Qualla: North Devon Coast

North Devon Coast: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit michael clarke stuff, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sixty-six years ago, in September 1959, a working group at the National Parks Commission drew a line on a map and made the North Devon Coast the first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Devon. The line followed cliffs and burrows from Combe Martin near the Exmoor border, looped around the mouth of the Taw and Torridge estuary, and finally hooked west and south along the Hartland promontory to Marsland Mouth on the Cornish border. Inside that line sit 171 square kilometres of some of the most varied coastline in Britain. A planner in 1959 was nervous about a proposed holiday camp at Watermouth. That was the only public objection.

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Image: michael clarke stuff | CC BY-SA 2.0

North Devon Coast: A Coast in Two Directions

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pauline Eccles, CC BY-SA 2.0. The geography here does something unusual. From Combe Martin to Hartland Point, the cliffs face north into the Bristol Channel - a broad sheltered arm of sea between England and Wales. At Hartland Point, the coast pivots ninety degrees and runs south, now facing west into open At...

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Image: Pauline Eccles | CC BY-SA 2.0

North Devon Coast: Braunton Burrows

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 3.0. At the centre of the AONB sits one of the largest sand-dune systems in Britain. Braunton Burrows runs along the back of Saunton Sands, mile after mile of shifting hills bound together by marram grass. In 2002, UNESCO re-designated Braunton Burrows as the core area of North Devon'...

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Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 3.0

North Devon Coast: Eleven Landscapes

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pauline Eccles, CC BY-SA 2.0. When Natural England and Devon County Council studied the AONB in 2006 and 2007, they divided it into eleven distinct landscape character types. The list reads like a taxonomy of the British shore. Open coastal plateaux of dense elm hedges between Bude and Ilfracombe. Farmed lowl...

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Image: Pauline Eccles | CC BY-SA 2.0

North Devon Coast: Where People Live

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Billinger, CC BY-SA 2.0. About 12,000 people live within the AONB. Combe Martin and Hartland are the largest places inside the boundary. Clovelly, Berrynarbor, and Croyde - all picturesque, all small - sit further along the coast. The bigger towns of Ilfracombe, Bideford, and Braunton fall just outside t...

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Image: Jonathan Billinger | CC BY-SA 2.0

North Devon Coast: Wildlife and Time

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MARK OGDEN, CC BY-SA 2.0. The AONB is a patchwork of habitats. Culm grasslands around Hartland - a wet, acid grassland community unique to the southwest. Coastal woodlands near Clovelly. Heathlands around Morte Point. The orchids of Braunton Burrows, the bluebells of the coastal combes, the seabirds threa...

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Image: MARK OGDEN | CC BY-SA 2.0