Qualla: Salcombe https://qualla.com/salcombe en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Salcombe https://qualla.com/salcombe Salcombe: Introduction https://qualla.com/salcombe/ Tennyson is supposed to have heard the moaning of the bar at Salcombe, and the line stayed with him until he wrote Crossing the Bar - the poem he asked be placed last in every edition of his work. The bar is still there. It is a long underwater spit at the mouth of the Kingsbridge Estuary, exposed at low spring tides, and it can turn a moderate southerly swell into a wall of breaking water across the harbour entrance. Salcombe has lived alongside that bar for centuries: fishermen, smugglers, fruit-trade captains, lifeboatmen, and now the owners of the most expensive holiday cottages in England. The water is the same water. The town is not the same town.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/m/salcombe-wp/gbvm-salcombe-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Salcombe: A Drowned Valley https://qualla.com/salcombe/ The Kingsbridge Estuary is not really an estuary - it is a ria, a drowned river valley flooded after the last ice age and held by steep cliffs on both sides, running inland nearly nine kilometres from the sea between Bolt Head and Portlemouth Down. There is no river worth the nam...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/m/salcombe-wp/gbvm-salcombe-a-drowned-valley.mp3 0:06 2 full Salcombe: Fruit Schooners https://qualla.com/salcombe/ Salcombe's wealth was built on oranges. In the 19th century its fleet of fast little Salcombe schooners ran the Iberian coast, the Azores, the Caribbean and the Bahamas, bringing back oranges and lemons, pineapples, sugar and rum, mahogany for furniture, shaddocks for the curiosi...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/m/salcombe-wp/gbvm-salcombe-fruit-schooners.mp3 0:06 3 full Salcombe: Fort Charles and Force U https://qualla.com/salcombe/ Two wars left clear marks on the town. Henry VIII had a small castle built on the rocks below the cliff at North Sands - Fort Charles - to defend the estuary. During the English Civil War it became the last royalist stronghold to hold out, garrisoned through January to May 1646 a...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/m/salcombe-wp/gbvm-salcombe-fort-charles-and-force-u.mp3 0:06 4 full Salcombe: The William and Emma https://qualla.com/salcombe/ The lifeboat station opened in 1869, the year after the wreck of the Gossamer off Prawle Point cost thirteen lives. On 27 October 1916 the open pulling lifeboat William and Emma was coming home over the bar in worsening seas when a single breaker pitchpoled her. Thirteen of her f...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/m/salcombe-wp/gbvm-salcombe-the-william-and-emma.mp3 0:06 5 full Salcombe: What Salcombe Is Now https://qualla.com/salcombe/ Walk Fore Street on a Saturday in August and you can buy gin distilled in the town, watch the Sea Tractor wade out to ferry tourists ashore at South Sands, and pay more for a holiday cottage here than almost anywhere else in the United Kingdom. The winter population is around 1,9...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/m/salcombe-wp/gbvm-salcombe-what-salcombe-is-now.mp3 0:06 6 full