A run at Westward Ho! Devon

I have returned from an enjoyable holiday in Devon and will update with a number of posts on where I ran and visited during our week away.

Travelling to Devon from Suffolk is about a 5 hour journey in the car and we choose to travel on the motorways for a quicker journey , following the A14 , M11, M25 , M4 and M5. The M25 in particularly can be very busy and with roadworks can slow you down considerably but we had a very easy journey. The weather was as predicted very wet with some torrential short sharp rain showers.

 We have many relatives in the Barnstaple and Bideford area of North Devon so our visit had a twofold purpose to have a holiday break and catch up with the relatives. We stayed at the Golden Bay Holiday Village at Westward Ho! This is a tiny seaside village which was named after the book of the same name written by Charles Kingsley in 1855.  Kingsley was the author of the Water Babies. There are very few places in the world with an exclamation mark in their name and I believe this to be the only place in Britain.

Our chalet apartment backed on the promenade with views out to the Bideford Bay. Surfing is very popular at Westward Ho! and there are also wide expanses of sand.

You can visit a surfers web cam of Westward Ho! here 

My first run after the long car journey was a gentle jog along the seafront just to get a feel for the place. Strong tides had some of the biggest waves splashing over the sea wall and you had to be mindful not to run too close or face an unexpected shower.