the last of suburbia before the road forks with the left
taking you down into Brixham, still a working town
with a residual fishing fleet clinging precariously to
a livelihood that extends back millennia but extends
forward with much less certainty. I forked right, and
into the steep side and utterly beautiful Dart Valley.
Crossing the Dart is not to be considered lightly.
There are 2 ferries, the upper and lower one. I chose
the scenic ride into Kingswear and took the lower one
across, getting the opportunity to take my helmet off,
get a bit of fresh air and enjoy the view of the flooded
river valley, or Ria, that is the Dart Estuary. A huge
gin palace of a super yacht sat at anchor just
upstream and chatting to the ferryman (don't pay him
till he takes you to the other side as Chris De Burgh
would say....) he said it was owned by Sir Donald
Gosling, of NCP parking, who bought up derelict
sites in UK city centres after WW2 and made many,
many millions out of it. I sat in the sun, soaking up
the view and chatting to a chap whose son lives in
Derbyshire and who rides KTMs on trails there and
in Wales. That's what's great about being out on your
own, folk chat to you rather than feel threatened
when you're in a big gang.
Disembarking the ferry, I was in Dartmouth, almost
on a par with Salcombe as the poshest seaside town
photo of the view, before moving onto the Stoke Fleming along the B3205 before rejoining the
A379. I immediately stopped to get a classic photo of Blackpool, nestling at the end of a cleft of
a valley industriously cut over millions of years by a small innocuous looking stream. Getting a
little confused looking for the UCR with a perfect view of Blackpool beach, I rode up a lane which
starts as a UCR then runs into a claimed lane into the valley.
Riding round the back of the coarse sand/shingle beach backed by pine trees giving a very
Mediterranean vibe to the place, I located the lane I was looking for and again took the archetypal
picture of the DR350 looking resplendent amongst the green bracken with the white shingle beach
giving way to turquoise waters. Bleddy boody!
Ley from the sea, similar to Chesil Beach. A few folk were enjoying the sun with only a zephyr to
ruffle their wind breaks. The A379 runs beside the sea, with tufts of slate grey/green sea kale
spouting from the barren shingle, extracting nutrients from the atmosphere and whatever it can
scavenge from the impoverished substrate it calls home. The far end of the beach provides a
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