I may have made a mistake in choosing Start Bay as our place to spend Easter. I chose it because of its location near the sea, which seemed a good idea, but I didn’t check out walking activities. On studying my Ordnance Survey I can see we can walk to the sea and turn right or left, but there are not many footpaths to make a good circular walk.
Basil at Start Bay
The weather forecast for today was not favourable – rain rain rain and more rain. However as the morning progressed and very little rain materialised we realised the forecast, surprise surprise, might be wrong. So we packed our waterproof trousers in a rucksack and headed for the coast.
Our local, tiny, seaside town is Torcross and only about a mile from the campsite. It was fairly quite because of the weather and its only commerce appears to be a pub (not dog friendly) a cafe and a newsagent. Luckily the newsagent sold tea bags, because we had reached the disastrous position of our last tea bag this morning, so now we can breath easily again.
Torcross and Slapton Sands
We had a wander along the stony beach adjacent to the village which is called Slapton Sands. Anyone familiar with World War II history will be know with this place as the location of a very tragic event just prior to D-Day. Slapton Sands had been chosen as the place where the US Army and Navy would practice their landings for Utah beach, because it closely resembled its Normandy counterpart. In April 1944 a large practice landing with live fire took place at Slapton Sands. As 9 large tank landing craft were preparing to land 30,000 US troops and their equipment, they were attacked by German E-Boats and 749 US servicemen lost their lives. There were also persistent rumours that troops on the beach were shelled by naval artillery and up to another 400 soldiers were killed, although this has never been confirmed. All of this was kept under strict secrecy until D-Day in June 1944 where the casualty figures were quietly slipped out along with those for D-Day. During the real landings on Utah beach the US only lost 197 personnel!
Little was known about this incident until relatively recently when a Devon man, Ken Small, uncovered the full story. He also arranged for the salvage of a US tank from the sea, which is now a memorial to the men lost on the Torcross sea front.
Operation Tiger Memorial
Having paid our respects at the memorial, we made our way back to the campsite. I was slightly excited by the large lake behind the beach because it is supposed to be an important nature reserve, but with the naked eye I could see nothing of much interest. I may return to one of the hides with my birding lens if we have a break in the weather.
On the way back we called in at what the campsite wardens had described as a “really good” farm shop. Unfortunately it was not particularly good and we ended up just buying bread at almost Norwegian prices.
Stokenham
This afternoon we snuggled down in Basil to watch a film, still expecting the forecast rain. We’ve had virtually none, so I think we will have to ignore the forecast when planning the forthcoming days. We finished off the day with a walk in the opposite direction to the village of Stokenham, which is another pretty village scattered with thatched cottages and best of all a thatched pub which we will have to give a try before we leave, because it says “dogs welcome”.
* iPhone photos again today I’m afraid, although unless you are viewing on a big screen you probably won’t see any difference.