Generally speaking, this time of year gets grim reviews. I blame the weather
forecasters, standing in their warm studio apologising for the drizzle,
panicking about a bit of snow, treating fog and rain as an illness we
British have to endure. But I’m not prepared to take that lying down. My
personal prescription for this weather-phobia is a wind-blasted three-day
walk along the South West Coast Path, winding 30 miles from Westward Ho!, in
North Devon, to Bude, in Cornwall.
Westward Ho! is an invigorating starting point, because it’s the only place in
the British Isles with an exclamation mark. You might imagine the town would
enjoy the pantomime air of its name more, perhaps giving its pubs names such
as The Vicar’s Gone Mad or Whoops, Where’s Your Trousers? — but sadly there
is none of this. It’s what lies beyond Westward Ho! that is so surprising: a
remote and vivid coastline riddled with the bones of lost boundaries and the
broken hearts of ships rusting on giant deserted beaches.
The lie of the land on the coast can be deceptive. Looking out from where the
footpath leaves Westward Ho!, I could see the distant houses of Clovelly
tumbling out of the woods into the sea. I assumed that dinner was only nine
miles away, and that the three hours that were left before dark would be
enough. I should have examined the map more closely, and listened to the man
in the car park who asked where I was heading while holding onto his hat. He
shook his head knowingly: “Clovelly? You’ll have to go some to get there,
boy.”
The wind was in his eyes, and he must have missed the fact that he probably
had no more than 10 years on me — but even so, being addressed as “boy”
bestows vitality. I strode away with renewed vigour. Age clearly garners
wisdom, however, and four miles later, after some testing climbs and
slippery descents, I arrived in Peppercombe with the sky already leaching
light.
The route on to Buck’s Mills is almost completely wooded, lined with stunted
oaks and a canopy of blackthorns whose curling branches are powder-painted
with lichen and moss. The ground was green with ferns and flecked gold with
dead leaves — and now the footpath was losing its edges, then dissolving
completely into the darkness. I had, indeed, left it too late. Now I was
truly alone; I could hear the pure notes of owls and, for the first time,
the sea swelling through the trees.
I nearly fell several times, once down what felt like a steep drop off the
side of the path. It took about an hour to navigate the last dark half-mile
into Buck’s Mills. There was only one light on in the village, and no
phonebook in the callbox. I was lucky to find a winter resident at all — 90%
of the houses are holiday lets or second homes. There is no pub and no
mobile reception.
“All the taxis have to come out from Bideford,” said the man at the door. “To
travel four miles is going to cost you about 20 quid.” He paused, smiled and
added: “Come on, I’ll give you a lift.” I never got my saviour’s name, but
he did tell me he was a crewman on the Clovelly lifeboat.
Clovelly is best seen out of season, when it becomes itself again and the
children of the village can walk up the steep, cobbled street to catch the
school bus without flocks of tourists pointing. It is the perfect place to
find a winter lair; to sit in front of the fire listening to the wind and
rain charging in off the Atlantic and battering the windows. Mine was the
New Inn Hotel, halfway down the high street, snug, frilly and friendly.
Behind the hotel is what must be one of the tiniest churches in England,
opened in 1846. It has just four rows of seats, facing some rather vibrant
red and yellow angels.
Clovelly is still owned by the Hamlyn family, and is one of the few villages
in England that you have to pay to get into — a human congestion charge. The
only way round this toll is via the coast path, which presses on westwards
from the top of the cobbles, crossing fields and tunnelling through
rhododendrons down to Mouth Mill.
I love beaches like this, where rivers meet the sea. It had rained in the
night, and the stream running out of the woods past a dilapidated lime kiln
had swelled, becoming proud and toned, a sleek, winding line of energy
sending all those stones back into the waves. As I sat on the beach with a
pair of grey wagtails and a dipper fussing around me, the forces that have
shaped this folding coast became apparent. For the first time, I could see
layers of rock lifted into the vertical or contorted into outcrops and
cliffs. The chaos of creation never follows straight lines; weaknesses and
strengths are crushed and caked into abstracts. Huge swathes of yellows,
greens and greys spill down the cliffs, and below them the sea forever
coaxes the land into sand.
An hour and a half beyond Mouth Mill, there is a large parcel of sand at
Shipload Bay, which appears and disappears with the tide. I saw a grey seal
in the shallows — no doubt a refugee from the island of Lundy, which floats
in the northern distance.
After Hartland Point, the coast turns to face west and the full force of the
Atlantic, the waves flex more muscle and the landscape morphs from fields
into moorland, with grass-bottomed streams and slopes of gorse that look
soft as pincushions. I ate lunch on Damehole Point, a small sliver of thrift
and rock right at the end of one the most exquisite valleys I’ve ever known,
saturated with numinous light that floods off the sea, turning land and sky
into eternity.
The tide was out, so I clambered down onto the beach, mostly to avoid another
testing climb and descent. In the more sheltered pools, I found small pink
cowries, and one or two false angel wings that had avoided being pulped by
the tide. Also beached on the rocks were great slabs of rusting iron, a
lonely riveted engine casing and a huge gnarled anchor. The only
corresponding wreck I could find on the map in the Hartland Quay Hotel, a
mile further on, on was the Margurie, which went down in 1896.
By nine o’clock that evening, the hotel was completely empty and I was
incarcerated in what felt like a fish tank. The walls of the main bar are
covered in a school of life-size plastic conger eels, wrasse, mullet,
mackerel and haddock. In among them are model ships, framed by the salvaged
portholes of the wrecked boats they once belonged to. I’m not sure whether
the decor — a hybrid of Swiss mountain chalet and 1970s soap-opera set — was
intentional, but I loved it. I loved it for its total absence of considered
design, its indifference to fashion and, most of all, the location — stuck
there on this rock next to the waves, falling asleep to the sound of the
sea.
When I woke up, the Atlantic had turned sour, grey and cantankerous. Winter
rain on the sea is so utterly sobering, especially when there is little
wind. I cut down onto the beach at Welcombe, then stumbled through the rocks
to Marsland Mouth and over the border from Devon into Cornwall, where the
path turned lumpy and broken. It’s a hard walk, through several combes and
mouths and across endless fields, to Hennacliff, but the view back to
Hartland Quay and beyond to Hartland Point is worth every step.
A mile farther on, a sign nailed to a stile heralds “The Bush Inn,
13th-century free house, bar meals and real ales, half a mile from here”. On
all accounts, you must take this diversion. The Bush Inn, in Morwenstow, is
a jewel of a pub, with low ceilings and a crackling fire — even in summer,
it has something of Christmas about it. It has recently come under new
management: the previous landlord is buried in the churchyard, alongside
shipwrecked sailors, smugglers and farmers.
Not far from the church is the smallest property in the National Trust
portfolio — Hawker’s Hut, dug into the side of the cliff and
originally built from driftwood. It belonged to the Rev Robert Stephen
Hawker, vicar of Morwenstow for some 40 years in the 19th century, who would
from time to time hole up there, smoke opium and write poetry. He was also
the founder of the harvest festival and well known for wearing thigh-high
boots, a pink hat and red gloves.
There is nothing flamboyant about GCHQ Bude, which sits on the hill between
Morwenstow and Duckpool, where the sand begins in earnest. Here, the land
inside the high fences has been cropped of every tree, every flower and, one
would assume, every mole. It is brutally beautiful, with clean, white
satellite dishes two or three storeys high and white towers with giant golf
balls on top of them — all listening, listening for plans, for plans within
plans, words within words, beginnings and endings.
I was coming to the end of my walk. The smooth grey stones begin to turn to
sand at Duckpool, but it is worth journeying on over the cliffs to
Sandymouth, where I cut down onto the beach and raced the incoming tide
across two miles of sand to reach Bude in the failing light.
It had been a toughish three-day walk, with only one shop and two places to
stay en route, and hiking time squeezed by the short days, but I was
reminded just how beautiful this country is in winter, how everything is
subdued, turns to pastel and is at rest. And because of that, to be out in
it is so very restful; much more restful, much more silent, than the frenzy
of summer. Perhaps the last words on this extraordinary coastline should go
to Reverend Hawker: “Twist thou and twine! in light and gloom / A spell is
on thine hand; / The wind shall be thy changeful loom, / Thy web the
shifting sand.”
Where to stay: in Clovelly, the New Inn Hotel (01237 431303) is an
atmospheric inn on the steep and cobbled main street, with smart doubles
from £92, B&B. Your next night stop could be the Hartland Quay
Hotel (01237 441218,
www.hartlandquayhotel.com), in the picturesque village of Hartland Quay.
It has a great bar and cosy doubles from £70, B&B. At Morwenstow,
the Bush Inn (01288 331242, www.bushinn-morwenstow.co.uk)
has great views and tastefully furnished rooms; doubles from £70, B&B.
Further information: www.southwestcoastpath.com
or www.enjoyengland.com
.
