Scenic Point in Devon

Appledore is one of the most attractive and most completely preserved maritime villages in Devon, a small port at the confluence of the Rivers Taw and Torridge near Bideford whose combination of narrow streets of Georgian and earlier cottages, the active shipyard, the maritime museum and the estuary setting creates one of the most authentic and most rewarding small coastal destinations in the West Country. The village retains the genuine character of a working maritime community in a way that more tourist-developed Devon coastal settlements have lost. The shipyard at Appledore, one of the last traditional shipbuilding yards in Britain, has constructed vessels on this site for centuries and continues to build and repair ships of considerable scale. The sight and sound of an active shipyard working with steel and tradition in a village of this intimate scale is one of the most distinctive features of Appledore and the most powerful evidence of the maritime heritage that the village museum documents in more conventional ways. The North Devon Maritime Museum in the village provides an excellent account of the seafaring history of the Taw-Torridge estuary, including the Victorian seamen who emigrated to Newfoundland and established the fishing communities of that coast. The estuary itself, with its shifting sandbanks, the bird life of the mudflats and the views across to Instow and the Taw Valley beyond, provides the beautiful setting for a village that rewards extended exploration.

Bedruthan Steps on the north Cornish coast near Padstow is one of the most dramatic and photographed coastal landscapes in Cornwall, a series of enormous sea stacks rising from the beach in the wide bay below the clifftops, their sheer faces and varied forms creating a scene of raw geological power that has made this one of the signature images of the Cornish coast. The stacks are the remnants of a headland progressively eroded by Atlantic wave action, the harder sections of rock resisting the sea longer than the surrounding material and surviving as isolated columns while the rest of the headland has been worn away. The clifftop viewpoint above Bedruthan, accessible from the National Trust car park, provides the classic view over the stacks and the beach below that appears on postcards and in travel guides. The beach itself is accessible by a steep staircase cut into the cliff face when conditions allow, but the tidal range on this exposed section of the north Cornish coast is considerable and the beach at high water is entirely submerged, making timing essential for anyone wishing to walk at beach level. The stacks have acquired individual names over the years, including Queen Bess, Samaritan Island and Diggory's Island, though the origin and reliability of these names in historical use is variable. The coastal scenery around Bedruthan is part of the extraordinary Heritage Coast that extends north toward Trevose Head and south toward Newquay, one of the most impressive stretches of the south-west coast path and an area where the full force of the Atlantic on an exposed coast can be experienced on all but the calmest days. The clifftop vegetation of maritime heath and grassland supports stonechats, skylarks and in spring the distinctive display of sea thrift that colours this stretch of Cornish cliff in pink every May and June. The National Trust café at the clifftop provides refreshments and the Trust manages the immediate site and the surrounding coastal farmland, maintaining both the visitor infrastructure and the ecological value of this important coastal landscape.

Boscastle is one of the most attractive and most historically interesting fishing villages on the north Cornish coast, a small harbour settlement tucked into the dramatic valley of the River Valency beneath the great clifftop of the Pentargon headland whose combination of the extraordinarily narrow harbour entrance, the whitewashed and slate-roofed cottages and the wooded valley walking provides one of the most complete small harbour experiences on the Cornish coast. The village was devastated by a catastrophic flash flood in August 2004 when the River Valency rose by nearly four metres and destroyed many buildings and vehicles, and the remarkable recovery and rebuilding since then has restored its character. The harbour at Boscastle is one of the most unusual on the Cornish coast, its entrance so narrow and so protected from the sea by the double dogleg of the approach channel that the harbour provides shelter from storms that would overwhelm a more conventional design. The Victorian jetty and the lime kilns on the quayside provide historical context for a harbour that was once busy with the coastal trade in coal, lime and the produce of the local farms. The blowhole near the harbour entrance produces dramatic jets of spray in rough sea conditions. The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in the village, the largest collection of witchcraft-related objects on public display in the world, provides an unexpected cultural dimension that has attracted considerable attention and visitor interest since the museum was established in the 1960s.

Charlestown is one of the most perfectly preserved and most evocative small harbour towns in Cornwall, a Georgian planned port near St Austell that was built in the 1790s by the entrepreneur Charles Rashleigh to export the china clay of the St Austell area and import coal and lime for the local agricultural and industrial economy. The combination of the original Georgian harbour architecture, the lock gates, the china clay cellars and the dramatic sight of the tall-masted sailing vessels that are frequently moored in the harbour make it one of the most atmospheric small harbour experiences in the southwest. The harbour at Charlestown is one of the most frequently used film locations in Britain, its complete Georgian character and the absence of modern development within the harbour basin making it ideal for productions set in the age of sail. Poldark, Hornblower, Alice Through the Looking Glass and numerous other productions have used the harbour, and the sight of a nineteenth-century square-rigger moored in the lock basin against the backdrop of Georgian stone warehouses is one of the most frequently photographed scenes on the Cornish coast. The Shipwreck and Heritage Centre in the harbour area provides an excellent collection of material from the many vessels wrecked on the Cornish coast over the centuries, and the combination of the working harbour, the heritage centre and the beautiful setting above the sea makes Charlestown one of the most rewarding coastal heritage destinations in Cornwall.

Clovelly on the north Devon coast is the most dramatically picturesque fishing village in England, a settlement of whitewashed cottages cascading down an impossibly steep cobbled street to a small harbour below the great cliffs of the North Devon coast whose combination of the extraordinary topography, the complete absence of motor traffic and the genuinely historic character of the buildings creates one of the most visited and most consistently admired small coastal communities in Britain. The village is privately owned by the Asquiths of Clovelly and has been maintained in its historic character with exceptional care over several generations. The main street of Clovelly, the Up-along and Down-along as the villagers call it, descends approximately 120 metres from the clifftop to the harbour below in a series of cobbled steps and narrow paths too steep for wheeled vehicles. Goods are carried by sledge to the houses below and donkeys traditionally helped with the heavier loads, a few still being kept in the village as much for their role in the visitor experience as for practical necessity. The experience of walking down this street, with the whitewashed cottages on either side and the glimpse of the harbour and the sea below, is unlike any other in England. The harbour at the bottom, with its medieval quay, the fishing boats and the atmosphere of an entirely authentic working fishing community, provides the destination that makes the descent worthwhile. The herring fishing that once sustained the village is commemorated each November in the Clovelly Herring Festival.

Dartmouth is one of the finest and most completely realised historic harbour towns in England, a settlement on the west bank of the Dart estuary in south Devon whose combination of the medieval and Tudor town houses, the two great castles guarding the harbour entrance, the naval college on the hill above and the extraordinary natural beauty of the Dart estuary creates a destination of exceptional quality and historical depth. The town has one of the finest collections of historic buildings of any small port in England, its prosperity as a medieval wine trade and privateering centre having financed architecture of considerable ambition. The Butter Walk in the centre of Dartmouth, a series of four seventeenth-century merchants' houses whose overhanging upper floors rest on granite columns creating a covered walkway below, is one of the finest examples of Jacobean commercial architecture in England, its carved woodwork and the scale of the merchants' ambition speaking directly to the wealth generated by the trade of this exceptionally well-positioned harbour. The nearby Flavel Arts Centre occupies the church built by Thomas Flavel, whose merchant fortune funded many of Dartmouth's finest buildings. Dartmouth Castle guarding the harbour entrance is one of the earliest purpose-built artillery castles in England, its round towers designed specifically to mount cannon for the defence of the harbour against attack from the sea. The combination of the castle, the estuary views and the Bayard's Cove Fort below the town provides a concentration of military heritage in a small area of great scenic beauty.

Fowey is one of the finest and most completely realised small harbour towns in Cornwall, a historic port on the western shore of the Fowey estuary whose combination of the medieval and Tudor town houses cascading down to the waterfront, the active harbour with its large ships and small pleasure craft, the views across the estuary and the associations with Daphne du Maurier create one of the most rewarding and most atmospherically complete small port destinations in the southwest. Du Maurier lived at Menabilly, the Rashleigh estate behind Fowey, for twenty-five years and the landscape of the Fowey estuary permeates her most celebrated novels. The town street descending from the church to the harbour, one of the narrowest and most characterful in Cornwall, passes buildings that range from the medieval period through to the Georgian in a compression of historical layers that reflects five centuries of continuous maritime trading prosperity. The Hall Walk on the east bank of the estuary, accessible by the Bodinnick ferry, provides the finest views of Fowey from the opposite shore and is the walk during which Kenneth Grahame, staying at Fowey in 1907, conceived the river and boat characters who became Rat, Mole and Toad in The Wind in the Willows. The estuary of the Fowey is still used by large vessels carrying china clay from the St Austell area to markets worldwide, and the sight of a vessel of considerable size navigating the narrow wooded estuary while pleasure craft and the ferry go about their business in the same water creates one of the most characterful maritime scenes on the Cornish coast.

Hartland Quay on the north Devon coast is one of the most dramatic and most remote coastal destinations in England, a small building group on the shore beneath great Devonian sandstone cliffs of considerable height where the Atlantic meets a coast of extraordinary geological complexity and where the wreck of numerous vessels over the centuries has made this one of the most dangerous and most storied stretches of the British coast. The former quay buildings, now converted to a hotel, café and museum, provide the only facilities in a setting of complete exposure to the Atlantic. The geology of the Hartland cliffs is among the most visually dramatic of any section of the British coast, the Carboniferous and Devonian rocks folded into extraordinary patterns of near-vertical strata that create the characteristic chequerboard pattern on the cliff faces as alternating hard and soft layers erode at different rates. The geological structures visible in the Hartland cliffs have been used as textbook examples of coastal fold geology since the nineteenth century and the combination of the scale, the variety and the clarity of the structures makes this one of the most instructive geological coastlines in Britain. The South West Coast Path from Hartland Quay traverses the most remote and most demanding section of the entire route, the succession of headlands between Hartland and Bude providing walking of exceptional quality and considerable physical challenge in a landscape of complete wildness where the Atlantic and the ancient rocks meet in constant dramatic engagement.

Ilfracombe is the principal seaside resort of the north Devon coast, a Victorian town of considerable character built into the dramatic cliffs and valleys of the Bristol Channel coast whose combination of the historic harbour, the Tunnels Beaches carved from the cliff by Victorian entrepreneurs, the Damien Hirst sculpture Verity on the harbour pier and the dramatic coastal scenery of the surrounding cliffs creates a destination of considerable variety and interest. The town has reinvented itself in recent decades as an arts destination and the contemporary cultural activity complements the Victorian heritage. The Tunnels Beaches at Ilfracombe are one of the most unusual visitor attractions on the Devon coast, a series of hand-cut tunnels through the cliff rock created in the 1820s to provide access to a series of natural tidal bathing pools on the sheltered side of the headland, with the pools divided by a low wall to provide separate male and female bathing in the Victorian propriety that governed public bathing at the time. The tunnels are still used and the tidal pools provide excellent natural bathing in a setting of considerable historical and geological interest. The Verity sculpture by Damien Hirst, a 20-metre bronze of a pregnant woman holding scales and a sword on the harbour pier, has become one of the most talked-about and most controversial pieces of public art in Devon and has contributed substantially to Ilfracombe's profile as an arts destination. The sculpture dominates the harbour entrance and provides an immediately striking introduction to a town of considerable character.

Looe is one of the most characterful and most completely realised small fishing ports in Cornwall, a twin-town of East and West Looe connected by a seven-arched Victorian bridge across the tidal estuary of the West Looe River. The combination of the working fishing harbour, the narrow streets of the old town, the excellent beaches and the wildlife-rich waters of the surrounding coast creates one of the most complete and most rewarding small coastal destinations in the southwest. The fishing harbour at Looe remains active, the day-boats bringing in local fish and the shark fishing boats that operate from the harbour in summer providing a distinctive and unusual element of the fishing heritage. The shark angling tradition at Looe dates from the 1950s when the town developed one of the most active shark fishing communities in Britain. The South East Cornwall Discovery Centre on the quayside and the Looe Island Nature Reserve, a small island offshore accessible by boat from the harbour, provide the finest marine wildlife watching available from the Looe coast.

Lynton and Lynmouth on the Exmoor coast are twin communities separated by a cliff 150 metres high and connected by the Lynmouth Cliff Railway, an 1890 water-powered funicular that is the steepest water-powered railway in the world. The upper town of Lynton sits on the clifftop while Lynmouth occupies the harbour below, and the extraordinary coastal and valley scenery of this section of Exmoor creates one of the most distinctive visitor destinations in the national park. Lynmouth was devastated in August 1952 when an exceptional rainstorm over the Exmoor plateau sent a catastrophic flash flood down the East and West Lyn rivers that destroyed nearly 100 buildings and killed 34 people in one of the most deadly natural disasters in twentieth-century Britain. The rebuilt Lynmouth is itself a monument to the community's recovery, and the flood memorial and river control works are now part of the village heritage. The Valley of the Rocks immediately west of Lynton, the Watersmeet wooded valley above Lynmouth and the South West Coast Path provide excellent walking destinations accessible directly from both towns.

Mevagissey is one of the most authentically preserved and most atmospherically rewarding fishing ports in Cornwall, a village of densely packed fishing cottages around a double harbour whose combination of the working boats, the harbour architecture, the fish cellars and the narrow streets of the inner village creates one of the most complete pictures of a traditional Cornish fishing community available on the south Cornish coast. The double harbour at Mevagissey, with its inner and outer basins providing shelter at all states of the tide, was constructed and expanded over several centuries to accommodate the growing fishing fleet. The harbour walls built from local Devonian slate and granite, and the fish cellars on the inner harbour, provide direct evidence of the scale of the pilchard industry that created this community's prosperity. The Lost Gardens of Heligan a short distance inland provide an excellent complementary destination, the combination of the fishing village heritage of Mevagissey and the great Victorian garden restoration of Heligan creating one of the finest full-day heritage and garden visits available in this corner of Cornwall.

Padstow is the most celebrated fishing port on the north Cornish coast, a small estuary town on the Camel Estuary whose combination of a working fishing harbour, excellent seafood restaurants, attractive medieval and later architecture and the association with the celebrity chef Rick Stein have made it one of the most visited and most gastronomically distinguished small towns in Cornwall. The town retains its identity as a working fishing community while accommodating visitor numbers that substantially exceed its permanent population in summer. The harbour is the heart of Padstow, the quayside buildings climbing above it and the fishing vessels, ferries and pleasure craft filling the inner harbour with colour and activity throughout the season. The fish landed at Padstow, including bass, sole, crab, lobster and the famous Padstow lobsters that feed on the clean waters of the Camel Estuary, provide the raw material for the restaurants that have made the town one of the finest destinations in England for seafood. Rick Stein's various establishments, opened in the town from 1975 onward, have been credited with substantially raising the quality and profile of British seafood cookery. The town's historic buildings include Prideaux Place, an Elizabethan country house immediately behind the town that has been home to the Prideaux-Brune family since 1592 and is open to visitors in summer. The Church of St Petroc, the largest in Cornwall, was dedicated to the sixth-century Celtic saint who is said to have founded a monastery in Padstow and gives the town its Cornish name of Petroc-stow, the holy place of Petroc. The Camel Trail, a cycling and walking route following the disused railway line along the Camel Estuary to Bodmin, provides excellent family cycling from the town.

Polperro is one of the most picturesque and most completely preserved fishing villages in England, a settlement tucked into a narrow creek below the south Cornish cliffs whose combination of whitewashed and painted cottages packed into the steep valley sides, the tiny inner harbour and the complete absence of motor traffic in the village centre creates one of the most authentic and most visited fishing village landscapes in Cornwall. The village is reached from the car park on the clifftop by walking down the valley path or by electric vehicle, the exclusion of ordinary traffic having preserved the human scale of the village as no comparable settlement on this coast has been preserved. The village grew as a fishing settlement from at least the medieval period, its natural harbour formed by the creek that descends from the Cornish plateau to the sea providing protection for the small fleet of fishing boats that worked the waters offshore. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw considerable prosperity from both fishing and smuggling, the village's remote position and the labyrinthine nature of its narrow lanes making it an ideal base for the contraband trade that was a major economic activity along the entire south Cornish coast in the period before effective Customs enforcement. The inner harbour, with its fish quay, the small boat museum in the old pilchard cellar and the cluster of buildings at the waterfront, provides the focal point of any Polperro visit. The coastal walking from the village in both directions, along paths providing views of the spectacular south Cornish cliffs and sea, extends the visit beyond the village itself and provides the wider landscape context for this concentrated fishing settlement. The village has attracted artists since the nineteenth century and several galleries and studios within the village reflect a continuing tradition of creative response to this exceptional setting.

Port Isaac is a small fishing village on the north Cornish coast whose combination of a working harbour, medieval street pattern, whitewashed cottage terraces descending steeply to the sea and global fame as the filming location for the television series Doc Martin makes it one of the most visited and most charming fishing communities on this section of the coast. The village retains its identity as a working fishing port despite the enormous pressure of visitor interest, its narrow lanes, the tiny harbour and the quality of its seafood providing an authentic Cornish experience in a setting of great visual appeal. The village centres on the small harbour where fishing vessels are pulled up on the beach and the fish cellars, once used to process the pilchard catch that sustained the community for centuries, provide shelter and storage around the working waterfront. The fresh fish and shellfish available from the harbour-side fishmongers represent some of the finest seafood available on the north Cornish coast, and the restaurants and cafés of the village serve crab, lobster and fish caught within sight of the tables. The Platt, the small square at the harbourside, is the heart of village life and the location for the Fisherman's Friends concert events, the group of Port Isaac fishermen whose sea shanty singing became an international phenomenon when they achieved a record deal and substantial fame from their informal harbourside performances. Their story, made into a film in 2019, has added a further cultural dimension to a village already well supplied with attractions. The steep lanes of Port Isaac, some barely wide enough for a person to pass through, provide excellent exploration and the clifftop walking north and south from the village along the South West Coast Path gives access to the dramatic north Cornish coastline.