Thursday 23 April 2026

Day 4 of walking
Combe Martin to Woolacombe
Distance: 25.04kms
Total distance: 83.97km
Climbing: 1011m
Total climb: 3679m

Today was an interesting day but a day quite different to yesterday. Gone is the splendid isolation of Exmoor. Combe Martin is a sizeable town so it takes a while to walk out and then you come to Watermouth Bay, a very sheltered bay with a large marina, then Hele, a sheltered beach with shops, cafes, toilets, changing sheds etc. Before you know it you come over a hill and there below you is Ilfracombe a town of about 12,000. It is a bit more remote from Ilfracombe to Lee Bay with a few houses and an ice cream shop. More isolation until Bull Point and the lighthouse, the large North Morte Farm Camping and Caravan Park and into Woolacombe.

Cold and windy again in the morning but sunny and we quickly warmed up. A lot of people (but not a Camino “lot” of people) out on the path today. At Hele we met our new best friends we have seen the last two days, who are camping. They now have names, Hazel and Mark. Mark had his 55^th birthday yesterday. They live in Cawsand which is the last village in Cornwall before you reach Plymouth and Devon. Some time in the distant future we will walk through it. They are doing the SWCP as a charity fund raiser for youth mental health. A teenage girl in their small village took her own life recently. Barbara is teaching them some Maori – Kia Kaha – Stay Strong.

Ilfracombe has North Devon’s largest harbour and the world’s second highest tidal rise and fall. There are loads of activities based on the sea. The ferry to Lundy Island, coastal cruises to see seals etc, fishing trips, kayaking etc. Ilfracombe also has a controversial 20 metre tall 25 tonne steel and bronze statue on the waterfront named Verity. She is standing on a pile of books and holds a sword vertically above her and a set of scales behind her back. Half her body is skinless with her skull and womb (including a developing foetus) revealed. She is a “modern allegory” of truth and justice. We found her a bit unsettling and grotesque.

We had a few firsts today. First lighthouse (Bull Point), first paddock with cows. It was lunch time and they didn’t even look up at us, just kept munching their grass, first pasties, first seals, first vast golden sand beach, first unplanned diversion,first accommodation with a lift,  first flat battery.

A lot of climbing again but not as high as yesterday. Our longest day so far which we managed to extend to 25km by making a few mistakes. The signage is not good through towns and in Ilfracombe we had to use our Macs app a couple of times to find our way out of town. Between Bull Point and Morte Point an old disfigured sign sent us in a wrong direction for a while. The worst was entering Wollacombe. What should have been an short easy flat walk into town turned into a steep roller coaster of a grind of about 3 kms. We took a wrong turn and got a bit lost. The battery on my phone had gone flat so we couldn’t check the Macs app map. We were very tired at this stage when two trail angels happened along. Two guys we met on the first day out of Minehead came by. These were the guys who are going to walk some of the Camino. They had made the same mistakes as us. They definitely were a god send to us. They are such happy friendly guys. Both in their thirties they amused us all the way to the end with stories and laughter. It turned out to be the nicest part of the day. Unfortunately they were being picked up by one of their parents in Woolacombe and were going down to Fowey so we won’t see them again.

We set out at 9am and reached our hotel at 4.45pm, so a long day. The Woolacombe Bay hotel is a bit upmarket for us. Dating from the 1800s it dominates the bay and has bars, brasseries, lounges, a swimming pool, Alchemist spa, Salt Gym, Neo Cinema, ball room and all the usual conference facilities. The lady at reception was extremely kind and patient with us. We didn’t want to eat in their expensive dining room (had to book 48 hours in advance anyway) and were too tired to go back into town to find a pub meal, so on the way to the hotel we bought some pasties. A vegan one, a chicken and bacon one, and a rhubarb and custard one. These are weird modern concoctions. The traditional Cornish Pasty had beef, potato and swede. Maybe out of Cornwall they are just called pasties and in Cornwall they are Cornish Pasties.

Last bit of trivia for the day: even though we passed a lot of sheep today the name Woolacombe has nothing to do with wool. It comes from Wolmecoma, or “Wolves Valley”, referring to the large packs of wolves that lived in the woods long ago.