Beyond Morte Point is Morte Bay, most of whose shore lies low, and is fringed throughout almost its entire length by the broad expanse of Woollacombe Sands, along whose margin, at heights varying from eight to fifteen feet above high-water mark, may be traced at intervals a raised sea-beach. At the southern extremity of Morte Bay is the noble headland of Baggy Point, a magnificent piece of cliff, haunted by crowds of sea-birds, and pierced by many caves. The shore of Croyde Bay, beyond the Point, is famous for its fertility; and from the crest of Saunton Down, the last headland before the estuary formed by the waters of the Taw and the Torridge, is a view which, embracing sea and coast-line, rich expanses of farm-land, the distant heights of Dartmoor and the faint shape of Lundy on the far horizon, is one of the finest in all Devon. Along the shore to the south of Baggy Point, where Saunton Sands form the seaward fringe of Braunton Burrows, is another long stretch of raised sea-beach, from two to fifteen feet above high-water mark. And in this beach, not far from Saunton, is a large boulder of red granite, a rock unknown in the district, which may have been stranded here by floating ice.
Braunton Burrows is a long, wide tract of sand-hills, some eighteen square miles in area, stretching far inland, and reaching to the estuary of the Taw and the Torridge, with deep hollows among which, without a compass, it is quite possible to get completely lost. It is a place of much interest to the naturalist and the antiquarian. A number of rare plants are found here, great quantities of primitive flint implements have been discovered in the sand, and at low water the remains of a submerged forest are to be seen along the shore.
The estuary formed by the combined streams of the Taw and Torridge, the former of which is also known as the Barnstaple River, flows into Barnstaple Bay at the south end of Braunton Burrows. There is no port on the open coast; but just inside the estuary are the quaint old town of Appledore and the equally ancient village of Instow, on the left and right banks, respectively, of the river Torridge. In the mouth of the same stream, a little to the south of Appledore, is a long flat rock called the Hubblestone; named, according to tradition, after the viking Hubba, who pillaged this coast in the reign of King Alfred, and fell in battle at the mouth of the Parrett, in the adjoining county of Somerset.
Blocking up a great part of the river mouth, and stretching down the coast past Westward Ho! a distance of about two miles, is the Pebble Ridge, a remarkable bank of shingle and sea-worn boulders, some of which are of great size, though the majority are not more than a few inches in diameter. The sea has gradually shifted it further and further inland, and it now covers what was once a long stretch of good pasture-ground. On its landward side are the golf-links of Northam Burrows, considered to be among the finest south of the Tweed.
Westward Ho! a modern watering-place named in honour of Kingsley's great romance, is chiefly interesting on account of its submerged forest, in whose peat and clay, deeply covered by the sea at high tide, have been found, not only the trunks of large oak and fir-trees, and bones of the wild boar, stag, horse, and dog, but bones of man, together with charcoal, pottery, and implements of flint.
Six miles south-west of Westward Ho! and in the centre of the curve that marks the southern shore of Barnstaple Bay, is the prettily situated fishing-village of Buck's Mill, with red and wood-crowned cliffs behind and beyond it, and extending to Clovelly, the famous little town that may truly be called one of the most remarkable spots, not in Devonshire only, but in all England. Crowded in a hollow in the cliff, with woods on either side, and with an air of climbing up from its little tidal harbour sheltered by a rough stone pier of the time of Richard II, it consists of one long, winding, pebble-paved street, too steep for wheeled traffic, with quaint and irregularly-built cottages to left and right, beautiful with creepers and myrtles, fuchsias and geraniums. Not only is Clovelly intimately associated with the memory of Charles Kingsley, whose father was rector here, but it is the original "village of Steepways," in Dickens and Collins' Christmas story, A Message from the Sea.
Cliffs near Clovelly