Minehead to Watchet – 18th January 2022
We may think of Somerset and Devon as “far-off counties of which we know very little”, to paraphrase Neville Chamberlain – and they are indeed far-off from East Sussex – but the area between Lynmouth and Watchet are in fact areas with which I am reasonably familiar. For 2 years I lived and worked in a residential field studies centre in the area. Nettlecombe Court, aka The Leonard Wills Field Centre, was my base to explore West Somerset and North Devon, especially the coast and Exmoor National Park.
Looking back, I was pretty unadventurous in those days, but then I didn’t have Betty to drive me along. Since 1982 I have returned to the area many times and each time I do, it feels like I’ve come home.
On our first day of walking we are to start from Minehead, where my parents spent their honeymoon back in 1949. I have a number of their photos from that time and I’m interested to see how much change has taken place during the intervening 73 years. Likewise the changes since 1980 when I first went to the area. But no, I tell a lie. In fact 1974 was the first time I went to the area, on a Botany field trip with Derby University, based in a hotel in Minehead. How could I forget that? Quite easy, when you are 20 and have the freedom to get totally bladdered every night in the hotel bar!
In fact our excursion doesn’t start at Minehead, but at Watchet, where we intend to return once we have walked back along the coast. However, let’s first just wind back an hour or so, since our drive to Watchet from Lynton (where we are stopping in an Airbnb for 5 days) throws valuable light on the problems of travel along the Exmoor coast. The A39 follows the coast, connecting up small towns and villages between Minehead and Lynton, before deciding the coast presents too much of a problem and heads off south west across Exmoor to Barnstaple.
On leaving Lynton this morning we picked up the A39 at Lynmouth only to find that the road was closed at Countisbury Hill. Using Mr Google’s Magic Navigation Machine we could find no mention of this closure, so we had to look for an alternative. The best we could do was follow the B3223/B3224 by way of Simonsbath. Small yellow roads do criss-cross Exmoor but who knows what manner of obstruction awaits the unwary traveller.
It reminded me of how challenging road travel can be in this part of the world during the busy summer months, when hoards of innocents roll-up to enjoy the charms of the area. Anyone reading about the travels of John Ridd, in Lorna Doone, will realise that it was not always thus.
Much as it breaks my heart, I part with £6 to cover the cost of a day’s parking. We probably could have parked on a suburban street somewhere for free, but since we are unlikely to be patronising any of the local pubs, I reckon we can give the price of a couple of pints to West Somerset County Council. They probably need it!
The bus arrives on time and jogs us along through Washford, Carhampton and Dunster, with me reminiscing to Betty about days past. She bears-up from the ear-bashing quite well as I point out my favourite drinking hole in Carhampton and the place where I regularly played hockey for Minehead 5ths. I played for the 3rds once, which was mind-blowingly fast – never mind the first team!
An hour and a half later we arrive at Watchet. Luckily we have given ourselves plenty of time. As part of my preparation I have scoured the bus timetables for the area and I know there’s a bus going from Watchet railway station to Minehead at a reasonably sensible hour of the morning. The plan is to catch this bus and return on foot along the coast.
Finally we alight at the promenade opposite the West Somerset Railway and close to Butlins. It is a mild and sunny day and we have perhaps 10 miles of walking ahead of us. However, I am keen to start today’s hack along the coast from the start (or arguably end) of the South West Coast Path (SWCP) close to the old harbour area. We will return to take the SWCP westward to Porlock Weir tomorrow.
North Hill, with the older part of Minehead encrusting its lower slopes
As we arrange our rucksacks and walking attire we find ourselves in the midst of a gallery of old photos of the town. The gallery is actually in the open-air and appropriately enough, consists columns of gabions – wire baskets full of loose rocks which are used as sea defences all around the UK coastline.
I can’t resist looking at old photos of places and comparing them with present day – so please indulge me for a while.
“The ‘gallery’ on the Esplanade exhibiting 19th/20th Century photos of Minehead.”
Quay Street and Quay Street old – “19th Century Quay Street v 2022”
2 comparative photos – “Jubilee Gardens a. early 20th Century (a little before my parents’ honeymoon) and b. 2022”
“Spectators at the Minehead Races” “Modern-day Minehead Sands”
The name Minehead is apparently derived from Mynydd, the Welsh for mountain. The Welsh influence is understandable since the town is pretty isolated from the rest of the mainland of England by Exmoor, the Brendon Hills and the Quantock Hills. Beyond these were the perpetually flooded Somerset Levels, so access in millennia-past was always going to be problematic. Anyone who has read R D Blackmore’s Lorna Doone will appreciate the isolated nature of the area. On the other hand Wales is only 20 miles away by sea.
Even in 1980 when I worked at Nettlecombe Court snuggled deep in a north facing valley of the Brendon Hills, the Welsh influence was equally evident. We were unable to get the BBC, other than in the Welsh language. Anyone for Pobol y Cwm?
Nearby Dunster Castle dates back to the Norman conquest, although it has been remodelled several times since then. There has been a small port at Minehead since the Middle Ages, but today most vessels are for leisure and fishing. Today Minehead is primarily a tourist destination, including Butlins and several National Trust properties in the area (including Dunster Castle). The West Somerset Railway attracts many visitors, especially as it terminates at Minehead.
Walking along The Promenade you get a feel of what it must have been like in Victorian and the early 20th Century times. I can imagine it looking little different 70-odd years ago when my parents visited. The old photographs on show illustrate this. The deck-chairs may have gone from Jubilee Gardens, the race-horses may have run their last and the houses to the north of Quay Street may have been washed away in the 1910 storm, but much remains that was here 100-200 years ago.
The sun is shining and there are a few people exploring the sea front, despite it being a chilly January morning. We are tempted to explore the maze of backstreets of Higher Town, but that will have to wait for another time.
Having reached the impressive sculpture marking the start of the SWCP we decide to drop down to sea level at the harbour and walk across the sands exposed by low tide. Doubtless it was a sandy beach a century ago when horse-racing took place. However, if the sedimentary regime was as it is today, they would have been kept busy clearing some significant pebbles and even the odd boulder off the beach. Originally these Old Red Sandstone pebbles would have been derived from the slopes of Exmoor during the Pleistocene epoch. It is unlikely that glaciation occurred this far south west, but the tundra-like conditions would have encouraged massive amounts of ‘head deposit’ material to be eroded from the steep Exmoor cliffs and into the sea. Hundreds of thousands of years of marine erosion will have rounded them to their present shape and size. I rescued a large one for Betty 14 years ago and it now holds our garden gate open.
“The modern tented holiday Mecca of Butlins attracts large numbers of summer visitors”
“The South West Coast Path starts at Minehead – maps do come in a slightly more manageable standard OS option.”
“The massive harbour wall, rip-rap, boulders and the wave-deflecting sea wall ensure the storm damage of 1910 and 1990 are not repeated.”
“Lots of pebble collecting will need to be done if Horse Racing is to be revived”
The beach walk offers the benefit of a short-cut and the avoidance of Butlins. Unfortunately anyone who did not make use of the toilet facilities at Watchet will be hard-pressed to find a discreet alternative.
Eventually we arrive at dry land, where we climb the low sand dunes to the east of Butlins, where the Minehead and West Somerset Golf Club finds a good use for the excess of sand hereabouts (many middle-aged men and a few women also, are to be seen in areas of bare ground excavating the sand with their long hooked sticks. Must be a quaint local tradition.
“Betty discovers a suitably discreet location for a wild wee”
“Onshore winds across Minehead Beach has led to accumulated sand for a golf course.”
“This World War 2 bunker utilised a number of bigger boulders to protect the golf course from foreign invaders.”
Beyond the golf course we enter Blue Anchor Bay where we discover all sorts of human intervention along the coast here.
A line of chalets is wisely set back 50 metres from the pebble storm beach which tops the sandy beach lower down. Doubtless these are very busy in the summer, but unsurprisingly look pretty empty at this time of year. I suspect that if they were set any further forward, there would be a good chance of them disappearing in a storm. The land here is only 5 metres above mean sea level, so on a 10 metre tidal range, spring high tides must be lapping almost to the height of the chalets. Throw in an onshore wind or big storm and the owners might have a problem. I wonder what their insurance premium is like.
If you want to know more about how the OS determine mean sea level visit https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/newsroom/blog/ordnance-datum-newlyn-100-years-old-today. They’ve been using a tide measuring station at Newlyn in Cornwall for just over 100 years now, which is the datum line (ordnance datum) for all the OS maps in the UK.
The Environment Agency have also been very busy here creating wooden groynes to trap pebbles moving under the influence of longshore drift. This is the movement of beach sediment in the general direction of the prevailing wind. https://www.internetgeography.net/topics/what-is-longshore-drift/ explains it much better than I can. On this coast the prevailing wind is from the south west, which induces local beach material to move eastward from Minehead towards Watchet.
It always intrigues me that the sea collects large pebbles at the top of the beach, but just a few metres further down the beach is covered in sand. Essentially, anything smaller than pebbles finds its way back into the sea after a storm, leaving the largest and least mobile pebbles stranded as a storm beach afterwards.
I take the name groyne to represent tacit approval for me to have a wild wee in its shelter. After all unlike some people, I didn’t make use of a large outfall pipe to hide behind at Minehead.
Not only has the Environment Agency been busy building groynes, but they have also inserted scaffolding poles supporting a curtain of fine meshed material. I suspect this is to counter the impact of people trampling the delicate sand dune vegetation at the top of the beach. In time they will probably plant marram grass inside these ‘exclosures’, whose roots and stems will eventually stabilise the sand.
“Beach chalets set well back from the storm beach.”
“Groynes hold back a large proportion of (left to right) moving beach pebbles at Blue Anchor Bay”
“An exclosure prevents trampling of the sand dune vegetation at the top of the beach.”
A sign warns us that the coastal path is closed due to groyne-building works and directs us inland along the road to Marsh Street. But we came to follow the coast path and on closer inspection it it evident that no construction work is taking place, so we ignore it and continue. Besides I want to record what they’ve been up to. As it turns out, it looks as if they have completed their work and there is certainly no physical obstruction barring our passage.
A little further along we come to the outfall of the River Avill, one of the streams that drains water of Exmoors highest hill – Dunkery Beacon. The river used to enter Blue Anchor Bay at Dunster Castle, but coastal sedimentation and human intervention have contrived to relocate its outfall about a mile further out. This new section of river is encased in concrete and cascades over Dunster Beach by way of a series of concrete steps before snaking out into the Bristol Channel.
Dunster Castle was an important military base after the Norman conquests, standing sentinel over the local land and sea area, with a watchful eye on the Welsh across the Bristol Channel.
Mrs Cecil Alexander is believed by many to have been inspired to write the well know ‘children’s hymn’ “All Things Bright and Beautiful” after a visit to Dunster Castle. “The purple headed mountain” could refer to Exmoor’s flowering heather and “the river running by”, possible to the River Avill. Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived in the area from 1797-1798 when he wrote “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. This famous poem includes the lines “He prayeth best, who loveth best; All things great and small; For the dear God who loveth us; He made and loveth all.” So she may have plagiarised his work (although perhaps not his obvious spelling mistake!).
A quick check of Wikipedia however, puts forward alternative places of inspiration. Mrs Alexander didn’t publish her work until 50 years after Coleridge’s masterpiece, so perhaps her inspiration came on rather slowly?
“A distant view of Dunster Castle watching over the Bristol Channel coast”
“The River Avill’s modified outfall into the Bristol Channel – not much “bright and beautiful” about it today.”
Close to the River Avill I pause to photograph two plants typical of the Somerset Coast – Tree Mallow and Sea Beet. Both of these plants are considered edible, although I would check a reputable source on this. Apparently Richard Mabey advises in his book “Food for Free” that Tree Mallow is edible, but I haven’t checked it myself. Sea Beet is also known as “Wild Spinach” and is recommended as edible on The Wildlife Trusts web site. I wonder if one could live off the land walking the coast of Britain – there’s certainly plenty of plant material, with various shell-fish between the tides.
“The commonly found coastal Tree Mallow – known as “petit pains” in Jersey and supposedly edible”
“Sea Beet – also known as “Wild Spinach” and likewise considered edible.
As global sea levels slowly rise, so the sea munches its way further inland. Much of the coastal plain here is composed of head deposit, derived from the slopes of Exmoor during the Pleistocene epoch. The material is angular, never having been worked into the round pebbles found on the sea shore. Head deposit is not cemented, so is easily eroded by even gently lapping waves. Slowly but surely a number of coastal trees are being undermined in Blue Anchor Bay and may even, as you read this, have been removed by the next high winds.
Several long-dead tree trunks adorn the strand line, left high and dry by high tides. I suspect these are all that remains of trees that fell to the advancing sea some years ago.
“Angular head deposit being eroded by the sea”
“Even large pine trees fall victim to the sea’s inexorable advance”
“The remains of fallen trees adorn the beach – victims of the advancing sea.”
Just before we get to Blue Anchor village, which takes its name from the Blue Anchor pub, we come across a line of wooden groynes inserted into the beach probably when the railway was built back in the late 19th Century. Over the intervening 150 years they have been ground down by intertidal silt, sand and pebbles to little more than teeth. One web site suggests that this was a line of trees from centuries past, but I’m inclined to differ. Their days of beach stabilisation are drawing to an end, however, they do serve a benefit for wildlife, with their solid wood surfaces providing a substrate for sea weed to latch onto, whilst deep fissures will be an ideal home for smaller marine invertebrates.
I am drawn up the beach to examine an area of wetland above high tide, whilst Betty decides to plough her own furrow, striding out across the golden sands. The wetland has probably formed due to the building of a railway embankment of the West Somerset Railway. The trapped surface water has provided ideal conditions for reed bed to develop. Like with much of the UK, farmers have been encouraged to regard wetland areas as unproductive waste – to be drained. The upshot is that even a small area of reeds such as this could support a wide range of birds (eg. reed warblers), amphibians (eg. newts) and invertebrates (eg. Dragonflies).
Despite living in the area between 1980 and 82 I don’t think I ever visited Blue Anchor village. It is obvious why a station was placed here, with the wide sandy beach offering holidaymakers an excellent place to spend a day.
A long embankment carries the coast road here and protects the railway line from erosion by the sea. In 2002 a commemorative parapet was put in place along the Esplanade to mark the Queen’s jubilee. Eventually Betty joins me after her foray across the beach and we carry on to then Eastward end of the Esplanade. We can’t resist returning to the beach to inspect the cliffs where the red Triassic rocks abut against the ‘blue’ Jurassic rocks of Blue Anchor Bay (the name ‘Blue Anchor’ apparently refers to the blue mud residue left on ships’ anchors).
“Remains of an ancient wooden groyne eroded beyond its useful life”
“Close up of one of the groyne’s wooden stakes, now offering a suitable habitat for seaweed and marine invertebrates”
“An area of permanently waterlogged land has become a valuable reed bed habitat”
“Betty strides out along Blue Anchor Beach”
“The faulted cliffs east of Blue Anchor abut Triassic and Jurassic beds.”
The cliff top footpath is no longer accessible beyond the Blue Anchor Hotel, such is the speed of coastal erosion here. We are instead directed along the B3191, where we are advised an alternative footpath exists. After a half mile of walking we decide against taking the alternative coast path, thinking it more than likely to have disappeared by now. Thankfully the road is quiet, although a little unnerving as we descent to Watchet – where it is narrow, bendy and lacks a foot-way. To our left the sea continues to erode the cliff line and I suspect it won’t be long before it removes the road too.
Looking back towards Minehead we get a good view of the Exmoor Coast and the highest sea cliffs in England. At the bottom of the hill the Washford River pours out into the sea. We get the impression that this is a location that has a history of civil engineering. The steep B3191, the eroding cliffs, the high walls that confine the river, the adjacent houses and Watchet Harbour appear to be jostling for primacy. However, in these times of rising sea level and extremes of weather I can see it all ending in tears as nature takes-back what is hers. It seems almost inevitable that before too long an extreme high tide will correspond with heavy Exmoor rainfall. When it does, the river in full spate is likely overpower man’s puny attempts at controlling it. A few miles further west is Lynmouth where in 1953 a similar situation arose, leading to loss of life and property.
Watchet marks the end of our walk from Minehead. It is a pleasant little town with a harbour. I recall back in the early 1980s that sea-going vessels docked here and were loaded with tractors amongst other things. I was told then that the port benefited from a loophole in employment law making it free of trade union influences and therefore competitive with larger ports such as Bristol. If true, that evidently ceased by 2000 when large ships stopped using the harbour and it was turned into a marina. I can still recall the strange sight of a large vessel moored to the harbour and standing high and dry at low tide.
A few years ago the manager/owner of the local chandlery told me a story of the PS Waverley, the world’s last sea-going paddle steamer, getting caught-out by the Bristol Channel tides at Watchet. It caused quite a furore when it was grounded and couldn’t take passengers to Lundy Island. I’ve had the pleasure of voyaging from Ilfracombe to Lundy on PS Waverley. A most enjoyable experience. She did not become a wreck in Watchet harbour!
“Looking west from Watchet to Minehead and the Exmoor Coast”
“The walled Washford River enters the sea at Watchet”
“Watchet Harbour is now a marina with a 6 metre tidal range.”
Our walk completed, we took the chance of taking tea (and cake) with my old Nettlecombe Court boss, John Crothers and his wife Marilyn, who live locally. By the time we had finished, we decided to call the bluff of the road repairers at Countisbury Hill, Lynmouth, convinced that since the closure did not appear on Google, then it must be open. Alas, when we got there I discovered an enormous hole in the road which forced us to take a circuitous route along steep and winding roads across Exmoor, in the dark. Mr Google is good – but not that good!