Henry Williamson Unchained – an eleven mile walk over the Chains and by the Hoar Oak Water

The Chains, the brooding ridge of hills which are the source of the Exe and the Barle, the greatest of Exmoor’s rivers, may seem the heart of this wild landscape. Henry Williamson, author of “Tarka the Otter”, thought “of The Chains as his ancestral homeland, giving race-memory of the source of divine creation that he called 'ancient sunlight',” notes the excellent “Henry Williamson Society” website. In his long novel sequence, “A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight”, his alter ego, Phillip Maddison, wanders this part of the moor in the last summer before the outbreak of the First World War.

The Chains can be a forbidding, not to mention dangerous, place in winter when the mists come down without warning over the rain-sodden marshy ground, but on a perfect day in late May it seemed anything but. We parked the car in the big lay-by opposite to Acland Farm  Drive on the Simonsbath-Challacombe road, and set off up the bridleway signposted to the Chains Barrow. The way across the sedgy pasture is easy to follow as posts are obligingly stuck in the ground to show the driest way. When we reached the boundary wall which runs right along the ridge, we turned right towards Exe Head.

Exe Head is a lonely place. “Southward lay mile upon mile of lower moorland, and beyond a shimmering prospect of woods and patchwork fields dissolved in sky,” wrote Williamson in the “Summer’s Lease” chapter of “How Dear Is Life”, the volume of “Ancient Sunlight” which chronicles that last, perfect, summer of 1914. Williamson liked tearing his clothes off to dry them when wet from the streams and bogs, but it would have taken a deliberate effort to be anything but bone dry on the perfect day which we enjoyed.

 

We hiked down the combe towards the Hoar Oak Tree. At first you hear the Hoar Oak Water without seeing it but eventually the passage of the stream becomes more marked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Hoar Oak is a stunning valley on a day like this. At its foot, massive beech trees bend over the water in a luminous green avenue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

On the western side is the Hoar Oak Cottage, a ruin which once provided shepherds with welcome winter shelter. The National Park had ambitions of turning it into a study centre but it has contented itself by caging the crumbling walls within steel fencing and hanging it with warning signs. Better that it should have left it alone, a reminder of harder and wintry times.

In the “Summer’s Lease” chapter, Williamson wrote an extraordinary description of his alter ego, Phillip Maddison, being caught in a thunder storm near Hoar Oak.

 

“Behind him played several kinds of lightning: long jagged electric blue threads forking into the ground; rose-coloured fan-like effusions which made everything a momentary glowing pink; green slashes that hissed a moment before the sky broke.

The ground was jumping with water. He gasped with icy shock. Shirt, shoes and trousers were heavy with water, dragging shapeless. He could see nothing beyond the smaller stones of the track dancing knee high. He knew not where he was walking, but walk he must, or perish in cold.

Thunder rolled continuously; reddish burnings arose upon the watery earth, or hovered as balls of fire, or shot sideways like expanding flares illuminating the massive sheets and torrents of the rain. White streams of water, suddenly suffused with pink, were everywhere gushing down through the heather; while through all was a roar that was frightening until he realised that it was the little Hoar Oak Water rolling its bed of boulders to the sea.” When nine inches of rain fell in a thunderstorm on The Chains in August 1952, thirty four people drowned and much of Lynmouth was washed away.

Maddison makes off down the Water towards Barbrook, but we took the track which passes the cottage and leads to Furzehill  Common.

 

 

 

 

 

 In a previous walk we had wandered too far eastwards on this wide expanse of moorland without distinct paths, but this time we steered north-west and miraculously kept to the intended line, which allowed us to take the necessary left turn into the little settlement at North Furzehill. We followed the farm track towards Shallowford, but at Hill Cottage found ourselves again on open moorland. We needed to go due west, and a compass here was a considerable help in sorting out which of the many paths was which. Frequently on Exmoor the most frequented track is not the most distinct on the map.

At Shallowford we turned left and headed up the track which would take us back to the ridge of The Chains. We passed through Saddle Gate, while behind us sky and sea merged in the haze, although the smudge of the Welsh coast was just discernible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 As we climbed, Longstone Barrow came into view. This is the country of “Redeye”, the vicious lurcher in the story of the same name from “The Old Stag”, a collection of Williamson stories first published in 1926. “Redeye” is one of my favourites, strongly reminiscent of the writing of Jack London. In a forerunner of the battle between Tarka the Otter and the hound, Deadlock, Redeye is hunted by the foxhounds from Brendon Two Gates, led by Lightfoot, across western Exmoor. “He passed the Longstone Barrow, loping onwards over Challacombe Common and past Blackmoor Gate.” “Blood is spilled in plenty,” L.P. Hartley noted in a contemporary review, and Redeye kills Lightfoot in an epic struggle before expiring himself just as he reaches sanctuary.

We reached Wood Barrow, past which Redeye would have struggled, and turned eastwards towards Pinkworthy, (pronounced Pinkery,) Pond. It was looking its cobalt best in the bright sunshine. A favourite with the more morose type of suicide, it can be a godforsaken spot in bad weather. Here Tarka played with the ravens and lived off frogs. “A tarn lies under two hills, draining water from a tussock-linked tract of bog called The Chains. The tarn is deep and brown and still, reflecting rushes and reeds at its sides, the sedges of the hills, and the sky over them.”

From Pinkworthy Pond it was just a short walk back to the point opposite the Chains Barrow from which we retraced our steps downhill to the car. A short drive took us into the hamlet of Challacombe where we were looking forward to having our tea in the garden of the Post Office. We were not disappointed. The scones were just the right balance, neither too heavy nor light, there were generous bowls of cream and home-made jam, and there was the final five-star touch which accompanies the best of cream teas. There was a jug of hot water with which to top up the teapot! If you drink tea in pints as we do, a pot with a maximum of two cups each in it just won’t do. Challacombe Post Office goes straight to the top of the leader board, not least because its cream tea was a very reasonable £4.50 each.

Although Henry Williamson was as red in tooth and claw as Jack London in his writing, thankfully he was more temperate in his diet. London’s passion for eating raw game ruined his digestion, ( not helped by the prodigious amount of hard liquor which accompanied it,) but Williamson’s hero Phillip Maddison was as keen on boiled eggs and bread, jam, and cream in a farmhouse, as we are.