About Salcombe
A guide to staying in Salcombe
Salcombe sits at the mouth of the Kingsbridge Estuary, at the end of a peninsula in the South Hams. Most visitors come for the water: the estuary is a ria — a valley drowned as sea levels rose — so it is salt and tidal for its whole length, deep, and sheltered enough that the town has been a harbour, a shipbuilding centre and now one of the busiest sailing places on the south coast.
The town is built up a hillside, which matters more than it sounds. Fore Street runs along the waterfront with the beaches and the ferry steps below it, and the streets above climb steeply enough that a property’s height above the water is worth checking before you book. Almost everything has a view. Almost nothing is flat.
What is available to stay in reflects that. This is a self-catering market rather than a hotel one — apartments above the harbour, whole houses on the hillside streets, cottages behind Fore Street — with a small number of hotels and hosted stays alongside. If you are travelling as a group or a family, the whole-property listings are where the space is.
South of the town the shore opens into North Sands and South Sands, and above South Sands the National Trust’s Overbeck’s is terraced into the cliffs at Sharpitor. Beyond that the land rises to Bolt Head and the South West Coast Path turns west along some of the most exposed cliff in Devon. Across the water on the East Portlemouth shore is a run of sandy beaches — Sunny Cove, Mill Bay, Cable Cove, Small’s Cove and Fisherman’s Cove — reached by the passenger ferry rather than by road.
One thing to plan around: the roads in and out are single-carriageway, and parking in the centre is genuinely difficult in season. Salcombe Yacht Club runs its regatta every August and the town fills for it. Late spring and September are quieter, and the coast path is at its best.