Prawle Point walk
This walk is full of drama: heart thumping cliff-top climbs, with rocky raised beaches below. Look out for the sunken Demetrios below Signalhouse Point and don't miss the ancient boundary stones that dot the landscape. Call in at the Coastwatch visitor centre to find out more about this wild and beautiful landscape.
Map
Start:
Prawle Point car park, grid ref SX775354
1
From the car park join the South West Coast Path and turn right towards Gara Rock. Walk up the hill towards the look-out at Prawle Point, soon passing the row of coastguard houses.
Site of radar station
These fields were the site of a radar station in the Second World War. The grass-covered bunker near the path, and others to the east, housed the transmitter, receiver and generator blocks. The site was protected by light anti-aircraft guns to the north and on the cliffs below the coastguard look-out. Today the scrub around the bunker is populated by crickets, grasshoppers and rare cirl buntings. From the bunker roof you can get a good view eastwards of the raised beach and fossilised cliff features formed by the sea level falling during the last Ice Age.
2
Continue west along the coast path, through a gate, and onto the clifftop of Prawle Point. This headland, the most southerly in Devon, has served on and off as a coastguard station and Lloyds signal station since the 1860s.
Prawle Point
Known as Prahuille (a look-out hill) in 1204, Prawle Point was also the site of a medieval chapel. The coast guard station now stands in its place and is manned by National Coastwatch Institution (NCI) volunteers and has a small visitor centre. Thrift, burnet rose, sea mayweed and sea beet grow amongst the crags, and rare sea storks-bill around the look-out.
3
Continue along the path as it climbs past cairns (built by walkers) and through the stone walls of ancient fields these are protected Scheduled Monuments and are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. At Signalhouse Point a late 18th-century admiralty semaphore station once stood on the summit, similar to that near Soar. Follow the path as it cuts through the rock and out over Elender Cove, with views to Gammon Head.
Scheduled Monuments
Admire these incredible ancient stone walls which mark timeless boundaries on the fields, running away from the cliffs. Cormorants, razorbills, fulmars and little owls breed on the cliffs, and the grassy slopes are scattered with tormentil, birds foot trefoil and autumn squill.
4
Keep on the coast path, past a steep detour to Maceley Cove, and go through the gate and onto Gammon Head, taking the new path up the incline.
Cliffside nature
Navelwort, stonecrop, sea spleenwort and butchers broom grow in rock crevices. Youll also find several rare plants amongst the outcrops including Portland spurge, autumn squill and the parasitic broomrape, feeding off the roots of wild carrot. Look for green hairstreak and dark green fritillary butterflies, linnets, cirl bunting and rock pipits.
5
Continue along the cliffs to reach Pigs Nose; an unsuccessful iron mine operated here from 1857 to 1860, its cliff-face adit now hidden amongst the gorse. Turn inland at the waymarker, up the path and through a gate. Ignore the next gate and instead turn right and head uphill, with the wall on your left. Pass through a gate into a green lane, and at the next junction of paths go straight ahead to eventually emerge onto the cliffs, alive in summer with orange tip, heath brown and red admiral butterflies, as well as crickets. Ignoring all paths down to the right, keep to the higher path until you reach a lane which leads up to the road. Turn right and back to the car park.
Moor Sands Beach
For a longer walk to Mill Bay, past Moor Sands beach (site of a possible Bronze Age shipwreck), continue along the cliffs. At Pig's Nose other neolithic artefacts have been found such as chert, flint and quartzite tools, all made from pebbles.
End:
Prawle Point car park, grid ref SX775354
