Motor Tours in the West Country 17

Motor Tours in the West Country 17

Especially on a hot afternoon this is one of the most desirable runs in

Devon. From Bideford to Torrington the road is shaded nearly continuously

by high banks of trees rising from the wayside: on the left the cool

stream winds beside us. Torrington, on its abrupt hill above the river,

must have been a place of dignity when its castle dominated the valley.

Through these streets where we are driving Fairfax chased the royalists

one night in the dark, after a long resistance “with push of Pike and

butt end of Musket”--chased them clean through the town and out of it to

the bridges. This engagement, wrote the general, was “a hotter service

than any storme this Army hath before been upon.” The royalists meantime

had bribed “a desperate villain” to fire their store of powder in the

church, lest the army of the Parliament should benefit by it; with the

unexpected result that when “the Lead, Stones, Timber, and Ironwork of

the Church were blowne up into the Ayre” two hundred royalist prisoners

were blown up too. Hardly any of the Parliament-men were injured, though

Fairfax himself had a narrow escape, and was obliged to return to “Master

Rolls his house” for the night, “in regard the Quarter at Torrington was

inconvenient, the Windowes broken in pieces, and the houses so shattered

with the great blast that they could not performe a convenient shelter

from the raine.” This church on our right among the trees replaced the

one that was blown into the air so completely that hardly a fragment of

the old building remains; and this street by which we pass through the

town is the one by which Fairfax rode back that night to Master Rolls

his house. He went straight on to Stephenstone, but we turn away to

the right on the road that skirts the castle hill and passes near the

Waterloo obelisk.

 

We see little more of the Torridge; but this splendid Exeter road takes

us through very lovely scenery; by woods, and beds of fern, and level

heaths, and fields of meadowsweet, and rows of shady beeches, while for

the last time our view is bounded by the beloved hills of Dartmoor. It

is a curiously lonely road: hardly a village, and indeed for some miles

hardly a cottage, breaks the solitude. Between the two valleys, as we

pass through Winkleigh and bear round to the left to cross the Taw, the

country is less beautiful and the surface rougher; but after the sharp

turn at Morchard Road Station we have a splendid run to Barnstaple.

 

This is the most level road in Devon. This fact alone commends it to

us, but there are many other facts to make it memorable: woods of oak,

and larch, and mountain-ash, and chestnut-trees, not only shadowing us

but filling all the landscape: tall red fir-stems, and ferns beside the

road, and wildflowers everywhere. All the way we follow the railroad,

swinging past station after station, Eggesford and South Molton and

Portsmouth Arms and Umberleigh, while the valley widens and narrows and

opens out again; and all the time the Taw is close at hand, growing from

a tiny stream between low banks of red earth and grass to a strong river

rippling over the shingle, with trees dipping into its sunny waters.

 

Somewhere in Bishop’s Tawton lies the dust of the first Bishop of Devon.

It was here that the see was originally fixed; but when the second bishop

was murdered it was thought wise to move to a more central position

at Crediton. Beyond the pretty village the estuary widens, and we see

Barnstaple before us through the trees.

 

[Illustration: ON THE TAW.]

 

Barnstaple, says Mr. Warner of the eighteenth century, “is by far the

most genteel town in North Devon.” This is a very happy word; though why

a town whose history includes the days of Athelstane, a town that has had

a castle and a priory and a life by no moans dull, should be “genteel”

when all is said, is hard to understand. The nice public gardens and open

spaces, the air of clean prosperity, and the colonnade with the fluted

pillars give it an eighteenth-century air, at latest. Yet, if we look

behind the church with the crooked spire we shall find the brown stone

grammar-school where Bishop Jewell and the poet Gay learnt their lessons;

and in the narrow street near the Imperial Hotel are some almshouses

whose granite pillars and beautiful moulded gutters date from 1627; and

spanning the river is the “right great and sumptuus bridge of stone” that

was “made long sins by a merchaunt of London caullid Stamford.” Nothing

is left of the priory where Sir Theobald de Grenville was excommunicated

with bell, book, and candle; nor of the castle that belonged at various

times to Judhael of Totnes, and the Tracy who murdered Becket, and

Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. Even at the beginning of the

Civil War it was “a place of small strength,” and during the struggle

it led a hard life. The Colonel Basset who defended it while it was in

royalist hands figures among John Prince’s Worthies. “This gentleman as

to his stature was somewhat short, but of an high crest and noble mind.

As to his religion he did not boast great matters, but lived them … he

being as plain in his soul as he was in his garb, which he resolved

should be proud of him rather than he of it.”

 

The road that crosses the hill between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe leaves

the town by the suburb of Pilton, whose white houses and gaily painted

shutters and high walls have rather a foreign air. There is a long but

well-graded hill before us, and a surface that is not very good. Each

flowery village is followed by another as gay, and each green valley

leads into another as green, and still we climb higher and higher till we

come to the heather. For a little time the scenery is dull; then the road

winds down a deep valley, and we see Ilfracombe in a gorge below.

 

Ilfracombe, like everyone’s grandmother, was lovely when it was young.

That, however, was some time ago, and at present its charms are a matter

of taste. That thousands love its piers and pierrots is evident at a

glance, but some of us can only look sadly at its bluffs and sparkling

sea, and long for the days that are no more. The change must have come

very quickly, for only fifty years ago George Eliot thought Ilfracombe

the loveliest sea place she ever saw, and found Tenby tame and vulgar

after it. “But it would not do,” she adds, “for those who can’t climb

rocks and mount perpetual hills; for the peculiarity of this country is

that it is all hill and no valley.”

 

There are hills, and valleys, too, in astonishing numbers along this

coast. The contour of the road between Ilfracombe and Porlock makes a

sinister picture. But those thirty miles include some of the finest

scenery in England; and by making them more than thirty, one may avoid

some of the worst gradients without missing any of the beauty.

 

For the first few miles the road clings to the brow of the cliff,

twisting round curve after curve, and mounting and falling and mounting

again. All the colours of the rainbow are in the landscape. There are

headlands of every shade of purple and red, foliage of every tint of

green, shadows that are intensely blue, sands that are really golden,

and a sea of a colour that has no name. We swing round a curve and see

the white houses of Combe Martin wedged between the brown cliffs, and a

few minutes later we turn away from the sea and mount the long village

street. Combe Martin may be defined as length without breadth; for though

it is a mile and a half long it is in no place wider than two little

houses. It has contributed in its day to the honour of its country, for

Edward III. and Henry V., it is said, made use of the silver-mines of

Combe Martin during their wars with France. Elizabeth gave cups of the

same silver to her friends; but Charles I., though ingenious in the art

of extracting the precious metals, sought here in vain.

 

The road, as it climbs up to Exmoor, grows rather rough. From Blackmoor

Gate the direct way to Lynton is of course through Parracombe, where

there are two hills of some renown, a descent and a climb. The

inconvenience here is in the fact that the change from the downward

to the upward gradient is in the middle of the village, and a run is

out of the question. None the less this hill, though steep, is quite

practicable; but the still more famous hill between Lynton and Lynmouth

thoroughly deserves its reputation, and, after personal experience,

I strongly advise motorists to avoid it unless they have absolute

confidence in the staunchness of their car, the power of their brakes,

and the scope of their steering-locks. Its difficulty lies, not only in

the gradient--though at one point that is steeper than one in four--but

in the extremely acute angle that occurs at the steepest spot and makes

it impossible, if there should chance to be so much as a wheelbarrow by

the wayside, for a car of any size to turn without pausing. An added

difficulty is the looseness of the surface, for the constant use of drags

has ploughed the road into a mass of stones and sand. It is possible now

to take cars on the “lift,” or funicular railway that runs up and down

the cliff; but it seems to me that the simplest plan is to drive round

by Simonsbath to Lynmouth. There is shelter there for both man and car;

but those who prefer to stay at Lynton--and they are many--may leave

their cars at the bottom of the hill, and mount it themselves, with their

luggage, in the cliff railway.

 

At Blackmoor Gate, then, instead of taking the road to Parracombe, we

must go straight on till we turn to the left at Challacombe. The country

is not inspiring. Technically, I suppose, this is part of Exmoor; but

there is nothing in these undulating fields and hedgerows to suggest

the hunting of the red deer by Saxon kings, or the jealous guarding of

forest-rights by the Conqueror. For William, though he gave away these

lands, was very strict about the hunting. “He loved the tall deer as

though he had been their father,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. His

love was like that of the little boy who was so fond of animals that he

always went to see the pigs killed.

 

[Illustration: LYNMOUTH.]

 

At Simonsbath there is a sudden outburst of beauty. The tiny village

lies in a hollow among the fir-clad hills, and makes an idyllic picture

with its stream and bridge; and here the road turns and winds up to a

fine expanse of true moorland. It is sterner than Dartmoor. There is no

luxuriance of bracken here, nor acres of purple, but mile beyond grassy

mile of stately, rolling hills, very austere at noonday, but in the light

of a summer sunset transfigured into splendour. The new road to Lynmouth

turns abruptly back upon the hillside, and on it we plunge into the green

depths.[17]

 

If Nature is austere upon these hills, in the valley she is riotous. We

seem to be dropping down and down into her generous heart, and, like the

poet, we bless ourselves with silence. Far above us, as we wind beside

the river, the tall sides of the valley are clear-cut against the sky;

but just below the line of rock and heather the rich woods rise up and

take triumphant possession of the hills, and fill every curve and hollow,

and clothe the steep heights, and hang over the stream, and rustle by the

wayside. We have dropped so suddenly and deeply into these green waves

that we almost expect them to close over our heads. And as the road winds

on we think at every corner that all this beauty must come to a sudden

end. Surely we have passed the climax: surely the next curve will take

us out of this enchanted valley into the world we know. But the beauty

does not end. It grows; and only finds its climax in the red and green