Instow to Westward Ho!

Monday 28th April 2008

13 miles on Coast Path; total of 15 miles walking.

Click here for all our photos from this walk.

We retraced our steps past the Oil Installation then turned right onto the railway line (heading back towards Barnstaple!) before turning left onto the Coast Path round East Yelland Marsh (so resuming our journey in the correct direction). We passed the jetties constructed for the Yelland Power Station (now demolished) - this is such a beautiful place that it seems difficult to imagine a power station here. The signing of the path then became a little indistinct - we went onto the beach then back up again then returned to the beach to avoid MoD land (a Royal Marine testing site for amphibian vehicles). With the benefit of hindsight, I suspect we were meant to cross the MoD land here. We followed the road through Instow, with views across the estuary to Appledore and the shipbuilding yard.

We left the Tarka Trail at an old station, now a museum, at East-the-Water. We crossed the Long Bridge to reach Bideford proper and walked along the quay past the departure point for ferries to Lundy. It started to rain at this point so we headed into the town centre and had lunch at a pleasant little cafe.

It had stopped raining after lunch and we returned to the Quayside past a statue of Charles Kingsley (author of the novel Westward Ho!, after which today's destination was named). The route past this point is described as 'fiddly' by one of the guidebooks - it was, but also very pretty, passing attractive houses close to the river (though a bit spoilt by the new road bridge high above us). We climbed up through woods to the top of a little cliff, then back down to a little beach. The guidebooks both said that the embankment in the following section had been breached and so an alternative inland route should be followed at all but the lowest of tides - which it wasn't. So we followed the inland route - then realised that the embankment had been remade!

There was another detour round the back of Appledore Shipbuilders then we followed a road round to the pretty quayside in Appledore, where we stopped for an icecream and to admire the view back across the estuary to Instow. We walked through the old part of Appledore, along Irsha Street, with colourfully painted cottages with equally attractive names. We passed the Lifeboat Station - the inshore lifeboat was here but the big lifeboat was out in deeper water in the estuary. Then we followed the coast along to the Northam Burrows Country Park, sometimes on a path on top of a low cliff, sometimes on the beach.

We followed the path between the dunes and a golf course until just after the information centre and a little lake, at which point we headed over the shingle to the beach (watching kite-powered surfing and karting) and walked along the beach to Westward Ho! Several of the long distance paths we've walked end in touristy destinations (for example, the Offa's Dyke path ends in Prestatyn), almost as if they're aiming to give you a culture shock after days of glorious countriside and very few people. At first site Westward Ho! (a nineteenth century seaside resort and also, apparently, the only place name in the UK to end with an exclamation mark) seemed to meet the usual criteria. However it appears to be in the process of reinventing itself, with a number of very upmarket (if not very attractive) apartment blocks being constructed amongst the amusement arcades and holiday villages.

Culloden House, with its name on the side of the building, was very easy to see but less easy to gain access to, since our instructions took us to a place beneath the building but with no access to it. A phone call to the owner, Graham Gent, soon sorted that out. The restaurant Graham recommended turned out to be shut (it being a Monday) so we celebrated the end of walk in appropriate style with fish and chips at 'The Sunshine Cafe'. Then we walked past the modern developments, holiday villages and beach chalets onto the route of the South West Coast Path the other side of Westward Ho! It was a lovely evening, with excellent views back the way we had come, and we followed the path for half a mile or so. The rest will have to wait until next year!

Following leg of path