Marie Corelli and Combe Martin, a seven mile walk via Berrynarbor and Ilfracombe

When Marie Corelli, the best-selling Victorian novelist, visited Combe Martin for the first time, she should have gone by sea. Marie delighted in boats, keeping a genuine Venetian gondola, “The Dream”, on the Avon near her Stratford home, and a genuine Venetian gondolier to paddle her about. Marie, in one of her signature white floaty dresses, would have made a fine sight sailing into the little cove, hopefully surrounded by a flotilla of admiring fisher folk. Sadly, it is more likely that she and her “companion”, Bertha Vyvers, drove along the coast road from Ilfracombe, where they were staying in 1895.

Let us hope for the sake of this most romantic, and often ecstatic, of writers, the road was not as it is now, but more of that later. Marie and Bertha wanted to visit the church, but they found more than that in Combe Martin, and there are reports that they stayed at a house called “Waverly” in the village, and that Marie wrote some of her novel, “The Mighty Atom”, in a room at that most eccentric of pubs, “The Pack of Cards”.

“The Mighty Atom”, published in 1896, was a smash hit, selling thousands of copies, as might be expected from a writer who sold as many books as all the other popular novelists like Conan Doyle and Rider Haggard put together. “The Mighty Atom” is a truly dreadful book, combining the usual Corelli stylised description of nature in extremis with an attack on rationalist education and with a plot of repellent mawkishness. The Victorian attitude in fiction to the death of children has always made me queasy, ever since reading “The Water Babies” as a small boy, but “The Mighty Atom” is something special. Lionel Valliscourt is an eleven year old boy, living in Combe Martin, who is being privately educated according to a rationalist scheme of his atheist father. The “mighty atom” of the title is the originator of the universe.

After a three hundred word overture of storm description which regular Corelli readers know all too well - “A heavy storm had raged all day on the north coast of Devon. Summer had worn the garb of winter in freakish fit of mockery and masquerade…” - the book begins with the sacking of Lionel’s present tutor, a young man far too fond of taking Lionel, for the liking of his domineering father, rowing in the bay and on to cottage cream teas.

Wandering around the churchyard, Lionel is smitten by a little girl, Jessamine, who is the daughter of the sexton, Reuben Dale, but the poor lad is soon hauled off by his new tutor for a holiday at Clovelly. When he returns, Lionel seeks out Jessamine, only to find her father burying her after she has died of diphtheria. Here is Marie in overdrive, spraying exclamation marks and dashes with her customary gay abandon, as Lionel pours out his heart to Reuben Dale.“ No – no! – not dead! Don’t say it! – not little Jessamine! Oh, you’re not – you’re not going to put her down there in the cold earth! – not little Jessamine! Oh, hold me! – I’m frightened – I am indeed! I can’t bear it, - I can’t, I can’t – oh, Jessamine!...she isn’t dead, - not really – oh, do say she isn’t,  - it would be too wicked! – too cruel!...”

Too everything! In his distress Lionel decides that there is only one way for him to confirm the heresy of the “mighty atom”. He writes a farewell note to his tutor. “I think that it would be better for boys like me if you could teach them that the First Cause was God, and that he loved everybody, and meant to explain the universe to us some day…”

Later that evening he hangs himself. “Lionel’s grave was closed in, and a full-flowering stem of the white lilies of St John lay upon it, like an angel’s sceptre. Another similar stem adorned the grave of Jessamine; and between the two little mounds of earth, beneath which two little innocent hearts were at rest forever, a robin-redbreast sang its plaintive evening carol, while the sun flamed down into the west and night fell.”

The success of the novel brought hordes of Corelli fans to Combe Martin and made a celebrity out of James Norman, the sexton and model for Reuben James. Very sensibly, James had postcards printed of himself and sold them from the churchyard. He lived but two years to profit from his fame, and his death encouraged the “Daily Mail” to publish a totally false story that Marie would provide a memorial for the poor chap but only if it bore the name of the fictional “Reuben Dale”.

Well, nothing much has changed there then, but I doubt if Combe Martin remains as Marie knew it. Approaching the village from inland, there is a long straggle of unattractive cottages, reminders that Combe Martin was once a mining community. Eventually the little harbour is reached, which is charming as long as you keep your back turned to the gift shops and caffs which despoil any seaside resort. The caffs were packed with ladies with tight grey curls, some escorted by swains in sad anoraks, and two huge charabancs were drawn up on the quayside. They probably had travelled from Ilfracombe in Marie’s and Bertha’s footsteps but I doubt with the same sense of intense romantic discovery. After a cursory look at the view, a cup of coffee, a slice of cake, and a charity shop or two would probably satisfy their needs.

Our plan was to walk in a circle to the outskirts of Ilfracombe and back, via the village of Berrynarbor, using as much of the South West Coastal Path as possible. It was a stiff pull out of Combe Martin as we walked up the A399 but at the top we turned left into the quiet lane which led along to Berrynarbor. Berrynarbor is a charming village, sheltered by its surrounding steep hills, and we quickly spotted a pleasing weather “cock” atop the church in the shape of a fox. We walked down through the churchyard of St Peter’s with its handsome tower, and turned right, which took us past the “Globe Inn”.

 

You need to have your wits about you to turn left and right to take the Goosewell Lane out of the village, otherwise you would be in danger of finding yourself back on the main road within yards of where you left it. This hill will make you puff but perhaps not quite as much as the horse of the cheery and amply-proportioned lady who passed us, exercising her nag by cantering it up the tarmac road. He must have had lungs like the Albert Hall organ pipes and joints of cast iron.

We left the village behind us and passed under a redundant bridge whose purpose was buried by time many years ago. The hedges hung thick with blackberries as big as grapes and, suddenly, there was a clink behind one of them. It was Ilfracombe Golf Course, and soon the town and the sea appeared below us. Approaching the main road, we took a footpath to our right which led us past Hele Mill. The water wheel still survives, but at this time of year the mill and its tearoom are open only at weekends. At the foot of the path lay the main road and beyond it the beach.

And here began our struggle. At this point the coastal path is the pavement of the A399 but, as we turned east, a couple walking in the opposite direction warned us that much of the path which passes round the coast was closed for repairs. So it proved and, in fact, virtually the whole coastal path back to Combe Martin was barred to walkers. The signs cheerily advised us that we could catch the bus if we liked. We did not like, and I should have followed my lifetime instinct to ignore all signs of prohibition and to plough on until one fell into an abyss.

Experience teaches that, in this part of the world, any sign threatening closure of a path or a road should be ignored, firstly as a gesture against officialdom and, secondly, because usually the sign tells a barefaced lie. We spent a frustrating hour or more, dicing with the traffic, while being miserably aware that no repairs were being made on that sunny morning. Two hundred yards from Combe Martin, at last back on the footpath, we saw a bus passing along the road.

Even if the path had been open, it would not have followed the coast all the way, and we would have spent much time on the busy A399. We passed numbers of caravan parks and Watermouth Castle, a Victorian folly and “theme park” which challenges one to “visit the gnomes.” The only gnomes visible were busy constructing a pavement on the main road opposite the castle, the only sign of coastal path construction work between Ilfracombe and Combe Martin. Watermouth Cove, framed by its distinctive hillocks, was crowded with boats stranded by low tide.

We came back into Combe Martin along the path which led to the beach.

“Turning away from the principal street of the village they bent their steps towards a small thatched cottage, overgrown from porch to roof with climbing roses, fuchsias and jessamine, where an unobtrusive signboard might be just discerned framed in a wreath of brilliant nasturtiums, and bearing the following device, CLARINDA CLEVERLY PAYNE. NEW LAID EGGS. DEVONSHIRE CREAM. JUNKETS. TEAS PROVIDED.”

("The Mighty Atom")

 

Miss Payne’s establishment, however, which entertained Lionel and his tutor, Mr. Montrose, in Chapter I of “The Mighty Atom”, was no where to be seen.A few steps above the centre of the village, we found “Devon Fayre”, a small tea shop which looked much more pleasant than the bigger caffs, now deserted after the earlier invasion of the silver hordes. We had a warm welcome, and were served a topping cream tea with scones as light and fluffy as a Marie muslin, proper clotted cream and good jam, and lashings of strong brown tea, all for £4.25 each, the most modest price we had found all summer. The people at the adjacent table had some excellent fish and chips in front of them.

After our tea, we drove back through the village to the church, which has its own car park; although a sign rather uncharitably threatened us with clamping if we were not on church business. Fortunately no clerical gentleman appeared with the dreaded metal shoe under his cassock and we visited the church unmolested.

 

We searched for the grave of James Norman without success, but we may have been misled by the graveyard index and map we discovered in the church. Subsequent reading suggests that we were on the wrong side of the church.

There were compensations within, however, in the form of a splendid rood screen with panels painted in Tudor times with portraits of the apostles.

Our visit to Marie Corelli’s Combe Martin had not been a great success, thanks to the prohibitions of Devon County Council. A better walk would have been eastwards towards Great Hangman, but we had done this before for our “Exmoor Pubs & Walks” site.

You may find it at http://exmoorpubswalks.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=combe+martin along with more about the “Pack of Cards”.

For more about Marie Corelli and a walk at Porlock Weir see the post of October 12^th 2013 on this site.

From Winsford to Nethercote - a nine mile walk in search of the Johnsons

Winsford, with its thatched pub and cottages, and streams and bridges, may be the prettiest of all Exmoor villages, but it is sadly short on literary talent, past or present. Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour government, has been the village’s most famous son for many years, but he popped his proletarian clogs even before he could pen any memoirs.

The title of Winsford’s foremost literary and political family now may be claimed by the Johnsons, the blond behemoths Stanley, Boris, and Rachel, who soon may include in their own dynastic soap opera the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

I have to confess that I have never read a word of paterfamilias Stanley’s many books on conservation, but I have attended a talk which he gave in Winsford Village Hall. It was a warm, autumn evening, and I had spent a long day in the saddle following the stag hounds. As Stanley floundered with the intricacies of the slide-projector, and as a surreal polar bear seemed to walk across the screen standing on its head, I sank into a profound coma from which I failed to awaken until the author of “Where the Wild Things Were” had sat down to enthusiastic applause.

I felt that I should do better with the literary aspirations of his children; Boris, the present mayor of London, and Rachel, editor of “The Lady”, the magazine “for elegant women with elegant minds.” For purposes of research, as men say when studying unorthodox internet sites, I borrowed Boris’s masterwork “Seventy Two Virgins”, and Rachel’s blockbuster “Notting Hell”, from the library.

 

In both cases I intended to adopt that traditional reviewing technique of reading only the first and last chapters of each but, to my eternal shame, in the case of the “Virgins”, I never progressed beyond the first page. My prep school English master had drummed into me, usually with the back of his hand and sometimes with the board rubber, that it was “the first sentence that counts.” If Boris too had attended that character-building academy on the muddy shores of the Severn Estuary, he might not have penned the following.

 

“On what he had every reason to believe would be the last day of his undistinguished political career Roger Barlow awoke in a state of sexual excitement and with a gun to his head, the one fading as he became aware of the other.”

It’s not quite on a par with Jane Austen’s use of irony, is it? “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Austen’s sentence balances effortlessly like a high-wire walker, but the Boris period flops like a great blond whale. If you replace “one” with “former” and “other” with “latter”, the conclusion at least becomes more precise, but it still deserves “awkward” in red ink in the margin. If the sentence ended at “head”, it would be much improved.

I think that it was Albert Camus who created a character who spent his life polishing the first and only sentence of his first novel. It never progressed any further. Boris has much to learn from him. You might find it an absorbing exercise to improve Boris’s opening yourself. Obviously, his publisher’s reader failed miserably.

Rachel Johnson is a more accomplished writer than her brother. The title of “Notting Hell” may well be the book’s best moment, but this saga of a community garden in a fashionable quarter of the metropolis may amuse some. The relentless punning and listing of chic brands, however, soon becomes a surfeit, as in the following passage.

“I put on some Levi’s and some cashmere socks, a grey cashmere sweater over a white Agnes B long-sleeved T-shirt, and pad down to the kitchen. I make a cup of green tea, slip on my fleece-lined lace-up nut-brown Ilse Jacobsen boots, and head out into the communal garden for some fresh air, pausing only to fondle the bud of mop-headed allium in our garden.”

What is it that makes reading this feel like a form of literary water torture? It’s the relentless stacking of compound adjectives, one on top of the other; “fleece-lined lace-up nut-brown Ilse Jacobsen boots.” It induces the throbbing neuralgia of a serious hangover until you are slugged from behind by the nausea from the inevitable brand name. Still, Rachel’s a tasty looking blond and I took a quick whiz through this saga of metrofolk to see how she dealt with what we called at school  “the good bits”, but they never seemed to progress beyond heavy breathing and references to obscure lingerie brands.
Perhaps the Johnson literary standard should be left in the hands of Rachel's aunt, Birdie, who produced "Reflections", a book based on her collection of Exmoor oral history. Birdie interviewed scores of Exmoor characters, and the books includes some fascinating photographs and personal accounts of life on the Moor.

Notting Hill seemed far away as we left Winsford by Ash Lane, after parking opposite the tea rooms and crossing the ford, in search of the Johnson fastness at Nethercote in the Exe Valley. We passed the lane which led up to the church and continued on the road until we could dive into the footpath which leads to Withycombe Farm and the Punchbowl. It’s a pleasant walk through the sheep pastures with dense woods lowering on the left. 

When we reached the Withycombe farm drive, we turned right and walked uphill back towards Ash Lane. The views of the Punchbowl behind us were stunning with a superb cloudscape.

To the right were the slopes of Winsford Hill.

When we reached the lane, we turned right and followed it, past a gateway leading to a Dutch barn, until we reached two gates together. The bridleway lies through the left-hand one, and this took us up a steep climb on to the top of Bye Common. After negotiating a gateway choked with a suckler herd of cattle, we passed through another and down the track which overlooked Nethercote.

We joined the rough roadway which follows the Exe and crossed the bridge which leads to the settlement of Nethercote. I have no idea of how many of the dwellings belong to the Johnson family. A skull-and-crossbones hung from the flagpole of the first cottage we passed, which seemed a suitable emblem for this swashbuckling family. I had a brief mental image of Boris as a child, in shorts and Clark’s sandals, living out some Arthur Ransome adventure on the banks of the Exe. Another property further down the lane appeared to have been renovated recently, and finally we came to the long, low farmhouse which I have always imagined was the family seat of the Johnsons.

All had a distinct feel of second, rather than first, homes. Everything was tidy enough, but plants grew across one of the front doors and the windows had that blank look which they show to the world when there is no life behind them. Notting Hill, not Nethercote, and Westminster, not Winsford, are the pastures where the Johnsons safely and mainly graze these days.

We walked on with the river on our left until we reached Lyncombe, another remote settlement which has a weekend retreat feel about it. We followed the track through the yard and upwards and on, past High Combe, until we reached the Staddonhill Road, a metalled no-through road where we turned right with a view of Dunkery Beacon to the north.

Above Staddon Farm, the roadway becomes the track known as Kemps Lane. This took us downhill back into the Exe Valley and eventually to Larcombe Foot. This is a lovely spot on the river and a good place to let a horse cool his legs after hunting, although we had never seen so little water in the river after the heat wave in July.

We took the footpath which runs to the south of the river back into Winsford, emerging on to the road just above where three hours earlier we had set off for Withycombe. At the side of Winsford Church we found this larky set of figures in a cottage garden playing out a cricket match.

Winsford Tea Room has fairly new owners, and they have certainly smartened the place up. As well as the charming garden next to one of Winsford’s many streams, there is a large indoor room for when the weather turns rough. A cream tea at £5.60 each was the most expensive we have seen on our travels so far but, in addition to the lovely setting, the Winsford Tea Room gave us the best scones we have tasted. There is proper clotted cream and a choice of raspberry and strawberry jams. We had both between us, and the vote goes to the raspberry.

 

Richard Jefferies and the River Barle – a seven mile walk from Tarr Steps

“The brown Barle River running over red rocks aslant its course is pushed aside, and races round curving slopes. The first shoot of the rapid is smooth and polished like a gem by the lapidary's art, rounded and smooth as a fragment of torso, and this convex undulation maintains a solid outline. Then the following scoop under is furrowed as if ploughed across, and the ridge of each furrow, where the particles move a little less swiftly than in the hollow of the groove, falls backwards as foam blown from a wave.”

 

Rarely has a river been so intensely realised in words as in “Summer in Somerset”, written by Richard Jefferies during his fortnight stay on Exmoor in 1882, but not published until after his death. It is no more than a fragment and much of it is devoted to a rhapsodic evocation of Exmoor’s most scenic river. It illustrates perfectly Jefferies’s method of pushing his nose flat against nature and itemising its detail, a technique which he unknowingly gifted to Henry Williamson, author of “Tarka the Otter”.

We started where Jefferies finished his walk; at Tarr Steps, up river from Dulverton. The ancient clapper bridge is one of Exmoor’s iconic landmarks, and arguments will always rage about its true antiquity. The past winter illustrated yet again how vulnerable the bridge is to the elements when in December 2012 a substantial length of the bridge was washed away by floods. West Somerset Council may be bankrupt but it found the money from somewhere to repair the damage promptly, to the relief of all who live off the tourist trade. Only Watersmeet near Lynmouth would challenge Tarr Steps as the most visited beauty spot on the Moor.

We parked the car in the National Trust car park above the steps for a reasonable fee of £2 for an all-day stay, and walked down to the river past the Tarr Farm hotel, of which more later.

 

 

We crossed the Steps to the western bank of the Barle and turned right into the bridleway which led steeply uphill towards Parsonage Farm. On our left we caught a glimpse of the roof of what used to be the Tarr Steps Hotel but is now a private house. Further up the track we could look back towards Ashway. It was the first day of the much-trailered heat wave and, as we walked through meadows thick with clover and flowers, ready to be mown, the flies clustered on our hats like grapes.

 

At the gate which led down into the yard of Parsonage Farm, we turned right and walked towards Westwater Farm across the top of the down, from which we had a panoramic view of the western moors. First came Withypool Hill.

Then the valley of the Barle topped by the sugarloaf of the stand of trees above Warren Farm which are visible from all points of the compass.

Finally, and much closer, stood Winsford Hill.

The heat thickened as we walked down the rough path towards Westwater. A suckler herd hid from the flies amongst the trees, and at the bottom a herd of sheep dozed in the shade.

 When we came into the lane below the farm, the collies that habitually lie in the entrance, and sometimes in the middle of the road itself, could hardly bother to rouse themselves to sniff us as we passed by and up the hill towards Greystone Gate.

 

The cattle grid is at the foot of the open common below Withypool Hill, but we kept on the road until it began to descend towards Withypool village itself.

Just above the village hall we turned right into the drive which leads to South Hill Farm. The bridleway used to pass through the yard, but there is now a right of way through the fields which brings one out between the house and the river. There is no bridge to take you to the path on the northern bank but a magnificent line of stepping stones.

 

For far too long the stones were blocked by a fallen tree, but eventually the Exmoor Park Authority cleared it away and the way is clear again as long as the river is not too high. Recently the weather had been comparatively dry. Sometimes one or two of the stones can be quite treacherous, and at others much of them are covered by the river.

We turned right towards Tarr Steps. It is said that Louis Armstrong never played the Ira Gershwin-Vernon Duke song “I can’t get started” after he heard Bunny Berigan’s awe-inspiring version. Similarly I leave our walk back to Tarr Steps to the words of Richard Jefferies and to my wife’s photographs.

 

“At the foot of the furrowed decline the current rises over a rock in a broad white sheet--white because as it is dashed to pieces the air mingles with it. After this furious haste the stream does but just overtake those bubbles which have been carried along on another division of the water flowing steadily but straight. Sometimes there are two streams like this between the same banks, sometimes three or even more, each running at a different rate, and each gliding above a floor differently inclined. The surface of each of these streams slopes in a separate direction, and though under the same light they reflect it at varying angles. The river is animated and alive, rushing here, gliding there, foaming yonder; its separate and yet component parallels striving together, and talking loudly in incomplete sentences.”

“Here is a pool by the bank under an ash--a deep green pool inclosed by massive rocks, which the stream has to brim over. The water is green--or is it the ferns, and the moss, and the oaks, and the pale ash reflected? This rock has a purple tint, dotted with moss spots almost black; the green water laps at the purple stone, and there is one place where a thin line of scarlet is visible, though I do not know what causes it. Another stone the spray does not touch has been dried to a bright white by the sun. Inclosed, the green water slowly swirls round till it finds crevices, and slips through. A few paces farther up there is a red rapid--reddened stones, and reddened growths beneath the water, a light that lets the red hues overcome the others--a wild rush of crowded waters rotating as they go, shrill voices calling. This next bend upwards dazzles the eyes, for every inclined surface and striving parallel, every swirl, and bubble, and eddy, and rush around a rock chances to reflect the sunlight. Not one long pathway of quiet sheen, such as stretches across a rippled lake, each wavelet throwing back its ray in just proportion, but a hundred separate mirrors vibrating, each inclined at a different angle, each casting a tremulous flash into the face.”

“The sky, which was not noticed before, now appears reaching in rich azure across the deep hollow, from the oaks on one side to the oaks on the other. These woods, which cover the steep and rocky walls of the gorge from river to summit, are filled with the June colour of oak. It is not green, nor russet, nor yellow; I think it may be called a glow of yellow under green. It is warmer than green; the glow is not on the outer leaves, but comes up beneath from the depth of the branches. The rush of the river soothes the mind, the broad descending surfaces of yellow-green oak carry the glance downwards from the blue over to the stream in the hollow. Rush! rush!--it is the river, like a mighty wind in the wood.”

 

“Every one has seen a row of stepping-stones across a shallow brook; now pile other stones on each of these, forming buttresses, and lay flat stones like unhewn planks from buttress to buttress, and you have the plan of this primitive bridge. It has a megalithic appearance, as if associated with the age of rude stone monuments. They say its origin is doubtful; there can be no doubt of the loveliness of the spot. The Barle comes with his natural rush and fierceness under the unhewn stone planking, then deepens, and there overhanging a black pool--for the shadow was so deep as to be black--grew a large bunch of marsh-marigolds in fullest flower, the broad golden cups almost resting on the black water. The bridge is not intended for wheels, and though it is as firm as the rock, foot passengers have to look at their steps, as the great planks, flecked with lichen at the edges, are not all level. The horned sheep and lambs go over it--where do they not go? Like goats they wander everywhere.”

Just above Tarr Steps there is a barrier strung across the river to prevent trees being carried down to the bridge by flood waters which would smash the ancient stones apart. Sadly, a few months ago, it proved completely inadequate.

“In a cottage some way up the hill we ate clotted cream and whortleberry jam. Through the open door came the ceaseless rush! rush! like a wind in the wood. The floor was of concrete, lime and sand; on the open hearth--pronounced 'airth'--sods of turf cut from the moor and oak branches were smouldering under the chimney crook. Turf smoke from the piled-up fires of winter had darkened the beams of the ceiling, but from that rude room there was a view of the river, and the hill, and the oaks in full June colour, which the rich would envy.”

 

When we first came here over thirty years ago, Tarr Farm had not changed much since Jefferies’s day. While our back was turned, however, the old farmhouse morphed into a luxury hotel, with a celebrated restaurant and a clientele in season of corporate tweedy shooters from the City. You can still enjoy an excellent cream tea in the garden above the river, from as early as eleven o’clock in the morning indeed. The price of £5.50 is at the top end of the range, as one would expect in so popular a spot, but look at the size of it. 

 

Three scones lay on each plate like golden hubcaps. Two of them went straight into the backpack for another day, and then we enjoyed the others in the company of a couple of chaffinches, a breed which seems particularly keen on scones. It wasn’t whortleberry jam but, judging by a pot which we bought once made from Exmoor’s signature berry, we weren’t missing much.

Richard Jefferies and Cloutsham Ball - six and a half mile walk in Horner Woods

Richard Jefferies lived for only thirty eight years but left behind him twenty two books. This remarkably prolific author, despite being dogged by poor health, was a journalist, essayist, and novelist, whose “Bevis”, a wonderful evocation of a boy’s country childhood, and “After London”, which virtually invented the post-apocalyptic disaster story, should find space on anyone’s bookshelf. In 1882 Jefferies came to Exmoor with his friend, the painter John William North, and used the bare fortnight that he was on the moor so intensively that it allowed him to write the magnificent “Red Deer”, possibly the last word on the species and on stag hunting, as well as the charming essay, “Summer in Somerset”.

The chapter “Deer in Summer” in “Red Deer” concentrates on Horner Woods, near Porlock, and particularly on the area around the hill, Cloutsham Ball, (“Ball” simply means a hill.) Our plan was to walk from Horner to Cloutsham Ball, and then back along Horner Water, as Jefferies had done himself. We parked the car in the National Trust car park at Horner, where we unwillingly paid a fee of £3 for the pleasure.

Our prejudice against the National Trust originates from its behaviour towards stag hunting, particularly as far as the old Acland estates are concerned. When the Acland family handed over its glorious holding on Exmoor to the Trust, it was understood that hunting would continue in perpetuity. The Trust’s ban on stag hunting, in advance even of the restrictive Hunting Act of 2005, meant that the hounds could no longer meet and hunt over Horner Woods and the slopes of Dunkery Beacon.

We took the little path past the tea garden and turned left into the road which led up to Horner Mill. When Jefferies was here, the mill still had its “immense iron wheel.” Just past the Mill, we turned right into a track and passed through a high deer gate. Here the way divides without a signpost but, following the old maxim that one’s way is almost always up rather down, we turned right and hiked uphill.

After some way we were rewarded with a signpost for Webber’s Post. We passed a shelter dedicated to the memory of the pioneer photographer, Alfred Vowles, where we found a “story tin” left by the organisers of the long-distance path, the “Coleridge Way”.  The object of the tin is to encourage walkers to contribute to a serial story, but this seemed lost on most passers-by. They had treated it, frequently and recently, as a visitors’ book. We contributed a few lines of dialogue in a lame attempt to initiate a narrative as intended, but suspected that the book would soon return to names, addresses, and “very nice views” in the accepted fashion.

Cloutsham Ball

Well, there are very nice views and particularly so at Webber’s Post, named after a famous stag hunter. There is no better place from which to see Cloutsham Ball, as Jefferies did himself, “a round green hill standing by itself in the midst of the dark heather-covered moors which overlook it. In shape it resembles a skull-cap of green velvet imitated in sward, or it might be a great tennis-ball cut in two.”

Jefferies was an acknowledged influence on Henry Williamson, author of “Tarka the Otter”, and both writers bring a microscopic attention to detail to their descriptions of nature. Jefferies used a method of quartering the perspective before him and searching each segment in detail in his attempts to spot deer in cover. Eventually he was rewarded with a sight of a stag. “He stood breast-deep in the brake, and there was a purple foxglove in flower just beside him. There seemed the least possible fleck of white among the golden russet of his side.”

Sadly, we saw no deer, and set off down the narrow lane which leads through East Water Valley towards Cloutsham Farm. Few vehicles pass this way, and the lovely combe which leads up to the farm is a pleasanter walk than along the bridle path which circles the northern edge of the Ball. When Jefferies passed by Cloutsham Farm, a hunting box built by Sir Thomas Acland, the house was still thatched but the balcony which “overlooks the steepest part of the vast natural fosse surrounding the mount” is still there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just past this end of the house we turned right and then left into the bridleway which took us away through sheep pastures towards Stoke Pero.

 

We walked round the edge of the yard at Church Farm, guarded by a very laid-back sheep, and into the lane below the church.

 

Jefferies does not mention the church, but at the time of his visit it was seriously dilapidated. It lays claim to being the highest church in England at 1013 feet above sea level.

 

The church was renovated in 1897 and only the tower and the porch survive from the original building. All the materials for the renovation were brought from Porlock on a wagon drawn by a donkey called Zulu. His heroic efforts are commemorated by a sketch on an interior wall, made by Hope Bourne, the late Withypool writer and artist.

 

In the churchyard we found a tombstone with a splendidly grim but ironic text.

 

 Farewell my husband and my children dear,

Now I am gone, don’t for me shed a tear.

As I am now, so you must shortly be.

Therefore, prepare for death, and follow me.

 

Mrs Mary Rawle was to be disappointed. Her husband, David, did not follow her for another twenty years. We rather hoped that he might have spent the intervening years doing everything that she might have disapproved of.

 

We retraced our steps into the bridleway, passing the sheep which was now industriously mowing the lawn by the roadside, and followed the path as it dived down through ancient oaks into the combe above Horner Water. “Here the sound of rushing water grew much louder, and in a minute or two the stream appeared, running at great speed over the rocky fragments of its bed,” wrote Jefferies as he approached Cloutsham Ford. In his day the foot bridge was a tree which “had been thrown and hewed flat at the upper side.” Today’s bridge is more prosaic but it is still a delightful spot.

 

 

 

 

We searched for the red stones which Jefferies noticed, and found them. Although mostly grey, some of the stone of the bank and the river bed is distinctly pink or red, particularly when wet. Wipe them with your hand and it will leave a distinct red stain.

 

 

From here we walked down the river until we reached the village. Horner is blessed with two tea gardens and we chose Horner Vale for no better reason than we had visited the other in the past.

 There were chairs and tables in a garden surrounded by flowers at the side of a pleasant cottage.

It was a delicious tea and at £4 the cheapest we have encountered so far. If it doesn’t top our list of tea gardens at the end of a long, artery-hardening, summer, it is only because we prefer a warm scone, (even if it thanks to the ping of the “magic box”,) and also jam to jelly. But these are mere details which did not come near spoiling a real treat in lovely surroundings.