Salcombe Beaches the Best!

There has been a lot of stories in the press recently about award winning beaches etc...South Sands missed out for the second year in a row, apparently due to a wet summer bringing sewage in?!?!?! The rest of Salcombe's beaches are not eligible due to the fact they allow dogs all year around.

We all know that the best beaches are to be found in Salcombe! We don't need an award to tell us that!

So with this in mind here are my top 5 Salcombe beaches:

1. Smalls Cove
This for me has to be number one as I spent my entire youth on this beach playing volley ball and racing my Mirror and Topper from there.
2. Sunny Cove
Where else do you get waves like that in Salcombe even when the wind hasn't been blowing.
3. Mill Bay
A great beach for kids, safe and huge so there is always space. Although last year the winter storms had significantly changed the shape of the beach and there were huge rollers coming in all summer so landing or launching was chaos!
4. Splat's Cove/South Sands
South Sands is a great place, every facility you could ever want and lovely golden sand! The walk (or boat ride) round to Splat's cove is well worth the trip if you want a bit of P&Q..
5. Ditch End
Salcombe's newest beach! This appeared over the last 4 years basically out of nowhere! It now forms a lovely arc of sand that looks up the estuary towards the Marine Hotel (RIP). No sun before midday though! I think most of this sand must have come form smalls which has shruk alarmingly over the last few years!

There also has to be a special mention for North Sands which although not much of a beach sand wise, can have great waves for body boarding and you can stay on the beach late into the evening and still have the sun which pours down North Sands valley, or pop over to the Winking Prawn for a beer and BBQ in the evening sun.

Salcombe Land For Sale

These houses(land) were originally touted around as one house at over £2.5m...now you can get the land for £800k!! Still a mad price but a whole world away from £2.5m!!

Has the worm turned in Salcombe are we about to see more realistic prices return? The local estate agents would have you believe not, but it seems they quite often protest too much about "not falling" property prices and hence the end of their gravy train.

With no huge city bonuses around for the foreseeable future and falling house prices elsewhere who will have the money to fund the Salcombe housing market?

Interesting times...

If I was in Charge of Salcombe...

I would:

Sack all the planners.
Pedestrianise Fore St in July and August.
Scrap the overnight charge for Whitestrand pontoon.
Make parking free all year.
Open a supermarket of some kind in Fore St.
Build some showers on Whitestrand.
Start a Salcombe half marathon.
Make Batson continually high water.
Open a shop that sold rope, shackles, boating parts etc on Fore St.
Bring "Bob" back to run The Ferry...those were the days!
Force Steve Ryder to host a Q&A on "local issues" on Whitestrand.
Make it compulsory for the bakery to open at 11pm as it used to! Did pizza, pasties and freshly baked bread ever taste so nice than after 8 pints of "Tally Ho!".