‘Plug into Devon’s landscape and history and it’s is like one big spiritual battery-charger,’ says local journalist Nick Pannell, who has published a book on the county’s spiritual hotspots.

‘Devon’s Spiritual Places: The search for God in an ancient landscape’ takes readers to 18 sites where people have found a spiritual connection.

Nick said: ‘It has taken me six years to research and visit them all and just as long to gather together a set of wonderful pictures by Westcountry photographers.

‘Self-publishing has given me control over the design and I hope readers will be pleased with the result.

Nick continued: ‘I visited some remarkable Christian sites but my adventures are not limited to churches and chapels.

‘Spiritual places are where people feel connected to God and that can happen as equally in the middle of Dartmoor or on a south Devon beach.’

One of the sites Nick explores is the Saltstone in the middle of Kingsbridge estuary.

Nick explained: ‘The most extraordinary ‘holy-ground’ is surely the tidal island in the middle of Kingsbridge estuary called the Saltstone.

‘In the 17th century, non-conformists could worship nowhere else without the threat of imprisonment by the county sheriff. It was outside of any parish and non-conformists came from all over Devon to worship there.’

In an excerpt from the book, Nick describes his visit to the Saltstone: ‘It’s early March and I’ve arrived by boat, having set off from Kingsbridge an hour earlier. You can also reach the Saltstone on foot either from Frogmore or West Charleton when the tide permits.

‘It’s a messy place to land, a fringe of squidgy mud at low water has to be negotiated before you reach the firmer rock. But this too is hazardous, covered in a tangle of bladderwrack and bootlace weed that slips and slides.

‘Occasional holes ensnare you. Only after a precarious scramble do you reach a tiny crest of shingle, no more than a few feet across, and firmer footing.

‘It looks idyllic today in early spring sunshine, but to the persecuted non-conformist it was a hostile land where oppressors roamed armed with a tyrant’s power to imprison and possess.

‘They did not come as I have, on an idle jaunt, but impassioned and fearful, risking freedom for their faith, a group cast out from the world that once embraced them. ‘While others compromised they could not.’

The 84-page ‘Devon’s Spiritual Places’ is available from many local bookshops, including Wordwise, 41 Fore Street, Kingsbridge.