Slapton Sands & Ley

Walk out onto Slapton Sands and you find yourself on a narrow ribbon of shingle with the sea on one side and, on the other, something you would never expect so close to a beach — a broad sheet of still fresh water fringed with reeds. Here the open Channel and a quiet inland lagoon lie side by side, separated only by the bank of pebbles beneath your feet. It is one of the strangest and loveliest meeting places on the whole South West Coast Path.

That lagoon is Slapton Ley, Devon's largest natural freshwater lake and a national nature reserve. It was formed over thousands of years as this shingle bar built up across the mouth of a valley, damming the streams behind it into a long reedy mere. Geologists call this a barrier beach: a bank of pebbles thrown up by the sea, holding back fresh water on its landward side. It is a fragile, shifting thing — great storms sometimes breach the coast road that runs along its crest. The Ley and its shore are cared for now as a reserve, a haven for wildlife between the traffic and the tide. But this gentle place also carries a solemn story. In late 1943 the whole area was requisitioned and its villages evacuated so that American forces could rehearse the D-Day landings here, on a shingle shore much like the beaches of Normandy. At Torcross, a Sherman tank recovered from the bay now stands as a memorial to the servicemen lost during those rehearsals — a quiet, dignified place to pause and remember.

Here is what to look for. First, the shingle itself — the way the beach shelves steeply into the sea, the pebbles grading from coarse to fine, hissing as each wave draws back. Second, turn inland to Slapton Ley: the wide reed beds, the open water beyond, and the green hills rising behind it. Third, the birdlife, for this is a birdwatcher's treasure. Listen for reed and Cetti's warblers in the reeds, watch great crested grebes on the water, and in winter look for wildfowl and the secretive bittern; dragonflies hawk over the margins in summer, and otters slip through at dawn. Fourth, at Torcross, the Sherman tank memorial, dark and weathered against the sea. And fifth, simply the sky — this is big, open coast, and the light over the water and the Ley can be extraordinary at dawn and dusk.

Let me dwell for a moment on the wartime story, told with respect. In the last months of 1943 this ordinary corner of the South Hams — its farms, its lanes, its villages — was emptied of its people so that thousands of American soldiers could practise for the great invasion of Europe. They chose Slapton because its long shingle beach, with a lagoon just behind, so closely resembled the Normandy coast they were preparing to assault. For months the guns and landing craft rehearsed here. The recovered Sherman tank at Torcross now stands for all those who trained on these sands and did not live to see the victory they helped to win. It asks only that we remember them.

A word of care. The shingle shelves steeply and the sea can pull hard, so take real care near the water, and mind the traffic on the road that runs the length of the beach.

From Slapton the Coast Path follows this remarkable bar northward, the sea always to your right and the reeds and open water of the Ley to your left, before climbing away towards the wooded mouth of the Dart. Take one last look at this thin line of pebbles holding two worlds apart — salt and fresh, restless and still — and at the tank keeping its long, quiet watch over the bay.

Walk safe.