The bridleway to Coffinswell

September is often a beautiful month, and here in South Devon, the season has offered us some of the year's best weather.  Cloudless blue skies, albeit with a little bite in the air, has prolonged the gardening season, and really encouraged us to get out and make the best of it, before the impending Autumn falls, and Winter's grip returns.  On a crisp and stunning Sunday morning, we left our front door and headed up into the Woods, destination Coffinswell, a little village a couple of miles away.

At the top of our little housing estate lies Ben Stedham's Wood, a sliver of woodland separating the estate from the back road to Torquay.  It's a lovely wild area and a little haven for wildlife - particularly, at this time of year, fungi.  I don't have much knowledge of mushrooms and toadstools, but their shapes and sizes fascinate me, and this year we have been especially blessed with sheer variety, noticing them both in our own garden, and elsewhere.

Ben Stedham's Wood

Fungi in the woods

The woodland gives way to a bridleway, from where the walker or rider can either head north towards the Teign Estuary, or south to Coffinswell.  Turning south, we pass hedgerows of ferns and young oaks, in which perfect spider webs have been weaved, shimmering in the sun.  Like fungus, I have noticed a proliferation in spiders this September, and webs straddle every space, crossing every path back in our garden.  

Perfect spider web

Lying just off the bridle path, a lesser-known archaeological site is a reminder of the area's ancient connections.  Milber Down Iron Age hillfort sits some 2,500 years old, once inhabited by people of the Dumnoni, the ancient British people who inhabited what is now Devon and Cornwall.  The hillfort itself is not easily distinguishable to the untrained eye, and could easily be overlooked as nothing more than a grazing site for sheep.  Aside from the gentle, overgrown ramparts, the site offers fabulous views over Newton Abbot, from which I spy many of my childhood haunts - Highweek church in the distance (we used to call the downs there the Mountains,) Decoy Lake, and even Seale-Hayne College, now part of the Dame Hannah Rogers Trust - all overshadowed by the omnipresent moors.  If ever one view could encapsulate the word home, then this is surely it for me.

Milber Down in Hutchinson's Diaries, 1853.  Source: Devon.gov.uk

Newton Abbot

Back on the bridleway, we seem to move through several landscapes at some pace.  Woodland gives way to a view of the South Devon link road, under-construction and a big talking point in the town.  Further along still, we overlook a quarry, before suddenly finding ourselves once again back in the middle of the countryside, with rolling green fields ushering us ever closer to the Coffinswell village.  I haven't been to Coffinswell for a number of years, and certainly don't remember it being so pretty.  Thatched cottages and lovely little gardens greet us, and we nose over the low walls with interest to see what the locals are growing.  My favourite garden, although I had not the nerve to so audaciously take a photo, took pride in two enormous purple echiums, no doubt bought from Plant World just up the road, where they are grown each summer (and I fully intend to get my own, next year.)

Beautiful cottage in Coffinswell

Another Coffinswell dwelling

The end point of our little walk is the Linny, the lovely village inn dating from the 14th century.  A very happy welcome within, a drink on an outside table, soaking up the sun and country atmosphere, a reminder to me that when the world is in this sort of mood, there really is nowhere else I'd ever wish to be.

The Linny, Coffinswell

A lovely front garden in Coffinswell