Seaton Hole to Pound’s Pool beach

Taking advantage of a low spring tide and a glorious warm autumn day, we walked west from Seaton Hole, round to Beer (a surprisingly short and easy trek), and then on to the fabulous chalk cliff and unspoilt shingle beach at Pound’s Pool after a stop for a bacon butty and cup of tea. This last  beach is approached through one of two arches in the towering white rock of The Hall/Arratt’s Hill, and was a lovely surprise for me as a first-time visitor, crunching up the shadowy banks of flint pebbles to be met by bright sunshine and a new vista. Looking back east, the distant view of Seaton with its beach huts and red Triassic cliffs hints at the fault line that separates the two very different geologies.

We met someone who’d walked east from Branscombe, so that’s another walk for the list at another low tide, though quite a lot more challenging than our mid-day perambulations. I’ve done the spectacular walk over the top of Beer Head, but never along the shore.

As well as the startling height and whiteness of the chalk here, there were ravens wheeling and cronking overhead in the blue, blue sky, egrets fishing on the rocks, gulls (of course), and the prehistoric and sinister-looking forms of cormorants topping the chalk pinnacles like ancient heraldic finials.

This stretch of coast at low tide is adorned by the golden fronds of kelp – both Laminaris digitata and Saccharina latissima (or furbelows), which make a lovely picture on a sunny day.