Wembury Point has a colourful history. During the 20th century it was transformed from a farm into a bustling holiday camp and then converted into a military radar station and Royal Navy gunnery.
But the last 20 years have been a little gentler as it has returned to nature, a haven for rare flora and fauna and a hugely popular spot for walkers, wild swimmers and rock-poolers.
The spot on the south coast of Devon is regarded as one of the highlights of Enterprise Neptune, a campaign launched exactly 60 years ago by the National Trust to protect and enhance the coastlines of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
On Thursday as the conservation charity celebrated the diamond anniversary of the Neptune campaign, it revealed it had recently worked out that it cares for even more coastline than it had previously thought.
A survey that “zoomed in” in on bays and inlets established that the trust looks after 896 miles of coastline, 116 miles more than it previously thought, equating to more than 10% of the coastline of the three countries.
The trust said that since Neptune’s launch in 1965, it had raised more than £114m to protect places ranging from the white cliffs of Dover in Kent to stretches once thought beyond redemption, such as beaches full of coal waste in north-east England.
On the day the Guardian visited Wembury Point, there were sightings of the rare cirl bunting. Linnets flitted around and skylarks soared above. A female adder was curled up in the sunshine.
Rich Snow, the National Trust countryside manager for south Devon, led a tour of the fields of wild flowers on what had been an artificial sports pitch when the Ministry of Defence owned the land.
He pointed out the bird’s-foot trefoil nestling in between oxeye daisies and purple spikes of broomrape, a parasitic herbaceous plant. “I’ve never seen so many of them,” he said. “They’ve gone bananas this year.”
Looking eastwards from the point, Snow said the charity owned almost all the coast that could be seen, as well as swathes of land just inland. “It means we can manage the land at scale,” he said.
Wembury Point is a favourite spot for artists: JMW Turner was one of those to have painted the Great Mewstone, an island lying half a mile off the point. It is also loved by visitors and locals, who donated £1.2m to allow it to be bought in 2005. It is only a 20-minute drive from Plymouth city centre, making it a favourite walking and picnic spot.
“People were worried it would be sold to developers,” Snow said. “It was so touching that local people came and donated, some just coins or a fiver. It meant so much to them.”
As well as protecting the landscape from development and boosting nature, Snow said a key aim was to keep on extending access. There are plans to build miles more paths just inland and Snow would like to convert an early 19th-century signal station into a bothy. “The point is the coast should be accessible to everyone,” he said.
Enterprise Neptune began in May 1965 after John Whittow, a geography lecturer, led a group of students and teachers on a survey of the entire coastline of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. With limited technology, the students trekked around the jagged coast, camping in tents and painstakingly mapping it.
Whittow, now 95, recommended that the trust acquire 900 miles of coastline, so it is a neat coincidence that the new mapping has found the trust is just four miles shy of that mark.
“I’m over the moon that I have lived long enough to see that,” Whittow told the Guardian. “Our aim was to ensure the public had sustainable access to the coast and be able to explore the maritime culture of our island nation while the marine environment was protected.”
Hilary McGrady, the director general of the National Trust, said threats to the coastline such as rising sea levels and more extreme weather events meant Neptune was needed as much as ever.
She said the campaign was a partnership between the charity and the people who had backed it. “It’s because of this shared endeavour that we can all freely access and enjoy the white cliffs of Dover, the inlets of Cornwall and the North Antrim coast, and our Pembrokeshire headlands. It is hard to imagine what our coastline would look like without Neptune.”
