Once outside the priest declared that he should never find the way, and that he must have a guide, “even though it were none better than the devil himself.”
On hearing this remark, his host, who had invited him to enter the house, volunteered to put him and his companions in the right way for Dawlish. He then guided the travellers to the end of the road, and told them to keep straight on. However, they had not gone very far ere they found themselves riding through water, which kept rising and rising, although but a few minutes previously they had believed themselves not only on dry ground, but a safe distance from the sea. They turned, as they thought, inland, and made every effort to escape the water, but the more they urged on their horses the higher the water rose. In their fright they called loudly for their guide, who had disappeared, but their appeals for help called forth loud and mocking laughter from a little distance. Then came a flash of vivid lightning, and their late guide appeared to them in his true guise—the devil, tail and all! He jeered and mocked them, and pointed to the sea into which they had ridden, and from which they could not now escape.
What became of the two unfortunate wayfarers the story does not actually say, but it tells us that their horses were found by a countryman going to work early next morning wandering riderless along the sands; whilst at Hole Head appeared the two rocks now known as “The Parson and Clerk.”
There is also a legend that the beach near the Head is haunted (as is that of Woollacombe in North Devon) by the spectre of an old gentleman, who for his sins is set the task of making ropes out of sand until Judgement Day.
If staying any time in the harbour one can do far worse than take the dinghy and pull up the river for a few hours’ fishing. The salmon fishery of the Teign (which owes its origin to the late Frank Buckland) is good, and during the period from March to September provides interest for many visitors to the town, who watch the operations of the fishermen from Monday morning till Friday at sunset, as they cast and draw their seines. Quite big fish are sometimes taken, and a 56-pounder is by no means unknown. The fish are often brought ashore, laid on the beach, and sold by auction; and when a good haul has been made, we have known them bought sometimes as cheaply as sevenpence or eightpence a pound.
The upper river is lovely. The low cliffs which skirt it for some distance are edged with foliage, and are beautiful in the spring with apple-trees in full bloom and wild cherry blossom in thick, snowy-white clusters, affording a striking contrast in rural beauty with the busy harbour and quays a few miles away below the bridge.
Alongside Teignmouth quay there are often quite big steamers noisily unloading or taking in cargo; colliers, grimy and red with rust, busily discharging their useful though unpicturesque freight; whilst the clay barges are being cleared of their lumps which are picked up on spiked sticks by the men who are locally known as “lumpers,” and thus transferred from the barge to the quay or the hold of another vessel.
At high tide there is generally some craft or other—a Norwegian timber brig, a trading schooner, or a coasting tramp steamer coming in or going out of harbour, which gives animation and an interest to the scene.
But yachtsmen, even of the least fashionable type, do not remain long at Teignmouth, but make for the westward to Torquay. The coast is very pretty, and one passes in turn Labrador, then the Minnicombe Bell Rock, Watcombe, and then Petit Tor, with jagged crest and sides looking out over the sea. The coast then becomes rocky off shore, which it has not been for many a mile, and to pass along it to Torquay either in the early morning, or towards the late afternoon, when the shadows of the cliff fall in charming colour upon the surface of the water, and the luxuriant vegetation which crowns the cliffs and headlands is seen at its best is to enjoy an experience of loveliness and even glamour not easily forgotten. The memory of the beauty of the scene remains as we once left Teignmouth at a little after sunrise on a July morning, when the shore was yet wreathed in mist, and the light soft and pearly-grey. As the sun climbed out of the sea eastward towards Portland, the mist rolled away, and the red cliffs with their crown of pleasant green trees and luxuriant vegetation gradually disclosed themselves. The reflection of all this beauty seemed literally to be falling into the calm, deep green sea, whose surface was only here and there disturbed by ripples where the young morning breeze flecked it.
Then appeared Babbacombe Downs, on which the cowslips grow within sound of the sea, and nowadays there are golf links and smart villas, and Oddicombe, with its white pebble beach forming so vivid a contrast to the still red cliffs in the bright light of early morning. Then ever delightful Anstey’s Cove, excelling in beauty even Babbacombe, and both of these with deep water close in shore. Through the passage between Hope’s Nose and the Orestone, where there is also deep water, one glides at once into Torbay; beautiful almost beyond description, with its three and a half miles of shining sea lying between picturesque Daddy’s Hole, and sheer upstanding Barry Head, which forms the southern horn of the bay, flat-topped as Table Mountain itself.