Motor Tours in the West Country 9

Motor Tours in the West Country 9

The road from Dartmouth to Slapton Sands is almost entirely composed

of astonishing hills. Only in Devon could hills so many and so fierce

be compressed within so small a space. But only in Devon, surely, is

the coast at the same time so wild and so luxuriant, so stern and yet

so tender; only in Devon can we look down from the clifftop through so

soft a veil of trees, and see far below us sands so yellow and rocks so

red, and the ripples of so very, very green a sea. This road that rises

steeply out of Dartmouth is characteristically deep in the shade of

rocky banks, and walls built of thin mossy stones. Long hart’s-tongues

hang in clusters by the wayside, and every cranny of the walls is filled

with tiny ferns. Having climbed to Stoke Fleming by a variety of steep

gradients we promptly descend, by two miles of gradients nearly as steep,

to the idyllic cove of Blackpool, whose golden sands once flowed with the

blood of four hundred Frenchmen. They, and many more, had landed here;

but the men of Dartmouth, who had not forgotten the sacking of their

town, came swarming down these cliffs upon them, so that the survivors

were glad to put to sea again. Another steep climb takes us up to Strete,

and another steep descent to Slapton Sands.

 

Here is a dramatically sudden contrast! From the very foot of the hill

the road runs, for two miles and more, over what is probably the most

level strip of land in Devon. It is no more than a strip. Close beside it

on the left runs the long strip of the sands, and close beside it on the

right an equally long strip of water, the reedy mere called Slapton Ley.

“There is but a barre of sand,” says Leland, “betwixt the se and this

poole. The waite of the fresch water and rage of the se brekith sumtime

this sandy bank.” It is along this bar of sand and shingle that our road

runs. If we turn away from it for a few minutes, on the by-road that

crosses the pool near the hotel, we shall see Slapton itself.

 

[Illustration: SLAPTON.]

 

The village has no very striking beauty; but its steep little streets,

its thatch and whitewash and flowers, its air of remoteness, its

maidens with their pretty blue pinners and prettier faces, make it a

very attractive place. Nor is it without distinction. Not only is it

dignified by a thirteenth-century spire of extreme austerity, but it

also has the remains of a collegiate chantry. The chapel tower, with its

graceful arch and fragment of groining, rises alone among the flowers

of a lovely garden, where wild olive and camphor grow as serenely as the

Devon apples that hang above them. It is a private garden, but as it

skirts the road we may drive almost into the shadow of the tower. For

several centuries, from the days of Henry II. to those of Henry IV., this

generous soil belonged to a Guy de Brian. It was Joan Pole, the wife

of the Guy de Brian of Henry III.’s time, who founded Pole Priory upon

this spot: we have it on the word of a Pole. The later Brian who made

it a college was one of the original Knights of the Garter, and a very

versatile person, being Edward III.’s standard-bearer in “that notable

fight he had with the French at Calais,” as well as an ambassador and an

admiral-of-the-fleet. In the reign of Henry IV. this manor of Slapton

became the property of Harry Hotspur’s crafty father; but to many of us

the most stirring memory in this place is that of Sir Richard Hawkins,

the third great sailor of his name. He bought Pole Priory--now corrupted

into Poole--before he set sail on that adventurous voyage that lasted

so much longer than he expected. During the ten years of his absence,

years of imprisonment in the South Seas and elsewhere, this was the home

of his “dearest friend, his second self,” Judith, Lady Hawkins. For

some reason--whether to impress the neighbours or because she suffered

from rheumatism I do not know--this lady was in the habit of walking to

church on three quarters of a mile of red velvet carpet. Possibly life

was not very gay at Slapton at the end of the sixteenth century, and this

mild ceremonial may have been a comfort to her. The time came when she

sought another kind of consolation in her loneliness. The story goes[4]

that when Sir Richard came home at last to Slapton he found a strange

air of festivity astir in these precipitous streets. The red carpet was

laid, we may be sure, from Pole Priory to the church, for when he asked

what matter was afoot he found it was his Judith’s wedding-day. It was

fortunate he came in time, for one cannot quite see Richard Hawkins in

the part of Enoch Arden.

 

The main road to Kingsbridge pursues its level way between salt water

and fresh till it reaches Torcross, a most desolate-looking village with

a reputation for fishing. Here, sad to say, we must turn inland. The

scenery between this point and Kingsbridge is no great matter, but there

are some pretty villages, and Stokenham Church has a good screen. The

road is fair, and the hills less formidable than usual.

 

There is no means of seeing, as a whole, this beautiful coast between

Torcross and Plymouth, except on foot or from the sea; but most happily

it is possible for motorists of inquisitive habits to find their way,

here and there, to various little havens of the greatest charm. These,

however, are all beyond Kingsbridge. Kingsbridge itself is a place of no

particular attraction nor interest. It has a few picturesque corners and

old houses, but its real claim on our affections is that the only way to

Salcombe lies through it. Now a road that leads to Salcombe is something

to be grateful for.

 

[Illustration: SOUTH POOL CREEK, SALCOMBE.]

 

To those who do not know Salcombe, the six miles that lie between it

and Kingsbridge may be a little depressing. The road leads to no

other place, and is preposterously hilly: the country is treeless and

discouraging. To the uninitiated it may well seem, as they drive between

the imprisoning hedges, that no compensation is likely to be forthcoming.

But some of us know better. We reach the edge of the hill, and suddenly

the sea, brilliant and soft--a sea of liquid jewels--is shining below

us, lapping upon the sands of the little creeks; wooded slopes drop

steeply to the rocks that fringe the shore; red and white sails flit

about the harbour, dapper yachts lie at anchor in the shelter of the

hill, wave-worn barges move heavily towards the land; Salcombe lies at

our feet, clinging to the hillside, a tiny town of steep streets and

shipwrights’ yards and little quays; and Bolt Head stretches out a long

arm to protect it.

 

There was an evening, not very many years ago, when at the hour of

twilight a yacht put out to sea over the bar of Salcombe Harbour, while

the sound of the evening bell came clearly across the water. Up the

estuary the lights were beginning to shine out one by one through the

dusk, and in the dark shadow of the headland the full tide silently

“turned again home.” Lord Tennyson, who was on board the _Sunbeam_ that

night, has made Salcombe Bar dear to many who have never crossed it.

He had been staying at the pretty house that stands on its own little

promontory, hidden by trees, between the town and the bar. Here for some

years lived Froude the historian among the orange-trees and tamarisks,

and it was here he died.

 

This peaceful anchorage was very useful to pirates in the good old

days. They hid safely behind Bolt Head and, when any unwary ship passed

by, dashed out and plundered her. Henry VIII., though not above piracy

himself, built a little castle for their undoing, upon a small precarious

rock nearly circled by the sea. Here are its fragments still. Sir Edmund

Fortescue strengthened it and called it Fort Charles, and held it very

valiantly for Charles I.: so valiantly that it withstood Fairfax, and

when it surrendered at last Fortescue was allowed to take the key with

him.

 

[Illustration: FORT CHARLES AND BOLT HEAD.]

 

To nearly every motorist, as he sits beside his tea-cup on the terrace

of the Marine Hotel, or leans against the wall that keeps the sea out of

the garden, it will occur at once that this harbour is an ideal place for

motor-boating. This is truer than he knows. For these waters that ripple

round the garden-walls of Salcombe pass on their way inland in various

directions: up South Pool Creek to the thatched farmstead that has its

feet nearly in the water at high tide; past Goodshelter to the old mill

at Waterhead, and to Kingsbridge four miles away. And beyond the bar are

all the little coves and bays of a lovely coast: Hope, where the high

rocks entrap the sunshine and keep out the winds: Thurlestone, whose

worldly ambitions are greater and whose charms are less: Bantham, between

a curve of the Avon estuary and the sea, where the breezes are sweet with

the scent of gorse, and worldly ambition seems altogether dormant. Even

without a motor-boat we may see these little bays, each at the end of its

own little lane; but only such motorists as are staying close at hand

will care to explore lanes so narrow and winding and steep.

 

On our way back to Kingsbridge, however, to take the road to Plymouth,

we shall see a narrow turn to the left, near West Alvington, which is a

perfectly practicable means of cutting off a mile or two of dull country

and avoiding a bad hill in Kingsbridge. As a whole the main road from

this point to Plymouth is one of the best in South Devon, though there

is a long and very steep descent at Aveton Giffard that is not marked

on Bartholomew’s map, and a sharp rise in Modbury that is considerably

steeper than the contour-book estimates. There is no very striking beauty

of a large sort, but a great deal of the restful, wayside charm that

makes Devonshire so comforting. There is no need to loiter on the road,

for though it played its part in the Civil War--and indeed possibly on

that account--there are few relics of its history to be seen. The bridge

that crosses the sedges of the Avon at Aveton Giffard was once important

enough to have a fort built on the hill for its defence; but none the

less it was taken by the extremely irregular troops whose clubs and

pickaxes and saws were wielded here for the Parliament. Champernowne

of Modbury was one of the builders of the fort, and one of the greatest

sufferers from the “clubmen,” for his house, which stood on the top of

Modbury Hill, was fortified and occupied by the royalists. “This Party

of ours wᶜʰ was at Modbury,” wrote Sir Bevill Grenville to his wife,

“indur’d a cruell assault for 12 howers against many thousand men.” One

result of this cruel assault, which could have but one end, is that only

a very small fragment of Court House is still standing.

 

We go on our way through Yealmpton and Brixton, on a surface that

gradually becomes very rough, and cross the toll-bridge into Plymouth.

 

This is a name that stirs the blood of every true child of Britain. In

the days of Elizabeth’s great sailors it was from Plymouth that Britannia

ruled the waves. And to-day there is no end to the interest that this

place holds for those who love the navy and the sea as is the wont of

Englishmen; no end to the modern interests of port and harbour, of

dockyard and battleship, nor to the crowding memories on Plymouth Hoe.

 

[Illustration: DRAKE’S ISLAND, FROM THE HOE.]

 

Here on the Hoe, with Drake’s statue beside us, and his island below us,

and behind it those fair woods of Mount Edgecumbe on which Medina Sidonia

cast a covetous eye, we are looking down at the channel through which