A sheltered shingle cove on the South Devon coast near Dartmouth, backed by wooded slopes and good for a calm-water swim
Not the Lancashire resort — this Blackpool Sands is a sheltered shingle cove on the South Devon coast, a few miles round from Dartmouth. Despite the name the beach is fine shingle rather than sand, curved into a bay backed by wooded slopes that keep the worst of the wind off. The water is clean and usually calm enough that it draws families for a swim in summer, with the South West Coast Path passing above. In 1404 a Breton raiding force landed here and was seen off by local levies, a fight remembered as the Battle of Blackpool Sands. Dartmouth Castle, built to guard the mouth of the Dart estuary, is a short drive north-east.
