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.