Coastal corridors
Imagine living somewhere, when it came to the weekend question: “where shall we go for a walk today?” left you genuinely perplexed.
Access to the countryside is something we are lucky enough to enjoy in a very peculiarly British way, we may not have freedoms to wander hither-and-thither over any piece of open space we lay our eyes on, but we do have networks of safe, legally protected rights of way to satisfy out wanderlust.
One of my favourite routes is the southwest coast path. It doesn’t even really matter which section, just pop me on a winding path up and down the East Devon coastal valleys, or fighting against buffeting winds on the North Cornish coast and I am equally happy. In fact, we are particularly fortunate to have this resource on our doorsteps, and it’s possibly something we take for granted, such is it entrenched in our outdoor pursuits manifesto.
Even if you’ve no reference material, or even a map, you can make your way to pretty much any coastal town in the South West peninsular and know that there will be a well marked, well maintained path to lead you away along the coast. Just take a moment to think what it would be like to not have this opportunity and spare a thought for those coastal communities elsewhere in the UK which do not enjoy such freedoms.
It must be a deeply entrenched human instinct to want to walk alongside water, whether its for the aesthetic pleasures, or whether its more of a comforting thought of knowing you can retrace your steps easily, is a moot point but either way its something we all enjoy.
Stretches with plenty of access facilities, such as a nice big car park and perhaps some refreshments at either end, are always busy especially at the weekends. If the going is flat and level and the surface sound, these stretches are important for people with mobility issues, providing some of the few chances to get into the countryside if your hips aren’t what they used to be.
Last week, however, I enjoyed a walk along what can only be described as the antithesis of the easy access corridor, as I joined BBC Radio Devon on a stroll along the Undercliffs National Nature Reserve. Normally I’d reckon on a seven or eight mile walk taking between two and three hours. It is testament to the winding nature of this route, and how much there is to stop and take in along the way, that this walk took nearer to four hours to complete. We started at Seaton, walked over to Lyme Regis and caught the X53 coastal service back to our starting point.
The recording was part of Radio Devon’s celebrations of its 25th birthday. To commemorate this quarter century listeners have been invited to send in details of their favourite walks in Devon, and the Undercliffs was a popular route. I was asked to join the walk and talk about various aspects of natural history and geology along the route, and as the morning unfolded I completed a list of birds either heard or seen during our peregrination.
The list was looking a little flat by the half way point, as there was no time to sit about waiting for woodland birds to put in an appearance, we literally had a bus to catch at the other end of the walk, and none of us fancied the prospect of missing our service and waiting another two hours for the next one.
But, luckily, we stopped at the French Lieutenant’s Woman’s tree (surely too many possessive apostrophes in that sentence?), one of the Great Trees of East Devon. I hopped up into the branches to give my best Meryl Streep impersonation and while in the tree was distracted by the croak of a raven. I looked over my left shoulder and saw a huge glossy black raven plunge into a cliff-top holy tree, closely followed by a peregrine falcon, giving voice just behind it. These two were probably having a bit of a tussle and mouthing off, as neither would appear on the dinner menu of the other bird.
We did however find a small pile of black feathers, adorning a sphagnum-covered rock. By close inspection of the feathers it was possible to deduce that this was the feeding station of a sparrowhawk, probably female, who had recently dined upon a male blackbird, using the rock as a butcher’s block.
No sparrowhawks were seen or heard during our dash along the coast, but we still knew they were in the vicinity from what they had left behind.