Lynton to Ilfracombe – 11th and 12th November 2023
Preamble
This was meant to be a 2 day walk from Lynton to Woolacombe. However, after a 16.5 mile walk as far as Combe Martin on our first day, we had second thoughts about repeating the distance on the second and settled for Ilfracombe.
Our first bit of coast walking in almost a year, but we haven’t been idle in that time. In April we cycled 300 miles from Dieppe along the Avenue Vert and then down the Seine to beyond Rouen. Different muscles though – so we are a little out of practice when it comes to hill walking.
Walking in East Sussex can be hilly, but rarely offers the 200 metre climbs we can expect in North Devon. Further, we have eschewed the inflexibility of the caravan for the luxury of BnB walking. Not a bad idea in November. The big advantage of BnB walking over caravanning, or a self catering establishment, is the opportunity it affords to start at one point and finish at another without the need to return to the former. This is particularly important in an area such as North Devon, which offers limited transport options, especially between Lynton and Combe Martin. The down side is one has to carry spare clothing etc., thereby adding not insignificantly to the weight of the backpack.
The BnB we stopped in on out first night, Rock Vale House, is one we would highly recommend for its cleanliness and the quality of the food and bed. What more could you want? Further, we found a nice little Tapas bar (The Oak Rooms) just down the road. As we headed for our food we encountered the local cinema and decided to take in a film afterwards as well. Talk about pushing the boat out! At £5 each watching Killers of the Flower Moon for 3 hours it made for a bargain.
Stepping-out
Saturday 11th November starts well, with a terrific cooked breakfast and we are up and away by 09.30. An estimated 14 miles should be doable in 7 hours surely? The backpacks don’t feel too heavy, although we may well live to regret forgetting to bring our walking poles with us. There is an outdoor shop in Lynton, but not open at this apparently unearthly hour on a cool, though sunny, November morning.
It is 2 years since we walked the adjoining stretch from County Gate to Lynton and we briefly reacquaint ourselves with views which have changed little in the intervening years.
Local photos
Our route initially takes us down the path to Lynmouth, but we soon fork off left to explore pastures new as we stretch our legs along the well tarmacked path which clings to the cliff side in the direction of The Valley of the Rocks.
“Castle Rock, The Valley of the Rocks
Until now we have had the path virtually to ourselves, but arrival at the Valley of the Rocks changes this immediately. Some 20 or so over 50s are out in a big group coming down the road from Lynton. I suspect they started at Lynton and will return along our earlier route before heading down to Lynmouth, perhaps for a coffee, before striking out up the East Lyn River. Well its what I would do if I were them.
We are quite pleased that they are not going in our direction since I hate getting caught up with a crocodile of other walkers. The valley descends westward towards Lee Abbey, but I can’t detect any sort of stream that may have eroded the valley floor. Is it piped or perhaps it is a dry valley. I would expect the latter in the Carboniferous Limestone of The Peak District but not here on Exmoor.
The white noise of waves pounding on cliffs continues to follow us, even though we are a good distance from the sea. The sea however is calm on this sunny autumnal morning as we look across the blue-grey expanse of the Bristol Channel and the thin grey line that is Wales.
Looking across to Wales reminds me of looking across to Scotland beyond the Solway Firth, or even truly foreign France from Dover. On this island’s coast one is often staring out trying to make out far off land masses, islands, or just out to sea and the distant horizon. Where else in Europe does a population spend so much of its leisure time wondering what is out there, beyond that horizon? In days gone by it must have been a shock to see approaching Viking longships, William the Conqueror’s fleet or the Spanish Armada appearing over that horizon.
But that’s enough standing and staring. We have work to do. You can’t write of your experiences until you’ve had them, so we walk on down the toll road in search of adventure.
We quickly lose sight of all other humankind as we come to the gates of Lee Abbey, where at one time a man would have taken a toll based upon your mode of transport, or on the number of sheep you were driving to market. No such employee is to be seen today, just a sign demanding payment of £2 per vehicle. Employing a man to do the job would be far too expensive and I imagine his tied cottage now generates valuable income as a holiday let.
“The toll gate cottage – Lee Abbey”
Only 3 cars pass us along the entire length of our walk along this road, which can’t contribute much towards upkeep at this time of year, let alone turn a profit. At Lee Abbey there is a bollard with a card machine attached – a clever modern innovation. But then a car approaches and drives through without stopping, which must be a bit dispiriting when the day’s takings are in single figures but car numbers are in double. I suspect the toll is really only there to discourage the large numbers of cars who might otherwise use the road.
At this point I have to confess that we drove this way 2 years ago and were guilty of not paying our dues. We overshot the payment box. But that was before the card reader appeared, when cash was king. I am 400 yards down the road before I have a Damascene moment and feel the need to make amends for my earlier failings. I make a mental note to send them £2 on our return (which I can gladly confirm I have now done!)
Lee Abbey is currently a Christian conference centre, but the largely gothic revival buildings date back to 1850 – probably when the toll road was first built – to cash in on the Victorian tourists who flocked to Lynton at this time.
“Lee Abbey (top of hill) and Lee Bay Car Park “(bottom left)
Further down the toll road is Lee Bay, doubtless a destination for summer holiday makers. There are toilet facilities here and opportunities for indulging in water sports in this secluded location. Be careful not to confuse it with the other Lee Bay which is near Woolacombe.
Coast path walkers are soon given the option of a half mile detour around Crock Point or remaining on the toll road. Perhaps a little foolishly we opt for the former (something we come to regret later when we try to approach the last half mile into Combe Martin in pitch darkness!).
It is about this time that we pass through ‘the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month’, a time I traditionally pause in silence to think about my dad and my grandfather who fought in two world wars. Sorry Victor and Harry – I missed it. I did however photograph some bales of silage at the allotted hour, and am now able to use these as a kind of memorial trigger, which I hope will suffice!
“Armistice Day silage bale memorial”
The footpath is quite slippery and steep up through the oak woodland and back to the narrow toll road, walking poles would have helped, but we make it just in time to nearly get pushed over the cliff by a passing blue transit delivery van. It is just as well that few cars pass this way as passing could be a little hairy.
The toll road then makes a sharp left-hander by Red House before dropping down close to sea level near Woody Bay. It is only from the far side of the bay I realise that should a speeding driver fail to negotiate this bend, they would face a 150 metre sheer drop to the sea below.
Soon the coast path follows a much smaller track off to the right, which I assume to have been the original packhorse route along this coast. Here the ambiance is close to perfection, with cascading streams and gnarled oak trees clinging to the steep hillside. The views across to Wales are stunning too.
Gnarled oak tree
As we approach Woody Bay, we encounter a couple and their dog and get into conversation with them. We are soon joined by a single lady who is walking the same path as us. She asks about the road down to Woody Bay and is contemplating walking down. Thinking that five and a dog is definitely a crowd, we leave them talking and climb a short way up to the 175 metres contour line. Here it is fairly level walking, with the same breathtaking views across to South Wales. However, what is most striking is the absence of oak woodland, all is bracken and heathland. I start to contemplate the vegetational history here and conclude that this must once have been temperate rain forest – a term coined in a book by Guy Shrubsole – “The Lost Rainforests of Britain”.
The cliffs here have probably been cloaked by ancient oak woodland since shortly after the last ice age. Some of this temperate rainforest still survives in places, but in other areas it has been felled and subjected to sheep grazing. Much of the oak woodland consists of oak trees little more than 50 years of age, probably allowed to return to oak woodland about the time that Exmoor was designated a National Park nearly 70 years ago.
The less steep slopes have been grazed by sheep for centuries. These efficient ‘eating machines’ munch their way through the vegetation ensuring species-poor heathland is all that can survive their depredations. No tree sapling can resist the nip of their incisors or the grinding of their molars.
However, there are patches of heathland where young yews, hawthorns and rowans are regenerating and it fills me with hope that some enlightened landowner has decided to remove his livestock and allow rewilding of his land.
There are a few patches which laking trees still possess a few woodland ground level species such as polypody fern, woodsage and woodrush. Reduced grazing is all that is required to return them to their former ancient woodland glory.
Examining the vegetation adjacent to the path at The Beacon Roman Fortlet it is noteworthy that the lack of tree cover corresponds with scree slope development. I suspect this lack of trees encourages greater freeze-thaw weathering. The dominant vegetation here is stonecrop and moss species.
An area dominated by bracken near The Beacon Roman Fortlet
A stand of oaks all about 50 years old, suggesting grazing ceased around the time the Exmoor National Park was designated in 1954.
Screes are common where lack of tree cover exposes rocks to freeze-thaw weathering.
Polypody fern and woodsage are relics of former oak woodland
Yew and other saplings regenerate where sheep numbers are reduced
Our relatively level walking is suddenly and rudely interrupted by the Heddon Valley, as its stream tumbles off the Exmoor plateau down to Heddon’s Mouth. Descending to sea level brings us into contact with large numbers of visitors drawn here by the rare opportunity of being able to drive and park close to a beach along the Exmoor coast and of course the nearby attraction of Hunters Inn.
We resist the allure of the pub, now realising it is going to be a challenge to reach Combe Martin before nightfall. Instead we make the long 200 metre climb to Peter Rock. Once again we miss the opportunity of taking a shorter alternative route, which perhaps adds a further half hour to our walk.
At Peter’s Rock I exchange banter with a group of men in their late 40s out for a chaps hike to Lynton. One disconsolate member of the party asks how far it is to the pub and I suspect he is unlikely to be dragged out of the Hunters Inn before closing time.
We decide this a good place to stop for lunch as we pool our meagre rations: a sandwich, a bag of cashews, some chocolate and two banana leftover from yesterday, and the complimentary biscuits from our hotel room. Having packed our stomachs full of cooked breakfast some 4 hours earlier, it is more than adequate. What it does make us realise is how remote this bit of coast is from towns where you can buy walking rations. I can’t think of any coastline we have walked in England which is as remote as this one.
Our al-fresco lunch at Peter’s Rock
On top of the climb out of the Heddon valley, the weather is unseasonably mild meaning that my back is soaking wet. Fifteen minutes of eating lunch in a wet shirt quickly drops my body temperature. So we start to repack our bags when a familiar face appears. It is the lone lady hiker from Woody Bay.
“You are very brave to be walking alone.” Compliments Betty
“Normally I walk with my little dog, but I thought it might be too much for him,” she replies, “I live over in Bridgewater, but got a friend to drive me to Lynton. I have a good body of friends, so I’ve conned another friend to pick me up from Combe Martin – once I’ve celebrated finishing – with a shandy of course.”
I note that she has had the good sense to bring a walking pole with her, although so far none of the terrain has really demanded one. We give her a head start (to avoid breathing down her neck), before we too continue along the relatively level cliff-top path. It is not long before we are climbing steadily upwards to the 200 metre contour at East Cleve. From here it is level walking alongside High Cliff.
It all looks downhill from this point, but The Great Hangman in the distance will be our highest climb.
The climb is necessary, taking us along the top of some of the highest cliffs in England, which are perhaps 100 metres of sheer rock, capped by a further 100 metres of whaleback cliff covered in bracken. The coast path follows the line of one of those massive drystone walls so common in the west country. In fact it is not so much a wall as a buttress holding back the relatively level farmland beyond. Most of the wall is constructed of local slate, but in places the farmer has supplemented the natural building material with old tyres.
Dry-stone retaining wall – patched-up with old car tyres.
I am fascinated by the immediacy of this boundary marking the break in slope between the farmland and the cliffs. Doubtless centuries earlier some pioneering farmer decided to put the wall in place and cultivate the landward side of it. Over the centuries his tilling of the soil and the force of gravity must have led to his soil accumulating up against the wall through a process called solifluction. Meanwhile on the seaward side the natural slope processes induced by marine erosion of the cliffs have continued apace. The wall now looks like it is about to throw in the towel against the irresistible forces of nature.
Shortly we come across the farmer replacing his fence and I can’t resist asking him how old the wall is.
A man of few words he responds “Generations” and continues knocking in aluminium fence posts along the top of the wall.
“I see you are fighting the shifting slope.” I press.
“Aye, and the sheep and deer. They always find a way over the fence and loosen the wall stones.”
You don’t get much by way of conversation from an Exmoor farmer and I count myself lucky to have extracted that little nugget.
The original dry-stone wall is swamped by the red Exmoor soil, with a new fence required to keep livestock from wandering over the cliffs beyond.
It is only a few hundred yards further along that we spot a small herd of llamas grazing under the watchful gaze of a strange looking figure dressed in a broad-brimmed hat and long white trousers tucked into green wellies. Waist-length hair suggests that the stranger is female, but facial hair quickly reveals him to be male (although the lines are becoming blurred on this issue!).
Llamas, crumbling cliffs and the mysterious ‘watcher’
So much cliff erosion has occurred here that the coast path has had to be re-routed inside the field. Negotiating the gate we experience one of those awe-struck moments – it is a strange sea of cobwebs adorning a field of grass. The condensation from afternoon dew on the cobwebs, coupled with the low angle of the sun highlights this killing field. Hundreds of thousands of tiny spiders have cloaked it with gossamer, designed to trap small insects. As the gentle breeze blows across, the sea of web-cloaked grass ripples magically.
As we are discussing the sea of gossamer, the mysterious long haired gentleman approaches and we have a brief discussion about the spiders. Moving on, Betty suddenly becomes all mythering, deciding that I need to have a ‘potato’ of wax removed from my ears. I’m sure it’s a sign of affection, not unlike my mother often did on the way to church. Out comes a tissue and I have to pause for her to firkle deep inside my lug-hole. Much to my embarrassment our strange man-woman companion thinks we are fair game for a bit more conversation.
“Did you know that this was the site of a free festival back in the 70s?”
I shoo Betty and her tissue away to listen to his lecture on the 70s pop scene.
“What like the Isle of Wight Festival?” I suggest, hoping that I might appear to know more than I actually do about 70s pop culture.
“No before then. You see the car park on top of the hill, well that’s where the stage was, with all the fields between us covered with festival-goers. It was with the permission of the landowner, before the government of the time made them illegal. They had some big bands on – Hawkwind, The Strawbs, Van Morrison.”
We listened to him rambling on and I wonder how he comes to know so much about it. I suspect he might have been involved in it in some way and perhaps never went home, choosing to rear llamas instead (I found this web site https://www.ukrockfestivals.com/trentishoe-73.html, which makes it all sound a bit chaotic).
Leaving him to gaze across the Bristol Channel and his llamas, we strike out along the cliff top where Betty finally liberates my ‘potato’ and plants it under a bramble bush.
If Trentishoe was popular in the 1970’s it seems it is even more-so these days. We pass a dozen trainer clad twenty-somethings making their way in the direction of the Hunters Inn. Perhaps they are pilgrims, inspired by the 1970s pop festivals culture. My guess is that they have parked where the early Hawkwind once performed and will then walk the 2 or 3 miles to the Hunters Inn, to later stagger down to the beach at Heddons Mouth and a spot of skinny dipping, before returning to the pub and their cars for a fix of acid. Alternatively they might just be on a church outing, enjoying God’s own country.
By now we are aware that our walk is going to be significantly longer than the 14 miles I had originally anticipated. We skirt past Holdstone Down along a stone-strewn path which thanks to recent rain has turned into a river bed. Oddly enough the river gets ever deeper as we march uphill, contrary to what I was taught as a Geography student. Betty, in the grip of a bout of public spiritedness decides to rectify the problem and attempts to create a ‘run-off’ for it to flow down, but without a garden spade gives it up as a bad job. This is just as well since we have got to quick-march if we are to make Combe Martin by nightfall (5pm).
A stream follows the line of the South West Coast Path around Holdstone Down
Ahead of us we can see our lone female hiker approaching the slope down to Sherrycombe. She moves in a very gingerly fashion down the slippery mud slope, as does Betty behind me. A fan of downhill walking I nearly catch the lone hiker up, but decide to await the arrival of Betty. The sound of rushing water below us fills the combe and I hope crossing it will not be a problem.
By now the lack of walking poles is starting to tell on us both, especially with all the lateral movement on knee joints – slipping as we descend. I pause at the bottom of the hill to take a photograph of the opposite-leaved saxifrage encrusted stream and check the map. This gives Betty a head start for the climb up The Great Hangman.
By now we are both feeling it in our legs and lungs. I check my heart rate on my smart-watch which has topped 140 beats per minute. Betty’s is similarly high and I suggest we take it steady up the long incline, frequently pausing to allow our racing hearts to slow a little. 280 metres higher up we spot the sprawling cairn atop The Hangman. I note that if it was once used for the execution of villains, they must have been half dead before they even got there!
The light is now starting to fade quite rapidly. A cock pheasant bursts across the darkening sky a few metres above our heads, followed by a phalanx of mute swans gliding by, their wings seemingly squeaking with each wingbeat. Otherwise all is silent, except for we two whooping and posing for photos on top of the cairn, enervated by having done the hard bit and topped the highest sea cliffs in England.
However, worse is to come.
Water gushes from a spring providing the perfect habitat for opposite-leaved golden saxifrage.
Looking back from The Great Hangman to Holdstone Down.
A jubilant Betty celebrates reaching the top of The Great Hangman, but we still have the descent ahead of us.
The temperature now starts dropping rapidly, but thankfully it is still dry and and the light wind has only a negligible wind chill effect. But it soon becomes apparent that descending is not going to be the picnic I expected. The path is coated with thick mud interspersed with the odd patch of slippery bedrock.
“Walk with your feet slightly wider and bend your knees a little. The rock might be slippery.” I shout back to her.
Then from behind me there is a scream as Betty slips on a slippery slab of bedrock. She appears more shocked than hurt, but progress now slows considerably as we plod through the mud on a steady downward trajectory.
The Little Hangman reveals a gash in its side where a landslip has exposed the bedrock.
It only takes us 20 minutes to cover the mile from The Great Hangman, but we are still 200 metres above Combe Martin, with a mile and a half ahead of us. Betty is now really concerned about the aching in her knee joints, which have taken a battering as we slither downhill. The descent is relentless and we drop a further 100 metres over the next half mile.
Our destination at Combe Martin is finally in sight, but it looks likely we will reach it in total darkness.
As we descend a silent, ghostly, yellow-white apparition glides across our path – it is a barn owl out in the twilight hunting for mice in the long grass. As it moves back and forth we forget all about our aching legs, stunned by its beauty.
A barn owl out hunting. It may be only a blurred spec in the sky, but the encounter is one of the more memorable on this trip.
We follow it downhill, two Alices following a white rabbit, and I attempt to capture it on video. Alas it is too dark to do it justice. Then it suddenly drops out of the sky and onto an item of prey, which would have heard or seen nothing before being enclosed by its powerful talons and quickly despatched.
Rounding some bushes, we bump into a young couple on bicycles and share the sight of the owl as it returns to silently quarter the fields all around us. It seems they have chosen this late hour to cycle over the Great Hangman, which I find a tad bizarre. Then again many would think our day’s exploits equally so.
We now have the option of taking the short cut into Combe Martin and for reasons better known to ourselves we decide to see the coast path down to the end. 10 minutes later we realise this may not have been our wisest decision as almost total blackness envelops us.
This last half mile down to the beach is the trickiest of the lot. Not only is the path muddy and steep, but we pass through a tunnel of overhanging thorn bushes by torchlight. By now Betty is convinced that she will never walk again, such is the ache in her legs.
Combe Martin looks serene by night, lit-up like a Christmas Tree.
Somehow we stagger, often walking sideways like a pair of forlorn shore-crabs, down the last flight of steps and across a car park to the beach at Combe Martin. Our hotel, The Pack o’ Cards, is still half a mile away up King Street, the main road which runs over 2 miles through the village, laying claim to being the longest village high street in Britain.
At least the road only rises slowly and offers relatively steady walking. Eventually we find our way into the hotel, where a sign politely requests that walkers remove their dirty boots. We comply, register for our room and crash out on the large bed for 30 minutes, before taking a well earned dinner, accompanied by a most welcome pint of Devon Cider.