Higher than a kite..well, kestrel!
To top off our trip to Salcombe we spent a few hours on Friday doing a short hike along the coast path. We parked the car at the hotel at Soar Mill Cove and walked out from there. The hotel is up a fairly long, grassy hill from the lovely, unspoilt valley-enclosed beach at the cove, and was the formal start of the walk. Parking costs £3 for the day, payable at the hotel reception. We must have made a sight standing in the lobby of the 4-star hotel in hiking boots, khakis rolled up to mid shin, baseball caps and sunglasses!
Fee paid we ambled off down the hill. As soon as you are away from the hotel all you can hear is birdsong. We counted four or five different types of butterfly, including many silver-studded blues on the path in front of us and to the left a mixed hillside of sheep and cattle amused themselves by running down the slope towards a pair of loud, fighting pheasants, then stood, staring.
Once at the beach the valley sides rise up steeply each side andyou can follow the coast path south towards Bolt head, one of the most southerly points of Britain, or north towards Bolt Tail and Hope Cove. Out plan was to turn left and go south to Bolt Head, have a spot of lunch and then turn back. The walk on paper would be only about 5-6 miles but included some steep climb - the most serious of which was just over the first bump. After a few days of diving, and given the hot sun we didn’t fancy anything more taxing.
Turning left we mounted the first short climb and as we hit the end we saw the steep climb up to the rolling tops of the cliffs that awated us. The path up was a mix of worn mud, shale, rocky steps and grassy slope. We were glad of our good boots and marvelled as some of the other footwear we saw whilst on the wander. I am sure that soft, white, slip-on moccasins do the job fine when all is going well, but I wouldn’t fancy trying to regain a foothold once I had slipped in them, and I am not sure how well they support an ankle on sometimes uneven terrain!
Sweating and puffing we reached the top and from a rocky point we had the first wonderful view. Flat, blue sea with starlight twinkles from a high sun, sailing boats below, and a coastline that signalled the dramatic end of England as green heaths and field stopped abruptly and fell straight down into the ocean below.
From hear the path meanders close to the cliff edge, up and donw over the undulating cliff-tops. The predominant environment is gorse heath, but occasionally this gives way to grassy meadow, where man has exerted his power as far as he can. Aafter a while a final drop heralds the last climb if Bolt head is your target and end up on a ridge, jutting out to sea, with a WW2 battlement at the very end, and some perfect little rock stacks as nature’s picnic table, giving views to the mouth of the estuary and a small bay on one side, and the coastline to the north, whence you have come, on the other.
We sat in the sun and brought out the water bottles and small snack that we had packed. Lazing there, smiling and admiring the view my gaze was caught by something that came past Caroline’s head, on the other side to me, as it wheeled in front of us, and slightly below it was immediately clear that it was a kestrel. It swung along the grassy edge of the cliff below us and then turned to come back again before passing over our heads to return to hovering, in classic kestrel style, over the long grass behind us.
The silence was shortly broken by the faint hum of some folk playing around in a powerful RIB below. I may have had more time for them if they were diving, of course, but the boat was just having a hoolie. It sped right across the entrance of the estuary, past sail boats before doing “doughnuts” in the bay below us. We could hear shrieks from the women aboard so I suspect that it was all done to impress!
Legs rested we set out on the return leg. The sun was hot and high and a judicious reapplication of the SPF 25 was needed, as were frequent gulps of water - now less than cool! The views were still stunning however and we walked along with that constant half-smile that comes with just being relaxed and happy. As we reached the beach at Soar Mill Cove I was very tempted to abandon boots and socks and go for a paddle, but the thought of making the last walk up the hill to the hotel with sandy feet deterred me and headed straight up.
I must admit that I was shattered byt he time we reached the car. Lots of practise and training is needed if we are to fulfill our aims to walk the Inca trail to Machu Pichu late next year, but it will be worth it, and if the training for it can be as enjoyable as that small hike along some of Britain’s most beautiful coastline it will not be too great a hardship.
Sunny Salcombe
When Mark Powell posted trip down to Salcombe for 3 days diving wrecks in the 35-45m range I have to admit that my eye was taken by the write-up of the wrecks in the area, rather than a visit to Salcombe, which, to my shame, I only vaguely knew of or where it was. Given the prices of B&B’s for two, Caroline and I decided to make a week of it in a self-catering apartment for not much more than 3 or 4 nights of B&B would have cost, and it turned out our choice of apartment location was most fortuitous, being at the mid-point in elevation over which salcombe lies!
Lesson #1 Salcombe is hilly. Really hilly. the hills are also steep, and some of the chaps (mostly those of a certain age, to be fair) named the hike to their B&B “cardiac hill”.
The view from just down the road from our apartment
Saturday afternoon we arrived in time to get a good seat at The Fortescue pub to watch the England footie match and try out the local ale. We then had a nice enough meal to celebrate C’s brithday at “Ripples”. Sunday was spent pottering around in rockpools on North Sands beach, and once Fiona arrived we made our way down town to watch live music and gig racing as this weekend was the Salcombe Festival.
Lesson #2 No-one actually seems to live in Salcombe. this means that there are no “normal” shops to actually buy anything useful in, but you can buy lots of fudge, pasties and sweaters that go beautifully with polo shirt if you turn the collars up..
Sunday evening and a pint in the Victoria Arms (only sellls Cornish ale - how odd!) and a meet up with Nick B, Nic Tootricky, Howie and Mark.
Monday morning and it is time for a frantic effort to heft all the gear onto the boat and then scatter to try and park the cars. Fiona and Caroline dump ours back at the apartment where we have off road parking (hooray!) and the guys try for the nearest on-road parking. Pinkandfluffy, who has only arrived that mornig for one day with is, finally gets somewhere right at the top of the hill, about a mile away. It was touch and go as to whether she would ever return!
Normandy Pontoon at Salcombe
Maine
51 mins 33.8m viz 3-4m
Fairly large swells on the surface had me feeling somewhat sick before entry, along with several others on the boat, so getting down the shot was a relief. Finding that it was dark, with limited viz and a still apparent surge at 30+ meteres was not! Still, after some swift orientation we made out the shape of an intact ship and swam along the outsdie of the hull, off the seabed, until a convenient break in the plating let us into the slightly jumbles, but more sheltered interior. There were lots of bib, a few nudies and pollack hanging around. Some patchy coverings of plumoses added colour.
The lack of viz made it more of a “detail” dive and I didn’t get quite the grand impression I was expecting, but it is definately a wreck I want to visit again. Mark was doing it with his club on Thursday - and judging by the view down to the area from the cliffs above on Friday, he may have had better luck!
View from cliffs near Soar Mill Cove, close to the site of the Maine
Herzogin Cecilie
33 min 5.2m viz 2-3m
This was supposed to be an area famed for good viz and hence was a drop in, swim shoreward and you will see the great lump of hull that nearly breaks the surface. What actually happened was drop in, hit seabed, see eff all - barely each toehr because the swell is kicking up the fine sand. Lose Fiona, swim shorewards until it becomes clear that soon you might be beached and that would be embarrassing. Agree with Caroline that we will swim back out and surface.. Get picked up. Get dropped in again and make out Howards yellow box through the sand….swim to it and find wreck…and the Herzogin Cecilie too! 
It was a nice little wreck, but I had to keep my head buried under bits of wreckage to prevent seasickness from the surge. Caroline, ont he other hadn, had foolishly binned her hood and gloves as we got dropped in quickly for the second time and mostly felt cold. There is a large lump of hull, what looks like a good length of mast and some other scattered wreckage. A bit of life on it, but I would bet that this improves markedly in better conditions. I didn’t see the thornback ray though….rats!
Tuesday and there is no Pinkandfluffy, but we do have Mr Paul Oliver now joining us…suddenly there seems far less room on the boat…
Riversdale
73 min 41.3m 5-6m dark viz
The shot dropped us onto one side of the large hull, and folowing the edge of this we came to a sudden end and a 90 degree turn. This confused me slightly for a while and following it I started wondering whether I was crossing the deck or running along it. As we came to the next 90 degree turn my initial assumptions were confrimed as we hit what was far mor clearly a rail. Someone had, at some point, run some orange line down into the holds from here, but we didn’t follow this - there was always the chance that the Dude might be on the end, having more knitting classes with Mark, so we continued along the rail. There was more life on here than on the Maine and after reaching the bow we turned back along the rail before going to deply blobs. At this point i realised I hadn’t sorted out the minor tangle on my reel from the Maine dive and so aborted my attemopt to deploy and left it to Fiona.
The ascent had us lose Fiona at 6m for a while, but gain a friend in a stunning blue jellyfish and his attendant fry. After watching this for a bit Nick and Nic came across C and I and were apparently a little confused at seeing the pair of us drfting along with out new mate, and no blob. they were even more confised when we finned off purposefully with the current - they hadn’t realised that we were off to find Fiona, which we did a couple of minute later
Soudan
24min 20.0m 6-7m
For a second dive this is a real cracker. scattered wreckage, including 2 large boilers, a mast, a hull section with swimthroughs, a resident emperor of the universe, daddy of all daddy lobsters and lots and lots of nudibranchs! The coner resident in the boilers looked as though he ate errant divers and I didn’t see Howie attempt his famous ell-tickling exercise there. The sandy bottom was alos a haven for flatties of differing types.
The long first dive left us low on gas for a really lengthy explore of the wreck first time so we requested areturn on day 3.
Kit repairs today included…..Nick B lubing up Fiona and Caroline - (zip and valve respectively) and untangling of both mine and Caroline’s reels. A festival of fluorescent line!
Nick checks that everything is nice and slidey…
Newholme
66mins 36.0m 6-7m
I have to say that this was my favourite of the three wrecks. There is less of it, but what there is is absolutely covered in life. it seems to sit as though fairly intact, but sunk into soft, white sand. The starboard rail is just visible and the port one sits higher, allowing some swim throughs, and some wriggle throughs, in clean, sandy-bottomed holds, whre the blukheads have rotted throug in places.
Highlight of this dive for me was spotting a type of large nudibranch that I have yet to identify, but which I have never seen before. I was, in a word, most over-excited
Soudan - again
42mins 20.8m viz 6-7m
There was one aim to this dive - for Caroline to find nudibranchs and faff around trying to get a picture of them. She had to cut the first shot on the Soudan shorter than I did and so had missed the daddy lboster, but I failed to find him again for her. Oops. Still. we saw about 100 nudies, and I got to watch Caroline trying to capture them on whatever digipics are captured on.
A nudi on the Soudan
Most folk went home after this dive, so lots of kitting lugging ensued. Clive Woodward walked past us from his yacht tender for about the 5th time that week and once again failed to offer a hand to carry anything ;). Goodbyes were said and a convoy of dive-kit laden vehicles exited the car-park. Only the dude’s had an extra drag factor of approximately 12 from the huge array of England “tat” adorning (and possibly holding together) his landie.
Caroline, Fiona and myself went back to the apartment for home-cooked Mexican and a lovely champage drink for C’s birthday from Fiona. Fiona left on Thursday and Caroline and I went to the beach at Soar Mill Cove for a bit of a relaxing day. Friday saw us back there to walk the coast path from soar Mill to Bolt Head and back again.
It doesn’t look far on paper, but there are a couple of fierce climbs that after a few days diving were the killing of me! Still managed to pose for some pics though…
Me at Bolt head - halfway and time for lunch in the sun
This morning it was with no small sadness that we packed up the car and left the lovely South Hams for home……..we do now have very nice yachtie sweater to remind us of the week though…
Windy Weymouth
A week of torrential rain and force 6-8 winds meant that we were not hopeful of salvaging a Bank Holiday weekend at Weymouth. We were due to be diving Saturday and Sunday, with Sunday being the main event and a return to the wreck of the Salsette - 10 miles west of Portland Bill.
The boat we were booked on was X-Dream, a 38′ Evolution skippered by Paul Pike. This is the same boat that we are using for a weekday safari down to Salcombe in a few weeks, so I was interested to get some dive in off her, and with Paul, first.
After many e-mails and phone calls, finally on friday morning we get the go-ahead that paul will try and get out of the harbour for us, and was hopeful.
In the end we didn’t get to do the salsette again, but managed some reasonable dives on Lulworth Banks, Bally Bay, the Aoelian Sky (which was dark, dark, dark but covered in nudibranchs!) and the bow of the Black Hawk.
More importantly we discovered that X-dream was a great boat, with lots of room and a good lift, plus the best head in Christendom - complete with air-freshener and clean as you like! Paul is a very friendly and extrememly competent skipper with a nice line in home-made soups for lunch, We were blessed with Mulligatawny, and given the weather it was extremely welcome.
Roll on Salcombe.