Berry Head and St Mary’s Bay revisited

A brief day of Indian Summer was just the right time for a walk near Brixham with a friend. We started at the car park at Berry Head by admiring the shimmer of sunlight on the distant sea, and then walked along to Sharkham Point and down onto the delightful beach of St Mary’s Bay – a picture-perfect curve of silvery slates and pink, white and red pebbles bordering a limpid pale green sea. As it’s not that easy to get to (114 steps!) it wasn’t very busy, and we spent a happy hour wandering along looking at the rocks and watching the sea.

In common with a lot of South Devon, the rocks here are mostly metamorphosed – some silvery slates with ghostly stress marks, and lots of folded and faulted brown and tan shales and limestones. There were also some striking boulders full of pebbles on the foreshore – not sure if they were real conglomerates or the remains of concrete washed by the sea.

Autumn is definitely here though – despite a few late swallows circling overhead and the warm sun, there’s a definite feeling in the air, not to mention a bounty of seeds and fruits in the hedges and fields. Sloes and blackberries, anyone?