no one can, with advantage, explore the rugged coast of north devon by progressing direct from the point where it begins and so continuing, without once harking back. the scenery is exceptionally bold and fine, and the tracing of the actual coast-line by consequence a matter of no little difficulty. only the pedestrian can see this coast as a whole, and even he needs to be blessed with powers of endurance beyond the ordinary, if he would miss none of those rugged steeps, those rocky coves and “mouths” and leafy combes that for the most part make up the tale of the north devon littoral. it is true that there are sands in places, but they are principally sands like those2 yielding wastes of braunton burrows, whereon you even wish yourself back again upon the hazardous, stone-strewn hillsides sloping down to the sea that make such painful walking in the region of heddon’s mouth; and there you wish yourself on the sands again. it is so difficult as to be almost impossible, to have at once the boldest scenery and the easiest means of progression. at any rate, the two are found to be utterly incompatible on the north devon coast, and it consequently behoves those who would thoroughly see this line of country to take their exploration in small doses. as for the cyclist, he can do no more upon his wheel than (so to speak) bore try-holes into the scenery, and merely sample it at those rare points where practicable roads and tracks approach the shore. the ideal method is a combined cycling and walking expedition; establishing headquarters at convenient centres, becoming acquainted with the districts within easy reach of them, and then moving on to new.
the only possible or thinkable place where to begin this exploration of these seventy-eight miles is lynmouth, situated six miles from glenthorne, where the coast-line of somerset is left behind. the one reasonable criticism of this plan is that, arrived at lynmouth, you have the culmination of all the beauties of this beautiful district, and that every other place (except clovelly) is apt to suffer by comparison.
hardy explorers from the neighbourhood of london (of whom i count myself one) will find3 their appreciation of this coast greatly enhanced by traversing the whole distance to it by cycle. you come by this means through a varied country; from the level lands of middlesex and berkshire, through the chalk districts of wilts; and so, gradually entering the delightful west, to the steep hills and rugged rustic speech of somerset. it is a better way than being conveyed by train, and being deposited at last—you do not quite know how—at lynton station.
of course, the ideal way to arrive at lynmouth is by motor-car, and there, as you come down the salmon-coloured road from minehead and porlock, the garage of the tors hotel faces you, the very first outpost of the place, expectantly with open doors. but, good roads, or indeed any kind of roads, only rarely approaching the coast of north devon, it is merely at the coast-towns and villages, and not in a continual panorama, that the motorist will here come in touch with the sea.
to give a detailed exposition of the route by which i came, per cycle, to lynmouth might be of interest, but it would no doubt be a little beside the mark in these pages. only let the approach across exmoor be described.
i come to lynmouth in the proper spirit for such scenery: not hurriedly, but determined to take things luxuriously, for to see lynmouth in a fleeting, dusty manner is to do oneself and the place alike an injustice. but the best of intentions are apt to be set at nought by circumstances, and circumstances make sport with all explorers.4 thus leaving dulverton at noon of a blazing july day, and making for exmoor, there is at once a long, long ascent above the valley of the infant exe to be walked, at a time when but a few steps involve even the most lathy of tourists in perspiration. and then, at a fork of the roads in a lonely situation, where guidance is more than usually necessary, a hoary signpost, lichened with the weather of generations and totally illegible, mocks the stranger. it is, of course, inevitable in such a situation as this that, of the two roads, the one which looks the likeliest should be the wrong one; and the likely road in this instance leads presently into a farmyard—and nowhere else. this is where you perspire most copiously, and think things unutterable. then come the treeless, furze-covered and bracken-grown expanses of winsford common and surrounding wide-spreading heaths, where the exmoor breed of ponies roam at large; and you think you are on exmoor. to all intents, you are, but, technically, exmoor is yet a long way ahead.
it is blazing hot in these parts in summer, and yet, if you be an explorer worthy the name, you must needs turn aside, left and right; first to see torr steps, a long, primitive bridge of celtic origin, crossing the river barle, generally spoken of by the country-folk as “tarr” steps, just as they would call a hornet a “harnet,” as evidenced in the old rustic song beginning,
“a harnet zet in a holler tree,
a proper spiteful twoad was he”;
5 for it must be recollected that, although on the way to the north devon coast, and near it, we are yet in zummerzet. secondly, an invincible curiosity to see what the village of exford is like takes you off to the right. cycling, you descend that long steep hill in a flash, but on the way back, in the close heat, arrive at the conclusion that exford was not worth the mile and a half walk uphill again.
and so to simonsbath, a tiny village in the middle of the moor and in a deep hollow where the river barle prattles by. unlike the moor above and all around, simonsbath is deeply wooded. simon himself is a half-mythical personage, one simund, or sigismund, of anglo-saxon times, according to some accounts a species of robin hood outlaw, and to others the owner of the manor in those days. “bath” does not necessarily indicate bathing, and in this case it merely means a pool.
the traveller coming to simonsbath in july finds himself in an atmosphere of “baa,” and presently discovers hundreds of earl fortescue’s sheep being sheared. then rising out of simonsbath by a weariful, sun-scorched road, come the rounded treeless hills and the heathery hollows, where exe head lies on the left hand, with chapman barrows and the source of the river lyn near by, in a wilderness, where the purple hills look solemnly down upon bogs, prehistoric tumuli, and hut-circles. here, in the words of westcote, writing in 1620, “we will, with an easy pace,6 ascend the mount of hore-oke-ridge, not far from whence we shall find the spring of the rivulet lynne.” hoar oak stone, on this ridge, is a prominent landmark.
presently, at brendon two gates (where there is but one gate), we pass out of exmoor and somerset and into devon, at something under six miles from lynmouth. alongside the unfenced road across the wild common, as far as brendon rectory, the sheep lie in hundreds. then suddenly the road drops down into the deep gorge of farley water, and comes, with many a twist, to bridge ball, a picturesque hamlet with a water-mill. one more little rise, and then the road descends all the way to lynmouth, through the splendidly romantic scenery of the lyn valley and watersmeet, where the streams of east and west lyn unite.
circumstances have by this time made the traveller, who promised himself a luxurious and leisurely journey, a hot, dusty and wearied pilgrim. to such, the sudden change from miles of sun-burnt heights is irresistibly inviting. to sit beneath the shade of those overhanging alders, those graceful hazels, oaks, and silver birches, reclining on some mossy shelf of rock, and watch the lyn awhile, foaming here in white cataracts over the boulders in its path, or smoothly gliding over the deep pools, whose tint is touched to a brown-sherry hue by the peat held in solution, is a delight. it is a delightful spot, to which the tall foxgloves, standing pink in the half-light under the7 mossy stems of the trees, lend a suggestion of fairyland.
watersmeet.
the road winds away down the valley, its every turn revealing increasingly grand hillsides, clothed with dwarf woods, and here and there a grey crag: very like the cheddar gorge, with an unaccustomed mantle of greenery. descending this fairest of introductions to the north devon coast, past the confluence at watersmeet, where slender trees incline their trunks together by the waterfall, like horses amiably nuzzling, one comes by degrees within the “region of influence”—as they phrase it in the world of international politics—of the holiday-maker at lynmouth, who is commonly so lapped in luxury there, and rendered so indolent by the soft airs of devon, that watersmeet forms the utmost bounds to which he will penetrate in this direction, when on foot. and when those who undertake so much do at length arrive here, they want refreshment, which they appear to obtain down below the road, beside the stream, at a rustic cottage styling itself “myrtleberry,” claiming, according to a modest notice on the rustic stone wall bordering the road, to have supplied in one year 8,000 teas and 1,700 luncheons. there thus appears to be an opening for a philosophic discussion of “scenery as an influence upon appetite.” the place is so far below the road that, the observer is amused to see, tradesmen’s supplies are carried to it in a box conveyed by aerial wires.
and so at length into lynmouth, seated at the point where the rushing lyn tumbles, slips, and8 slides at last into the sea. one misses something in approaching the place, nor does one ever find it there. it is something that can readily be spared, being indeed nothing less than the usual squalid fringe that seems so inevitable an introduction to towns and villages, no matter how large or small. there are no introductory gasworks in the approaches to lynmouth; no dustbins, advertisement-hoardings, or flagrant, dirty domestic details that usually herald civilisation. the customary accumulated refuse is astonishingly absent: mysteriously etherialised and abolished; but how is it done? in what manner do the local authorities magic it away? do they pronounce some incantation, and then, with a mystic pass or two, abolish it?
