Thinking About Thurlestone
View from the Thurlestone Hotel
The South Devon coast is delightful dawdling country, which is why I was delighted to find myself staying down in the South Hams recently while doing some work for RAW Food & Drink PR.
I was fortunate to be staying at the award-winning Thurlestone Hotel, a magnificent hostelry I’ve visited before. I recall writing a news story about the hotel not long ago after the owners had spent over £1 million upgrading the restaurant.
Thurlestone Hotel’s restaurant with panoramic views of the South Devon coast
The hotel’s old restaurant was given a complete transformation with a new identity and new menus that feature produce sourced almost exclusively from within the county.
Set across two levels and with floor-to-ceiling windows that make the most of the coastal views, the restaurant was been redesigned by London-based Fabled Studio, whose work can be seen in many of the capital’s best dining rooms including Dinner by Heston Blumenthal and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.
An elegant, art deco style runs throughout, with marble flooring, mirrors and lighting echoing the 1920s and 30s, alongside discreet naval detailing that gives a nod to the region’s maritime history.
The menu highlights a selection of dishes prepared using seasonal produce, and the restaurant showcases such delights as home smoked salmon, River Yealm oysters, hand-dived Start Bay scallops and Aune Valley beef.
Outdoors at Thurlestone you get plenty in the way of beach and bay. You even get the famous Thurle Stone thrown in for good measure and on a windy day you can hear the thing moan like the crying of long lost Sirens. They say you can even hear it in far-away Kingsbridge, but no one has ever been able to verify this for me.
Thurlestone from the west
The ‘Thurl’ bit of the name apparently means pierced or drilled, and it is the giant hole through the middle of the rock which moans when the wind is blasting through it.
There are plenty of walks around the village - I took a wander from Thurlestone to Hope Cove and back via inland paths
Central Thurlestone is old and grand. The marvellous church at the top of the hill acts as a sort of antidote for the architectural failings to be seen elsewhere. Not only is it a handsome affair, but its ancient annals contain many an engaging tale of yore. For instance, in 1328 the Bishop of Exeter commissioned the Archdeacon of Totnes to reconcile the church which had been "polluted by the spilling of blood therein."
Whose blood? What terrible thing had occurred within these gaunt and splendid walls? I am afraid I do not know; what I can tell you is - the Abbot of Buckfast arrived to do the heavenly deed only to find that the churlish folk of Thurlestone wouldn't pay his fees. The answer? The Bishop of Exeter threatened to ex-communicate the whole lot of them unless the money was paid - which, of course, it duly was.
The rock with the hole in is called the Thurle Stone
From the centre of the village I made my way south down the hill to find the corner of the golf course and so the south west coast path. It’s an odd bit of the littoral, quite unlike any other in the West Country. The low hinterland speaks of rolling downs and the beaches themselves have a scruffy look more reminiscent of somewhere in Essex near the Thames Estuary.
There are pilings to help keep the stunted cliff intact - although there are the occasional rockfalls along here as was witnessed recently. Being west-facing the strand is forever covered in seaweed and other detritus chucked up by wind and tide.
I got the feeling Alfred Hitchcock would like this place – even in bright afternoon sunlight it has an eerie feel.Maybe that’s something to do with a lady called Burke. In the year 1772 she was a passenger on the good ship Chantiloupe which was in trouble just off this bit of coast. Seeing the beach so near, she thought there may be some means of escape and quickly donned all her finest jewellery so that she’d have some ‘readies’ that would keep her in the style to which she was undoubtedly accustomed.
Alas for Ms Burke, things were not destined to fall her way. Indeed, her forward planning was to prove her undoing. The story goes that she made the beach in one piece but then was then set upon by three local villains who helped themselves to the rich pickings adorning her frail limbs.
It probably didn’t take much to kill Ms Burke, but in doing so they seem to have unleashed some demon that was bent upon her revenge. According to a local report ‘all three came to awful and untimely deaths’.
How true any of this is, no one can say, but it is believed that the celebrated Edmund Burke came to the area to investigate the demise of some of his relatives. He went away without a fig of evidence.
Spooky stuff – and maybe it was this sorry tale that cast me into my Hitchcockian state of mind. But this soon ebbed as I climbed the wide, well-laid path that crosses the downs between Thurlestone beach and Hope Cove.
Walk from Thurlestone to Bantham with Bigbury and Burgh Island in the distance
You get fantastic views up here, of Bigbury Bay which sweeps around past Burgh Island. You also get skylarks and an airy feel which puts you in mind of the music of Vaughn Williams.
Hitchcockian darkness defied, I descended into the busy little sunlit resort of Hope Cove where I enjoyed a drink before continuing my way up the track inland to North Bolberry.
From here another right of way took me north through the village of Galmpton and north again to South Huish. Yet more footpaths now took me uphill to pass Horswell House, where it was a quick left, then a right, down the path into the valley past the sewerage works and then up and over past Whitlocksworthy to eventually regain the villa-dom that is Thurlestone.
All the while I was able to peer over my left shoulder to witness the west-facing loveliness of the sun dipping over the great maritime expanses of the South Hams coast.
Thurlestone Church close to the hotel
