Contact Details

holiday@torbay.gov.uk
Tel: 01803 211 211

Listen using ReadSpeaker

Cockington Estate Country Walk

Cockington Estate Country Walk

2½ miles (4 km) - Circular route - Grade 3 - tracks, stiles and country footpath

O.S. Map Explore 110 - Torquay & Dawlish

Starting Point: Cockington Village car park - Bus service from Torquay harbour

A country walk taking in the outer reaches of the Cockington estate and providing contrasting experiences of green fields, hedgerows and wooded coombes, a typical South Devon rural idyll.

Historic and picturesque Cockington village provides the initial setting for this walk. Created by Saxons as a farming settlement over 1000 years ago, the rural scene has continued unbroken although now wedded to the needs of tourism and conservation.

The route commences by passing by the Drum Inn, the last building to be constructed within the village back in the 1930's, the architect being Edwin Lutyens. Fifty yards further up the road the junction with an ancient sunken lane marks the site of an earlier village inn and the way up Bewhay Lane, cut deep into the red Devon rock. Bewhay Lane takes you up away from the village and Torbay onto an open rural landscape of fields and ancient hedgerows. The lane gives way to a footpath before dropping down to pass through the farmyard of Stantor Farm.

A farm track now takes the route out to join a short section of the old Totnes Road, once the old highway from Cockington to Totnes, now a relatively peaceful sunken lane well clothed in fern and seasonal wild flowers. Three hundred yards on, a footpath leads off to the right into Scadson Woods and soon begins to follow the line of the Hollicombe stream. Scadson is an ancient word originating from a Saxon derivation meaning 'in the shadow of'. The woodland is indeed mystic and beautiful providing a carpet of springtime bluebells and wild garlic and was once an important source of raw materials for numerous rural tasks.

At the first footpath junction, take the left fork and climb gently up through the woods and out once more onto open pastures. The field to your right was once part of a rabbit warren where rabbits where raised for both their meat and fur. On reaching a cross roads of footpaths, continue straight ahead, dropping down to the recently renovated Warren Barn. You will notice an area of newly planted deciduous woodland to your right. The route now turns to follow the edge of Manscombe Woods down the valley to the Gamekeeper's Cottage, situated on the boundary of Cockington's more managed garden area. The cottage was first constructed in Tudor times and notice the timber latticework on the end of the building where game was once hung in preparation for the cook up at the Court.

From here it is a sedate walk along surfaced paths either to Cockington Court or back to the village centre and car park.