Salcombe day 22


South Sands Salcombe

Hullo again dear readers,  I had heard that Salcombe is a lovely place and it hasn't let us down. It is a very pretty little village coming right down to the waters edge, with little alleyways and narrow streets. As I mentioned yesterday there is no river running into this sea inlet, know as a ria. It was formed after the Ice Age when sea levels rose . The area is a Marine Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Marine Nature Reserve. It is home to some rare plants and animals including seahorses, fan mussels that grow to over a  foot in diameter and  a sea slug thought to be unique to this area!! So Salcombe has its very own sea slug, luckily we haven't come across any of those yet.

It also has a lifeboat station here and we saw them coming in from an exercise last night, a large lifeboat and several ribs, one of which neatly stows in the bottom of the large lifeboat. 

Salcombe also has it's own class of boat, the Salcombe Yawl, still being built today.

    

Yesterday evening we had a delightful supper in a local pub, the Fortescue Inn, where we met up with Celia's friends. We had delicious food and sampled the Salcombe Gin, very smooth, we liked it! We dare not drink too much as we had to negotiate the water taxi and climbing back onto Lunar Sea on the way back!

Perhaps we should try paddle boarding, the black Labrador seems to be enjoying it!


Lunar Sea from the yacht club


This morning we decided to spend the day off the boat, so we got a water taxi to take us to the town quay, and we ambled up to the yacht club and had a very pleasant view while having our morning coffee. We looked down on Lunar Sea moored right outside, and posed on the terrace for a photo.

Posing on the Salcombe Yacht Club terrace.

After a delicious pasty lunch Josh decided to stay in town and visit the tiny Maritime Museum and the local cemetery, to try to find out more about the Lidstones and other ancestors, that all originally came from the Salcombe area. 

Clelia and I decided to take the South Sands ferry to a sandy bay at the entrance to the ria, and we had a very different sort of ferry ride. I will explain. The ferry can't go up onto the beach as it is too shallow and there is no landing pontoon, so it stops near to the beach and a sea tractor drives out from the beach to transfer the passengers from the ferry to the sands. 



Bolt Head, Celia's walk

I had a very refreshing swim and Celia walked to Bolt Head, the cliffs at the entrance to the ria. A nice cup of tea and an ice cream was a very welcome refreshment , before we hopped onto the sea tractor to take us out to the waiting ferry. A very different experience and great fun!



Sea tractor and ferry coming together South Sands

When we got back to Salcombe we met up with Josh for a drink before getting the water taxi back to the boat, and supper on board. It was a glorious evening, very warm and still. There is nothing like sitting on deck and watching the sun go down and the stillness of the evening taking over. 

South Sands beach

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