On a good day like today, Tor Bay looks massive. With a clear blue sky, calm sea and bright, intense light there is a lovely sense of colour, space and texture. There was a short time as we walked round the early part of the bay, there were few people around which added to the immensity of the space. A great feeling of all this space and only us here to enjoy it.
Of course, it being a seaside resort, it did not stay that way for long. As you walk round the bay your eyes are constantly drawn to the seascape, the wonderful scallop of the bay and the rise of hills and the headlands on both sides of it. As well as the salty tang of the sea on the breeze, there is the unmistakeable aromas of the seaside including frying chips and onions. Yes, even this early in the morning!
The views out and across the bay are the main attraction, with lovel views around the red sandstone cliffs out to Hope's Nose to the east and Berry Head to the west. Coming in to Paignton there is a nice row of multi pastel-coloured beach huts, reflecting the pastel colour contrasts of many of the Georgian houses that line the main road. Various of the beach hut owners were already out in the early morning enjoying breakfast, the sun or completing some small maintenance task on their huts. I have always fancied a wee beach hut but they are in short supply where I live in the Grampian mountains!
The Paignton pier, built in 1879 at seven hundred and eighty feet long, was designed and built by George Soudon Bridgman. The original pier had a pavillion theatre at the seaward end, but this was destroyed by fire in 1919. The whole pier was redeveloped in the 1980's, to reflect the amusement arcade environment now common on many other piers around the coast.
In my home town of Clydebank, Scotland, the Singer Factory founded by Isaac Singer was for many years the main employer in the area, employing many thousands in its heyday. In 1867, the first Singer factory in the UK was opened at Love Street, near where Queen Street Station in Glasgow now is, before moving to James Street, Bridgeton in 1869. In 1881, in what was at that tiime an area of open farmland just above the River Clyde and on the banks of the Forth & Clyde Canal at Clydebank, Singer started to build a major manufactoring factory with production commencing in 1885.
At its peak, the factory was producing nearly one and a half million machines from the factory and employing fifteen thousand people in the process. From the high of 1913's production, steady deterioration set in before the factory finally closed on 12 October 1979. In the early sixties, my father was the union man for Flat 7, and would keep us entertained with stories of the shop floor. In many ways the factory was good to the workforce providing a range of social activities in which our family participated. My father sang in choir competitions with his workmates and every Saturday morning during the fishing season the factory fishing club run a bus to some of Scotland's better known trout lochs. Arguably, the town has never recovered from the loss of the factory and, subsequently, the closure of John Brown's Shipyard.
As we started the climb up Sugar Loaf we were treated to a visit from the one of the large steam trains that regularly run on this route. What fun was had waving to all the passengers, reminiscent of childhoood holidays in the fifities and sixties on the beaches of Ayrshire beside the main Glasgow line.
As you begin the descent from Sugar Loaf you can see the side of Archair Rock, which is an indicator for the small and secluded Shell Cove. A little further on there is a one-way path goes off and over the railway on a small bridge, to access the rock and cove. On this occasion we continued on to go down to Broad Sand where we stopped for lunch and refeshments at the small kiosk at the western end of the beach. It was nice to sit in the shelter of the cove, enjoy the sun and particularly to take off the rucksack for half an hour. Four days in to the adventure we were starting to realise we would be living this life for the next couple of months and that we coiuld just sit back and go with the flow.
Where just a few days ago we were walking along the coast at Dawlish on the red Permian sandstone, here on the edges of the high ground approaching Berry Head we are starting to tread tread on Devonian-age limestone. Locally, limestone has been quarried since Medieval times and was used in building both the fort on Berry Hill and the breakwater down on the shore. As well as its uses as a building material, quicklime was made locally and the remains of one of the local lime kilns can be seen on the edge of the Berry Head Nature Reserve.
One of the first things to impress us was the use of small pieces of public art around the harbour and the town including the use of mosaic and painting. Brixham also boasts a full size replica of Sir Frances Drake's ship, the Golden Hind which operates as a museum ship. Brixham is said to have been the home of the birth of the trawling industry, a form of fishing which started in the 18thC. Today there are fewer trawlers but there is a nice marina in the harbour with, what seemed to us, a surprising number of boats for such a small place. Walking along the promenade I stopped to watch a young lad test his mettle on one of the high bar activities in a local adventure school.
With a run of camping nights coming up we were determined to enjoy the life of Reilly as long as we could. In the course of today we passed lots of nice little coves, bays and rock outcrops where you could sit and quietly contemplate the meaning of life. Despite yesterday's hard walk, we felt strong today. On adventures such as this the physicality comes with miles; embracing the psychology of long-distance walking, however, comes from letting go and that just needs time.