Motor Tours in the West Country 7

Motor Tours in the West Country 7

Almost as soon as we have crossed the same river we find ourselves on

the fringe of the Moor, and begin to rise slowly on a fine curving road,

through a scene that grows in beauty moment by moment. On one side are

the sweeping lines and satisfying colours of the moorland, the heather

and the yellow grass, the greens and browns of the bracken: on the other

are all the graces of a copse of birch-trees. At every turn the view

widens, till on the skyline Hey Tor appears, very sharp and dark. As the

road sweeps round it the Moor is everywhere about us, an endless series

of rounded hills, with the line of their curved shoulders broken here and

there by jagged tors. Everywhere the rim of the landscape is blue beyond

all experience. When green has melted into grey, and grey has deepened

into an indigo so strong that it seems no colour can be bluer, there is

still beyond it a line of hills as purely, piercingly blue as the sky in

June.

 

We run on between Saddle Tor and Rippon Tor over hill and dale,

till we look down on the famous goal of a certain historic grey

mare--Widdecombe-in-the-Moor; then past Hound Tor and round by the pretty

village-green of Manaton to the woods through which the Becka’s waters

dance and sing. Here by the wayside the car must wait a little time,

while we are carried to fairyland on a magic carpet of moss. Long, long

ago, say the fairies, this was a stony, barren slope. Some wild spirit of

the storm had flung upon it a host of mighty boulders, which lay there

bare and grey beneath the open sky. At last the fairies came, and wove

their wonderful carpet of moss, soft and green, and laid it gently over

the great stones and over the earth, and scattered their enchanted seeds

upon the ground so that the tall trees rose thickly upon the hillside,

and a mysterious, dusky veil of leaves hid the river from the sky. Then

the fairies made their home here; and we may walk with them through the

woods to that strange fall that in summer is no waterfall, but a cascade

of gigantic rounded stones, flung from the height in a confused mass,

through which a thin stream trickles.

 

As we drive out of the dark and spellbound wood we suddenly find

ourselves on a heathery hillside, all space and colour and light; and by

a winding road we return to Bovey and Moretonhampstead.

 

Quite near to Moreton is one of those unforgettable places of charm so

rare that they dwell in one’s mind for ever as types of beauty. This is

Fingle Bridge, which crosses the Teign where the valley is narrow and

its sides are high and very steep, and the brown river flows quickly

among woods and beds of fern, and a huge slope, completely carpeted with

heather, towers close at hand. The best road is by Sandy Park, and beyond

that point even this is by no means good. In Drewsteignton, indeed, a

prudent owner of any car that has more than a nine-foot wheel-base will

get out and walk, for between that delightful village and the Teign

there is an extremely steep and narrow lane, with a surface that is

chiefly made of stones both large and loose. There is, moreover, no good

turning-place in the narrow gorge through which the river runs.

 

A longer run than either of these is through Bovey Tracey and Ashburton,

and across the Moor to Two Bridges by a road whose hills are grimly

described in the contour-book as “all highly dangerous.” The description

is justified, and it cannot even be pleaded that the surface is good; but

the sweeping moorland, and the woods that veil the hurrying Dart near

Charles Kingsley’s birthplace at Holne, and the valley at Dartmeet, will

compensate for much. From Two Bridges the road to Moreton is the same by

which we must cross the Moor on our way to Tavistock.

 

[Illustration: HOLNE BRIDGE.]

 

It is no hardship to travel twice upon this road. The run from east to

west, from Moreton to Tavistock, is one to repeat as often as may be,

and to remember whenever life seems dull. It is a glorious run. The road

is hardly ever level, of course, but the surface for the most part is

fairly good, and the hills, if steep, are straight. And from our feet a

wide sea of fern rolls away on every side, billow beyond billow, till

its waves break at last upon the rocks of a hundred tors. There are

certain scenes that remain with one, a possession for ever. One of them

is on the hill where Grimspound lies. A little by-road takes us quickly

to the wild spot where neolithic man built himself this dwelling, with

the object, doubtless, of keeping an eye upon his neighbours rather than

that of enjoying the view. Whatever his motive he chose well. He saw this

splendid panorama--a pageant of green and purple and indescribable blue.

One thing only he did not see: the tragic thing that gleams so suddenly

and whitely in the far distance, when a sunbeam chances to fall upon

it--Dartmoor Prison.

 

When we have passed the stony stream and pack-horse bridge of Postbridge

the scenery is less interesting for a mile or two, for this is the

more civilised part of the Moor--a fact that has a brighter side in a

comfortable luncheon at Two Bridges. Unless we change our minds and take

the beautiful road to Plymouth, we turn to the right here after crossing

the stream, and leave Princetown and all its heavy hearts behind us on

the left. When the highest point of this road is passed and the long

descent begun, the scenery is again of that well-wearing kind that can be

stored and put away for the winter. And if I pay scant attention to the

vast host of most venerable relics with which Dartmoor is dotted--I had

almost said _crowded_--this is not because neolithic man seems to me a

person of little account, but because the study of his life and times is

not one that can be taken up suddenly on a motor-tour. For one wayfarer

who takes heed of the menhir, and the stone-row, and the pound near

Merivale Bridge, there will always be a hundred to gaze eagerly from the

hilltop at the long line of dark and rugged tors that stretches across

the immense landscape, and at the gleaming Hamoaze on the left, and at

the clear outline of Brent Tor Chapel on its rock, and above all at blue

Cornwall meeting the blue sky. In the middle of this picture Tavistock

lies, and we run down into it on a splendid road.

 

The abbey that once gave renown to Tavistock has nearly vanished, but

even its fragments--an archway and an ivy-covered tower--are enough to

bring beauty and distinction into these pleasant streets. Ordgar, the

man who founded it, was the father of Elfrida, the wicked Queen who gave

her stepson a stirrup-cup, and had him stabbed while he was drinking

it. It was in Tavistock or near it that she spent her childhood, and

to Tavistock that Ethelwold was sent by the King, to see if her beauty

deserved a crown. Ethelwold, seeing her, forgot all else and married her

himself. “She is in noe wise for feature fitt for a king,” he told King

Edgar. Then the King, whom men did not lightly deceive, came hither to

Tavistock to judge for himself, and Ethelwold at bay told the truth to

his wife, begging her--poor ignorant man!--“to cloath herself in such

attire as might least set forth her lustre.” Elfrida smiled; and when

her lord was gone arrayed herself in all she had that was most rich and

beautiful, so that “the sparkle of her fair look” made the King mad for

love of her. The next day he took Ethelwold out upon the Moor to hunt,

and left him there with an arrow through his heart; and after all Elfrida

became a queen.

 

The abbey her father founded was famous, not only for its splendour, but

also for its learning. Though nearly all its stones are gone there are

still some of its documents to be seen in the church, and certain ancient

books which were printed, I believe, in the printing-press of these

progressive monks.

 

It was in the year after the monks were driven from their abbey that

Francis Drake was born to bring fresh glory to Tavistock. At the end of

a long, wide street his statue stands--the familiar figure by Boehm,

all fire and energy, the “Francie Drake” we know. His ardent face is

turned towards the town whose pride he must ever be; behind him is the

ivy-covered gateway of Fitzford House. Through that embattled archway Sir

Richard Grenville--“Skellum Grenville” as he was called--came home with

his bride to her own house; the house in which he afterwards shut her

up, and “excluded her from governing the affaires within dore,” and even,

it is reported, gave her a black eye. This was the Richard Grenville who

was the King’s General in the West, and was described by the Parliament

as “a villain and skellum.”[3] He raised an army in Cornwall “with most

extrem and industrious cruelty” and brought it to this place; and I

believe it was here that young Prince Charles stayed when he came to

Tavistock and complained so bitterly of the weather. The soldiers of the

Parliament afterwards sacked the house, of which nothing is now left but

this gateway.

 

There may be some who have been led to think that they have but to

drive a few miles from Tavistock to see the house that belonged to the

earlier, and far greater, Sir Richard Grenville, the house of which an

old writer says: “The abbey scite and demesnes was purchased by Sir

Richard Grenvill, whereon hee bwilt a fayre newe howse, and afterward

sold it unto Sir Francis Drake, that famous travailer, wᶜʰ made it his

dwellinge-plaice.” These I must sorrowfully inform that Buckland Abbey is

no longer open to the public.

 

From the statue of that “famous travailer” we turn to the right upon a

fine road, and presently, crossing the Tamar by a beautiful bridge, climb

into Cornwall on a gradient of one in seven.

 

 

 

 

THE SOUTH COAST OF DEVON

 

 

SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH SOUTH-DEVON

 

DISTANCES.

 

Exeter

Newton Abbot 16 miles

Torquay 7 ”

Totnes 9 ”

Dartmouth, viâ Brixham 16 ”

Kingsbridge 15 ”

Salcombe and back 13 ”

Plymouth 20 ”

---------

Total 96 miles

 

ROADS.

 

Hills steep and frequent.

 

Surface poor, except from Kingsbridge to the outskirts of Plymouth.

 

 

III

 

THE SOUTH COAST OF DEVON

 

If our object in choosing to cross Devon by the coast road were simply