The Devon Coast to Coast Walk OptionUsing the Erme - Plym Trail from Plymouth / Wembury to Ivybridge
16.5 miles to extend the Two Moors Way into a full Coast to Coast Walk across Devon from Wembury - Grade 6 miles easy, 10 miles moderate - What these grades mean.
An additional first day(s) walking on the waymarked Erme Plym trail allows you to complete the full Devon Coast to Coast route walking from the South Coast to the North at Lynmouth. It also offers an easy first days walk, great for easing you in as preparation for Dartmoor National Park which looms above you throughout today on the horizon. The route takes in gentle walking through South Devon landscapes of hidden estuary and river valleys, unspoilt sleepy villages, and rolling farmlands.
Overnight stops in Plymouth before you start your walk.
Those starting in Plymouth get the bonus of being able to pass through the key seafaring historical locations and panoramas along the famous grassy Plymouth Hoe. Here Sir Francis Drake gazed out to sea playing bowls as he waited for the Spanish Armada. Smeatons Tower leads on to the medieval cobbled Barbican area of the city - a fascinating spot to explore - and here you make use of the Mount Batten ferry giving superb views from the water as you cross Plymouth Sound. This section is known as the Plymouth Waterfront Walkway.
Sheltered Wembury Bay, the other starting option, sits in a stunning location with its old mill, the old wheel pit now a cafe where old millstones are used for cafe tables. The bay itself is a stunning spot, a protected Marine Conservation Area, and home to Devon Wildlife Trusts Marine Centre, one of the best places on the South Hams for spotting larger marine life from the shore.
Either way, both trails join quickly just north of Wembury and the walker enjoys pleasant wooded vales of beech and pine past old lime kilns and gothic estate lodges with enticing glimpses of the mighty Dartmoor on the horizon. A highlight is the tranquil tidal waters at Cofflete Creek hidden below a disused railway arch, and now disturbed by little more than the kingfishers, waders and egrets of river estuary.
More flowering green lanes and wooded pastureland takes you through three unspoilt villages enroute, all with good facilities, At pretty Brixton, there is the Fox Hound Inn listed in the CAMRA 2010 Good Beer Guide. A few fields away at Yealmpton village you can visit the Goreus Stone in the churchyard, over 1400 years and said to be the oldest Christian site in Devon, an early relic of one of the West Country’s first Christian Chieftains. You also pass the picturesque cob thatched cottage where Sarah Catherine Martin, the housekeeper at nearby Kitley Manor, wrote the famous rhyme Old Mother Hubbard after accepting she could never marry her upper-class love because of her background as a servant. Look out for the bizarre thatched dog on top of the roof of what is now Old Mother Hubbard’s Restaurant.
The last sleepy village on the trail is that of Ermington, famous for its crooked church spire after which the welcoming pub is named. Legend has it that one of the earliest brides who came to be married in the church was very beautiful and the spire bowed to her and never recovered.
On the walking side of things, you pass through a succession of pastoral scenery and fine woods in an area of old sawmills and quarries, meeting both of the South Hams river systems on the way. First, the stunning River Yealm at Yealmpton, before crossing the secretive River Erme at Sequers Bridge and, by following its old watercourses and mill remains for the final 2 miles, you reach the moorland staging post of Ivybridge.
Overnight stops in Ivybridge at the start of the Two Moors Way.