Wonwell Slipway

The Erme is a ria, a drowned valley flooded by the sea rather than cut by the river itself. At high water it holds a broad sheet of tidal water reaching upstream to a weir at Flete, about 3.5 miles from the estuary mouth. What the slipway lands you on is mostly firm sand at low water; the banks beyond are dense woodland fringed with saltmarsh, much of it undeveloped because most of the shore belongs to the Flete Estate.

An 18th-century lime kiln survives in the rocks at the southern end of Wonwell Beach, its curved double-skinned chamber exposed where coastal erosion has removed roughly half the structure. Further along the foreshore stand an ivy-clad chimney once used by fishermen to boil crabs and lobsters, several ruined cottages including the former home of the pilot who guided boats through the estuary's shifting sandbanks, and a large slate slab near the old boathouse at Malthouse Point. At low water, the remains of a drowned prehistoric forest, identified as Scots pine and dated to around 3,500 years ago, are still visible in the sand at Wonwell Beach.

The estuary is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Marine Conservation Zone, protecting estuarine rocky habitats, sheltered muddy gravels and the rare tentacled lagoon-worm; it also functions as a bird foraging ground and a fish nursery, with sea trout, European eel and otter recorded. Offshore at the mouth, on Mary Reef, lie three Protection of Wrecks Act sites: a cannon assemblage discovered in 1990, comprising four cast iron guns, a wrought iron swivel gun and an anchor, with cannon dated to between 1490 and 1750; a separate Bronze Age tin-ingot site; and the neighbouring Salcombe Cannon site.