There is a world of desolation in Braunton Burrows, and he who would thus come, overland, to the queer lighthouse that is perched at the seaward end of the estuary of the river Taw, must needs quest doubtfully and with some physical discomfort, before reaching that point where the waste of shifting sand slopes down to the waves. Just as no one becomes irreclaimably wicked in one plunge, but descends irretrievably by a series of slight moral lapses, so does the unwary traveller come by degrees into the baffling sand-wreaths of the Burrows. A good riverside road from Braunton village by degrees becomes an indifferent road; then, ceasing to be a road of any kind, becomes a more and more sandy lane, which, in its turn, insensibly degenerates to a track, and--there you are! You must not, however, imagine this sandy waste to be without its own peculiar beauties, or barren of vegetation. The winds have blown the immense accumulation of shifting sand into fantastic hummocks and weird hollows, where the dry surface is ribbed by their eddies, just as the retreating tide ribs the wet sand of the shore; but here and there coarse grasses have taken root and achieved the seemingly impossible task of anchoring the elusive substance: crowning the ridges with a wan growth; and in some sheltered hollows, where the wind comes scouring with less insistence, there are nurseries of pretty wild flowers which, although the unskilled explorer knows it not, are botanical treasures, some of them sought almost vainly elsewhere. Mats and patches of candytuft form exquisite carpetings, the wild pansy blooms abundantly, and in July, beautiful above all else, the intense blue of borage competes vigorously with the yellow-brown of the sand. It has been affirmed that eight hundred varieties of wild flowers are found here, including the rare _Asperugo procumbens_ and _Teucrium scordium_; while near the quaint lighthouse the curious will discover the mud-rush (_Isolepis holoschænus_), and a bad smell.