A Hunt for Tarka the Otter – an eight mile walk from Hillsford Bridge

Henry Williamson is one of those writers who are a delight to read but, as with Ernest Hemingway, if he came into a pub, you might be knocked down in the general rush for the door. Eccentric, solitary, with a strong preference for animals and for the countryside to human beings, a fellow-traveller of a fascist persuasion, Williamson remains a one-hit-wonder of English literature, known exclusively for his classic animal story, “Tarka the Otter”. “Tarka the Otter” was published in 1927, and recounts the life story of an otter and his battle with the hound, Deadlock. It is set mainly in the land between the rivers of the Taw and the Torridge near Barnstaple, but at one point Tarka ventures on to Exmoor, country which Williamson knew well from childhood. Williamson, who in the years before writing the book, had kept an otter as a pet, was so determined to see life from an otter’s perspective that he would crawl on his hands and knees across country to ensure correctness of detail. The book was obsessively crafted and rewritten some seventeen times, but it possesses the stark and evocative power which distinguishes his best writing.
 

Our walk followed the path of Tarka as he journeyed from the Hoar Oak Water to Watersmeet, and then across country to the West Lyn River where he fights his first battle with the fearsome Deadlock. The direction which Tarka, and no doubt Williamson himself, took is easy to follow as Williamson obligingly heads each page with a place name. Tarka comes down the Hoar Oak Water, passing under Hillsford Bridge, until he reaches Watersmeet, where the Hoar Oak Water joins the East Lyn River coming down from Brendon and the “Doone Valley”.

We parked the car in the National Trust car park at Hillsford Bridge, where the honesty box requires a pound donation, and instead of following slavishly the otter’s path, walked a little way up the main road towards Barbrook, and then struck into the path signposted to Lynmouth.

Tarka at Watersmeet at first swims up the East Lyn River but he encounters an otter bitch, dead in a gin trap. “Tarka heard the clink of the chain as the swollen body rolled; and his bubbles blown of fear rose behind him.” He returns to Watersmeet and then sets off westward across country. Our path took us round the foot of the Myrtleberry Iron Age settlement, giving us magnificent views back over the wooded slopes which led down to Watersmeet.

Above Watersmeet

Soon afterwards the path divided, and we took the left hand fork signposted to East Lyn which led us along a grassy lane between banks of wild spring flowers and through the farms of Higher and Lower East Lyn. The way continued through fields, with Lynmouth and the sea far below us.

Looking towards Lynmouth

Eventually we came into a metalled lane at West Lyn, where we first turned right and then left, past a farm which specialises in alpacas, and thus to the main A39 road with the Beggars Roost pub away on our right. We walked straight up the road until we reached a sharp left-hand bend and here went straight on along the footpath signposted to Stockwater. Tarka crosses “stubble with lines of sheaves, stacked in sixes and tied in fours, fields of mangel and sweet turnip, where partridge crouched, and pasture given over to sheep,” but we saw only the ubiquitous sheep. We circled Stockwater Farm, and came out into the lane leading down to Barbrook and with the beginnings of Ikerton Water which flowed towards the West Lyn River. Here “Hazels grew on the bank above. Their leaves took on the golden-green of spring in the beams of the low autumn sun as Tarka crept under the rock”

Ikerton Water

 

“He was awakened by the tremendous baying of hounds”. What follows is a magnificent description of the hunt as the otter hounds pursue Tarka down the West Lyn River. Ikerton Water meets the West Lyn River just above the bridge at Barbrook where the main A39 road meets the minor road running down the Lyn Gorge.

 

Ikerton Water meets the West Lyn River

Here Tarka leaves the water and runs the road, hoping to destroy his scent, and even under a charabanc. Oddly enough trippers in the 1920’s seemed to be more untidy than the modern variety. “He ran in the shade of the ditch, among bits of newspaper, banana and orange skins, cigarette ends, and crushed chocolate boxes.” Barbrook seems a great deal tidier these days with its muddle of stone cottages.

 

 

At one point the hounds are at fault and follow a scent which leads to a duck “that beat its wings and quacked in terror before them.”  On our morning the ducks slept on undisturbed. Otter hunting ceased in England in the 1970’s, as otter numbers declined because of river pollution and well before the species became protected.

 



 

We followed the West Lyn River downstream as Tarka did. “The water was friendly to the otter” and, as he swims and turns from pool to pool, the pack of hounds flounder in his wake. Tarka’s hunt was in autumn but on this late spring morning the bluebells were still out in profusion.

 

West Lyn River

 

At Lyn Bridge Tarka continued towards the sea, but we crossed the road by a pub which promised a” belly-busting burrito”, a culinary treat which I found easy to resist, and walked along a lane which is signposted as a no-through road but which took us pedestrians above Victorian villas, built into the sheer rock of the gorge with wonderful views out over the sea, and into the town of Lynton.

 

Lynmouth

Here we found the famous Cliff Railway, which Phillip Maddison, the hero of Henry Williamson’s autobiographical novel sequence “A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight”, takes when he arrives for a holiday just before the outbreak of the First World War. “He saw steel lines with grease on them going down fearfully steep to a tiny roadway below. He saw the tiny white fringe of sea breaking on grey boulders. The sea was nearly black, like a stain, beyond a dwarf quay. He felt giddy and put down his bag…”

 

 

 

To date I have tackled only the wartime volumes, (there are fifteen in all,) but the “Chronicle” seems to me a great but sadly neglected documentary of English twentieth century life. Williamson brings his typically obsessive eye for detail to the life of his hero, and it allows the reader to appreciate just what it was like to serve in that terrible conflict. Robert Graves’s and Siegfried Sassoon’s accounts seem mere rough sketches by comparison.

At sea-level we wandered on to the shingle of the beach. The Lyn Rivers, now one, flowed along their channel to the sea. It is the story of much of my life that the tide in the Severn Sea is always out. Tarka, before breaking out into the open sea, has the last word this time in his struggle with Deadlock. “Deadlock tried to twist round and crush the otter’s skull in his jaws, but he struggled vainly. Bubbles blew out of his mouth. Soon he was choking.” Deadlock is hauled from the channel and has the water pumped out of his lungs while the triumphant Tarka makes for the open sea.

The way to the sea

 

Rhenish Tower

We passed the “Rhenish Tower”, in which a General Rawdon stored seawater for salt baths in his villa, and walked upstream to where the two Lyn Rivers meet.

East & West Lyn Rivers

 

 

At the next bridge we took the eastern bank of the East Lyn River, and started our walk back towards Watersmeet. Watersmeet is a deservedly popular beauty spot, easily accessible from the main road, and with a busy National Trust tearoom. Prejudice on our part against the National Trust, which prohibits stag hunting on Exmoor, even though their holding was given to it on the assurance that it should continue, prohibits us from using the tearoom. We continued, as Tarka did, up the magnificent stretch of Hoar Oak Water with its run of boiling falls, until we reached Hillsford Bridge and the car.

Hoar Oak Water

 

We had our eyes on a better treat than a National Trust slice of carrot cake. We were heading for the nearby Brendon House tea gardens for, according to the Country File programme, the best cream tea in England. Well, it might have been, but it evidently wasn’t the most profitable as we found the gardens closed and for sale. We withdrew to Simonsbath and to Boevey’s tearooms where we enjoyed an excellent tea. It was more expensive than Cloud Farm’s, £5.50 each rather than £4.50. I preferred the Boevey scones, which were heavier and “breadier “than the Cloud Farm ones, but my wife argued the opposite case for Cloud’s more ethereal offerings. A Boevey’s tea certainly filled one up after an energetic day’s otter hunting. The original Mr Boevey owned Exmoor in the sixteenth century when he discovered, as everyone does eventually, that Exmoor is a place to spend money, not to make it.

The Valley of “Lorna Doone” & Oare Church – a seven mile walk from Cloud Farm, Malmsmead

In the United States there are “Lorna Doone Shortbread” biscuits. They have been a popular brand for Nabisco since 1912, so long ago that now no one at the huge cookie conglomerate can remember why they were named after the heroine of a mid-nineteenth century English romantic novel.

How I first met Lorna Doone

Perhaps the combination of a Scottish-sounding name with the title of a still popular novel originally attracted the Nabisco marketing department. “Lorna Doone”, first published in 1869, is one of those books, of which everyone has heard, but very few have read, and yet it survives in the public consciousness in much the same way as “Oliver Twist” or “Wuthering Heights”. The combination of a dramatic narrative within a wild and beautiful landscape has ensured its durability, through film, comics, and constant popular reference, despite the fact that people find the original text a difficult and forbidding read.

“If anybody cares to read a simple tale told simply, I, John Ridd, of the parish of Oare, in the county of Somerset, yeoman and churchwarden, have seen and had a share in some doings of this neighbourhood, which I will try to set down in order, God sparing my life and memory.”

For students of the use of language, this is a marvellous opening with its sonorous, self-important rhythms, within the framework of a pseudo-oath, revealing so much immediately about the narrator, but it is far from being “a simple tale told simply.” The lengthy periods and the use of deliberately archaic language might make it hard work initially for some readers, but it repays richly those who persevere.

Lionel Edwards's Waterslide

There can be few works in the English language whose landscape is so immediately recognisable today. The valley of the East Lynn River is little different now to what it was in the day of the author, R.D. Blackmore, or in the days of John Ridd, for that matter, in the late seventeenth century. Blackmore himself, however, sounded an important note of warning. “If I had dreamed that it would have been more than a book of the moment, the description of scenery which I know as well as I know my garden would have been kept nearer to their fact.  I romanced therein, not to mislead others, but solely for the uses of my story."

The famous waterslide, and even the valley of the Doone encampment itself, can not be identified reliably with any particular place, but the Ridd farmhouse, now a gift shop called “Lorna Doone Farm”, Oare Church where Lorna is shot by Carver Doone, and Badgworthy Water are all real enough.

Lorna Doone Farm

Most of all, the wonderful scenery of Exmoor which informs the atmosphere of the book is accessible to anyone with a sound pair of legs. Our walk started at Cloud Farm, from which you can gain direct access to the valley down which the East Lyn River flows. It is possible to park at Lorna Doone Farm and to walk up the bridleway to Cloud Farm, but the path is away from the river and somewhat tedious. Better to pause and take a selective view of the Ridd homestead, filtering out the gift shop and the metro-inspired deli-caff next door, and then drive up to Cloud Farm.

We also planned to have tea at Cloud after our walk. If you don’t stop for tea, you will be expected to pay a modest parking fee of £1.

East Lyn River

We walked down to the river and crossed the footbridge to the other bank, where we turned left up the river valley. There are lovely views here of the river Lynn. We passed through woods of old oaks and past thickets of rhododendrons. It’s worth timing one’s visit to see these in all their glory in early June, although the best time depends on the harshness of the previous winter and spring.

Where we emerged from the trees, the river becomes officially the Badgworthy Water of the book, which is pronounced “Bajjery” on Exmoor. A little further on the path curves round to the right and to the west, taking one towards Tippacott Ridge. Not far up the path there are some visible remains of some shepherds’ cottages which coincidentally mark the site of a Medieval village. This, at the foot of Lankcombe Combe, is generally agreed as the spot where Blackmore imagined his outlaw encampment.

To follow the river onwards, you need to return to the bottom of the combe and, after passing through a gate and over a little bridge, follow the path around the foot of Badgworthy Hill with the river on your left until you reach a foot bridge. This is a wonderfully lonely place.

Footbridge leading to Great Tom's Hill

Here we crossed the river and then scrambled up the rough path which, as it grew smoother, took us up over Great Tom’s Hill. From here you can appreciate the overwhelming loneliness and wildness which haunts the pages of the book.

The middle of the moor

Soon we saw the great beech wood enclosure that once belonged to Larkbarrow Farm, destroyed when this was an artillery range during the Second World War.

Larkbarrow Enclosure

We turned left up the bridleway confidently signposted to “Oare”. Unfortunately this did not prove the plain sailing which the well-trodden way promised. At some point we should have swung away to the right, but there is a law of walking which dictates that the desperate necessity for a signpost is in inverse ration to the likelihood of there being one. We were taken unwittingly back towards the Doone Valley, which we realised when we found ourselves above the stand of trees known as the Deerpark Plantation. I made a promise never to leave my compass at home again.

We floundered due eastwards through a sea of millenia grass until we found a likely track and, after passing through a succession of close-bitten sheep pastures, we fell into the footpath between Oare Church and Cloud Farm. We probably had been walking only two boundaries away from where we should have been, and turned right downhill to reach the church.

Oare Church

Even without its associations with Lorna Doone, Oare Church is a charming place with its box pews and the sunlight streaming through the window above the altar, through which in most film productions Lorna is shot on her wedding day by the villainous Carver Doone. “Darling eyes, the clearest eyes, the loveliest, the most loving eyes – the sound of a shot rang through the church, and those eyes were dim with death.”

Out in the grassy churchyard, my wife regarded my search for a Ridd amongst the gravestones with sceptical disdain. I didn’t find “gurt Jan Ridd” himself but at least I found one of his descendants.

We retraced our steps up the steep footpath which would take us back to Cloud Farm, following the same path as John on his formidable horse Kickums as he rode in pursuit of Carver Doone. When we walk this way again, we will do it in reverse so that we may follow the way back across the moor which they took southwards until Carver came to a suitably grisly end at Cloven Rocks bog just outside Simonsbath.

Carver Doone's last ride

On a sunny afternoon there was nothing so threatening, and the lambs were basking in the sunshine.

If there is any better treat than a cream tea, then I would like to see it. On a weekday in May we were the only customers at the old tea house at Cloud Hill Farm, except the chaffinches who were determined to take a share.