The walk on 15 th October 2000 was led by Margaret Vatcher and she had planned a 10 mile walk down the Avon from Aveton Gifford to the sands at Bantham for lunch and a return via footpaths and lanes back to the car park on the main Plymouth to Kingsbridge road

The Sunday morning dawned wet but luckily the drizzle soon stopped for a dry but overcast day.

23 walkers turned up at the car park for the start at 10 30 am.

 An outline of the route taken is shown above. This outline should be used in conjunction with a good Ordnance Survey map of the area, such as the leisure map number 20 of South Devon.

It just after 10 30 am we left the car park by the roundabout and crossed over the busy road bridge over the River Avon.

Having crossed the bridge, we turned right passing some houses before picking up a footpath which headed south up a steep hill.

We had to take great care walking up this footpath with hedges on either side and slippery rocks and stones and lots of wet leaves underfoot.

It was quite a difficult initial climb with the slippery conditions underfoot and the recent heavy rains had made it even more slippery and dangerous underfoot than normal.

We were all rather pleased when the terrain levelled out and we left the track for the relative safety of footpaths through fields.

After a good half a mile climb we passed a farm and continued south-west with wonderful views of the rolling Devon countryside all around us as we made our way though fields and over stiles.

Not unexpectedly after the climb up to the high vantage point, we soon found ourselves descending down a very steep path through a field down to sea level once again.

We were soon at sea level once more, looking down a muddy Creek, marked on the map as Stiddicombe Creek, on out to the Avon where we could see the occasional boat motoring down the river towards the sea.

 This was the morning coffee stop point and we enjoyed the views along the mudflats as we sat by the creek on a relatively warm, for the time of year, Sunday morning.

After the break we made our way back to the head of the Creek and over a small wooden bridge.

Having crossed the bridge, we turned right and climbed heading in a south-west direction through fields and over stiles.

We are walking just above and parallel to the river Avon as it were wended its way out to sea and we had a great views both back up the river and forward down the river towards the sea.

As we made our way along fairly level land we could see in the distance a small village ahead of us.

This was the village of Bantham and after a few hundred yards, we left the footpath and came on the road which went straight through the middle of the village.

We passed the village public house on our left-hand side as we headed out towards the sea along the busy road.

We passed the beach car park on our left-hand side towards a spit of land which gave as good views of the beaches.

Across the sand as we could see Bigbury on Sea and ahead of us an island called Burgh Ireland with its well-known hotel.

At a point just above the beach we stopped for lunch for half hour break to enjoy the views all round us.

Once again we were lucky with the weather and we had no rain.

After lunch, we made our way back to the car park and thence back through the village of Bantham before turning off a long a lane to a small hamlet called West Buckland.

Unfortunately there had been a lot of rain recently and the footpath route out of Bantham was very slippery.

Because of the steepness of the climb on the slippery ground, Margaret, who had reccied the route the day before, thought it better for us to keep to the roads and not take the slippy, slidy route out of Bantham.

At West Buckland we turned right and descended a steep hill until we came to the junction of the road which would have been used had we taken on the originally footpath route out from Bantham.

At this point, we turned left and followed the road along to East Buckland, another hamlet I didn't know existed.

There was rather a nice example of a house which had been built following the curve of the road below us as the photograph shows.

We continued to make our way generally east and then left the level section and had a very steep uphill section for a few hundred yards until we reached the entrance to lovely country house with magnificent views down the Valley. JJ decided that she would go for it and broke away from the group with a climbing spurt, but she was almost overtaken near the top by the steadier walkers.

The large house was called Clanacombe. At this point the road we had been walking swung right and we took a footpath off to the left, heading North along level ground.

We walked under a few conker trees and of course the ramblers were in their element once again.

Lots were collected and I can imagine just how many will be hardening off their conkers this week for the forthcoming ramblers newly innovated champion conker competition.

We followed this footpath northerly gradually descending through Buckland Park and on up to Worthy farm. We continued to head roughly North crossing a road, with a couple more of the descents and ascents en route.

There were plenty of stiles to negotiate, some were rather non standard and caused those with short legs not a little difficulty in crossing them. Eventually we emerged onto a narrow lane, turned left and made our way west along the narrow road for three or four hundred yards until we intercepted the hedged track we had climbed up at the start of the walk.

We turn north-east and descend this track. We took great care as we made our way down with the slippery stones just as we had done on the way up. After the descent of getting on for a quarter of a mile we were once again down by the Avon, retracing our steps along the busy road over the bridge and the river Avon and back to the car park.

We noticed some very large mullet in the river below us, no time fishing today however, Jack, so you didn't lose out.

We were back on the car park by about 3.20 PM, having managed the walk of 10 miles or so in mild conditions for the time of the year, and more importantly without any rain.

Have thanked Margaret for all her efforts, this was the second time she had walked the route in two days, we were soon back in our cars and returning to the car share point in Plymouth.

It had been yet another area of Devon that I had never walked before, and yet another section of Devon countryside had been introduced to me.