they charge £5 day for parking so although it would have been free earlier it is a very useful place and £5 does not seem unreasonable for all day. The sun was shining and although it had been a very cold night, the wind had dropped and so a good day for a coastal walk.
There is a short walk down the road before joining the Coastal Path. At first there was a fairly easy ascent and descent to Meadowsfoot beach. Surprisingly popular for so early in the year, with quite a few people swimming, most (but not all!) with wet suits.
After this we saw very few people on what is a relatively easy stretch of coast, with a few fairly mild up and downs. In places it clearly had been very muddy, but was quite dry now and we were rewarded with primroses, violets and blackthorne coming out.
We did meet one lady, and her dog walking the other way, the dog had a couple of small paniers and we learnt that she was walking the whole of the coastal path and the dog had to carry its own food. She was heading for Bigbury-on-Sea and as she was camping hoped that tonight would be less cold than last night.
The path joins an old carriage drive and so is then relatively level and quite wide and took us to a road down to what is shown on our map as Stoke Beach, but also goes by the name of Revelstoke Park, a mass of green mobile homes.
So we walked down through the “park” to see the Church of Peter and the poor fishermen, although only a part of it still has a roof, it is still a consecrated church and worth a look as a contrast to the mobile home “park”. Then we walked, avoiding the “Private – no public right of way” signs that proliferate in this “park” down to Stoke beach.
An interesting little beach with sandstone rocks, with almost vertical bedding planes and interesting red colours so having stopped for lunch we walked back up the Public Footpath through the static caravans and then along road.
We passed “Eastern Lodge” now a private house but it was the entrance to the Membland Estate where man who built the built the carriage way used to live. We then took a series of byeways back to Mothecombe where we enjoyed tea and coffee cake at the old schoolhouse restaurant next to the car park.
Then to complete the walk we went down to the beach, it was now a little after low tide, and walked to the River Erme crossing point and although we could clearly see Womwell beach only a little way away, and horses crossing the estuary, were not tempted to wade across on what was now a rising tide.
