Rain and Estuaries: South West Coast Path – Day 32

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Wembury to Bigbury

30,000 steps and two estuaries crossed (one by ferry, one waded)

The weather forecast lets me down. It’s completely accurate.

I wake up at six. Outside, it sounds like someone has aimed a hose at the house. There’s been heavy rain in the night, and it continues, driven on strong winds from the south.

This is the day that has dominated planning for this trip. There are two estuaries to be crossed. The first, early in the day, is the Yealm, which has a small ferry. I need to get that between 10 and 12.

After that, I have to make rapid progress to cover the eight miles to the Erme, so that I’m there for low tide (around 1pm), when the guide book assures me the estuary can be safely waded. Miss that slot, and it’s an eight mile detour inland. As the ever-cheerful Book puts it:

“Be sure to plan this day’s walk carefully to avoid being stranded, or having to make long detours inland.”

At breakfast, I phone the ferryman, to check whether the Yealm ferry will be operating, given the dreadful conditions.

“Unfortunately, yes,” he says.

I set off, fully togged up in cagoule and over trousers. On the headland, making my way to the Yealm River, the wind drives rain up the hillside from the sea, sweeping it across the Path in curtains. The sky is blurry and grey. Water drips from my nose.

In places the Path has become a stream, I follow it past a few cottages and down some wooden steps to the slipway. I reach the steps for the ferry and shelter for ten minutes, waiting for a sign of Bill, the happy ferryman. Across the water, I see a man row a boat out to a moored dinghy. On board, he picks up a bucket and begins bailing copious amounts of water out of the boat. This goes on for some time.

At last, he starts the engine and comes over to pick me up. Bill tells me he’s been doing the job 27 years, and has never had to bail out so much water in the morning! I tell him 27 years makes him a feature of the coast path, and I ask if he minds me taking his picture.

Bill the Ferryman

From the Ferry, I walk along the road into Noss Mayo, where every building surface is dripping and the streets run with water. I head uphill and inland, cutting through woods and along roads back toward the coast.

For the next mile, a high hedge protects me from the full force of the wind driving sheets of rain in from the sea. When I pass the occasional gap in the hedge, its like stepping in front of a fan in a shower.

I find the Path and head east, on a part stony, part grassy track between low, wind-stunted shrubs. I may be imagining it, but the conditions appear to improve slightly. It’s now possible to distinguish the grey sky from the grey sea.

The wind draws an interesting variety of sounds from the landscape around me – a whistle from barbed wire on the fence; wind-driven rain through tree branches sounds like a distant waterfall; a constant surge of white water on rocks below.

I pass a ruined lookout, and the Path plunges down a precipitous and rather slippery incline. I’m grateful for my stick for preventing me skidding out of control.

A few more ascents and descents, as the Path follows a grassy line along the brow of the hills. The rain has now eased, although the sky is still blurred and not much is visible out to sea. Down onto and across a small beach, and I take a wrong turn and find myself having to scramble on hands and kness through wet bushes to recover the Path. At last, half an hour before low tide, I reach the Erme mouth.

It’s clear that I’ve got the tide right. But I haven’t factored in the heavy rain overnight and through the morning. Instead of the tiny trickle I’ve seen in photos, the river is about fifty metres wide, flowing quite swiftly in the middle. And it’s a dark brown colour, looking like it’s washed a large proportion of the peat out of the hills of Dartmoor upstream.

I wonder how the Erme got its name. I can imagine one of my weary predecessors coming upon a similar scene and enquring of a local:

“Where’s the ferry?”
“No ferry.”
“How am I supposed to get across that?”
“Wade it.”
“Erm…?”

I take the precuation of faffing about long enough removing boots and socks that I have time to watch a couple of other people cross before me. They make it okay, although the water reaches to their groins, and at times they appear to be struggling against the flow. I tell myself I’m probably taller than they are.

I sling my boots round my neck, roll up my trousers, and wade in. In mid- channel the current is quite forceful, and I am grateful for the stick to brace myself and retain my balance.

But I reach the other side without mishap.

I climb the Path out of the valley, onto the headland, where I rest and eat my lunch. I’m in a sheltered, grassy spot, and after all that Fording excitement, I fall asleep for a few minutes, lulled by the sound of waves below and the wind sighing above my head.

I awaken refreshed and ready to go, not least because it is not raining.

The rest of the day’s walk is uneventful, if a little more arduous than I’d prefer. I have overlooked the sentence in the Book, which says the Coast Path beyond Erme:

“features a series of steep ascents and descents on the way to Bigbury, enjoying some of the best cliff scenery on the south Devon coast.”

The scenery is indeed fine, but I could do without quite so many of those ascents.