April 4, 1989: Westward Ho! to Clovelly
Harold with Q (l) at Green Cliff.
I used a version of this photo as an illustration in A Walker’s Alphabet.
Tuesday, April 4, turned out to be a bright, sunny day, but a very cold one – with a chilling wind either behind us or blowing in at us from the sea. Tosh inherited the drafty window seat at breakfast; the bacon turned this meal into another salty exercise – we all started with the Alpen. Our host was serving breakfast to another couple. They also had to hear about the number of wallpaper rolls and the miles of carpet. Packed lunches were provided for us and stuffed into our knapsacks. The Lees were worried about not having enough biscuits and candy bars and soft drinks so when we left, at 9:30, we headed for the Spar market down below, backtracking just a bit.
A lazy cat, trying for a little sun, was lying on a pile of Crackerbread boxes in the window. He accepted a few strokes from me, the only non-shopper. The manageress was filling local orders in a cardboard box, a scene rights out of Take The High Road. When we were ready to leave we continued south on the main road but to rejoin the promenade I put us behind a hotel. We walked through its car park, behind some cottages, and emerged at the end of tarmac where the coast path strikes off in earnest over grassland on a gentle shelf above the sea. “Say goodbye to civilization,” I said. We hurried forward in the wind. I wore my blue coat at all times on this day, sometimes adding its hood to the one on my UCLA sweatshirt. In addition I wore my own black mittens for much of the day.
As soon as we had emerged from our first cutting we could see the wide sweep of the bay before us. It was easy to see Buck’s Mills, Clovelly, and even Hartland Point’s lighthouse twinkling almost a dozen miles to the west. We were following the level line of the old Westward Ho! to Bideford railway but eventually we had to take our chances on a coast path that adopted the gradients of a route that climbed over cliffs and down to combe bottoms and then up again. At first these were rather gentle, and we had made an early enough start – so I was quite satisfied with our progress. Something was about to put a dent in this schedule.
As we had our first rest at Green Cliff two doddering ancients, both on sticks, she with an ace bandage around one ankle, appeared on the horizon above us and began poking their way down to the beach. “Have you seen it?” she inquired. “What?” “Tut’s Hole,” she replied officiously. “What is it?” I wanted to know? “A steep anti-clinal fold,” she offered. Evidently there was something visible from the pebble beach at the bottom of the little combe and Tosh and Harold, their packs off, scrambled down to have a look. The male member of this duo seemed more interested in the fact that we could be American tourists. “Have you ever visited Bickleigh Castle?” he asked. He then took from his coat pocket a brochure, which he gave me. “A very interesting place,” he said, “you can see some of my inventions.” His wife, several steps above him on the bank, now added imperiously, “He was Q, you know.” It turned out that we were talking to 85 year-old Charles Fraser-Smith, the model for Ian Fleming’s Q in the James Bond novels – the man who put compasses in golf balls. “Knew Fleming, of course,” Q now added, “quite a lad.” He then took out more material, xeroxed newspaper clippings about himself and order forms for his own books. All of these he pressed upon me.
I walked down onto the pebble beach with him. Mrs. Q, still trailing, demanded to know if I had found Tut’s Hole. “What does it look like?” I inquired. “A steep anti-clinal fold!” she snapped. I was too much of a geological ignoramus for further conversation and she limped off over the pebbles, following Tosh. It took us some time to get the latter lady to give up the quest and return to her pack. Mrs. Q was still searching and Q himself was having doubts about whether this was the right spot after all; he would have to be content with a photo he had taken decades earlier. He lay down next to our packs and it looked like he wanted a little kip. Tosh was very reluctant to leave the spot before Mrs. Fraser-Smith returned. At last we could see her limping back along the pebbles, mission unaccomplished. “There are eight million stories on the naked footpath,” I said as we moved off, “this has been only one of them.”
We continued in a westerly direction, with the path turning away from the sea to face a succession of wooded combes descending steeply to the unseen ocean below us. Things were very well marked and I wasn’t paying much attention to our precise location. I was using an old guidebook by Hugh Westacott and we were just passing Westacott Cliffs; his wife Joan had told me that his family does comes from this part of North Devon. We met three gaitered lads who were contemplating a raid on the bar of the Portledge Hotel nearby, but, after our long stop with the Qs, I didn’t want to go that far off route. Nevertheless we did stop as we entered the precincts of the valley I took to be Peppercombe (I was one valley too early, I soon noticed) for a spot of lunch.
No sooner had we relaxed then the sun went and hid behind a cloud, a cold breeze came up, and we didn’t get very far into our sandwiches before it was time to get moving again. I had one sip of the bitter lemon I had been dragging since London, but mostly I was drinking water. (We hadn’t even broken into the gin yet.) A steep climb and a steep descent brought us into the real Peppercombe. A road penetrates this valley and there were human sounds echoing from the bottom.
As we climbed out of the combe we entered a lovely forest. Bluebells were already in bloom and many of the trees were in white blossom. We were fooled by this fact because it seemed as though the wind had dislodged these white blooms – until they began to melt against our faces: we were actually walking in a brief snow flurry! The climb from Peppercombe was quite long, with steps helping at a number of points. I got quite some distance ahead of the Lees, waiting every few minutes to see if they were still behind me. I rounded Gauter’s pool and climbed steeply over several gates to arrive at a farm track at the summit of the climb. Jumping down from one of the stiles I felt a slight pull in the top of my left leg, but Deep Heat at the end of the day seemed to do the trick.
The Lees finally chugged up behind me and we had some of the gin. Tosh was not pleased with the state of the farm track, which was extremely slimy, and blamed me. Nevertheless we had to use it to descend to the valley of Buck’s Mills and so she lead us on one of her usual quick descents down the muddy lane. The lower we got the steeper things became but the footing improved as we returned to real path among the rocky outcrops above this unusual village. The guidebooks held open the prospect of refreshments in summer so I hadn’t promised much to my pals but to my delight I soon had an overhead view of the cottage in question, resplendent with signs advertising tea and ice cream. We hurried down the rest of the path and spent several minutes knocking mud off our boots before entering.
The Lees at The Old Mill, Buck’s Mills
New proprietors had taken over the place and were keeping it open year round. They brought us coffee and while Tosh had some tea cakes Harold and I each had a doughnut. He then had a second doughnut while I switched to a dish of chocolate ice cream and a glass of orange squash. They had left some of the old rock wall of the cottage exposed when they plastered the rest – and from chinks in this wall a gale was blowing into the room. The proprietress told us that they were thinking about doing bed and breakfast; there had been many inquiries. When she complained about how quiet it was at night I suggested she turn the place into a pub. “My neighbors would kill me,” she said. Buck’s Mills, settled by a race of Spaniards centuries before, still had a medieval feeling about it.
After a very welcome and refreshing rest we packed up. Some little boys were kicking the ball around across the road and I waited for a few minutes before getting a good shot of the cottage. Then we began our last steep climb of the day, up through the woods to emerge at Walland Cary, once a humble caravan park, now a holiday village with its own cafeteria, disco, pub, and community center. It was deserted in early April.
We skirted field edges (and a car dump) to re-enter the forest on a mostly level path that eventually brought us our first glimpse of the famous Hobby Drive, a well-maintained track (used evidently by donkey carts in the summer) all the way to Clovelly. We had to cross a little bridge to come out on the road, where we had another slug of gin. Walking was easy from now on – we never encountered any form of vehicle, but the last two miles seemed very long nonetheless. No sooner had we paused at a bench to view the village below us – a wonderful viewpoint with the breakers crashing over the quay – then the road turned away from this goal to negotiate a deep W-shaped maneuver necessitated by the crossing of two steep combes.
It was really quite chilly. Sleet pelted us briefly and it began to drizzle. No one wanted to pause, this close to the end, to put on raingear, and I could see that the clouds above would soon be replaced by blue skies. Tosh was obviously in need of a loo so we pressed on, passing above the village before finding the path down. We met the three lads here; they, of course, insisted they had been here for three hours. It was close to 6:00.
Harold and Tosh approach the New Inn, Clovelly
The cobblestones of Clovelly, this dramatic single street vertical village, descend steeply to the sea but, fortunately, the New Inn, was at the top of the street and we were soon inside. The deputy manageress showed us to our rooms, adjoining one another on the first floor. The Lees, discovering that I had not had a bathtub in my room the previous night, let me have the first go in the bathroom now. I had a wonderful soak and was pleased to discover no problems with abrasions of blisters.
I got dressed and went to the pub. The nice barman opened the office so I could use the phone to make a quick call to London. Then I returned to have a wonderful icy cold lager next to the fire. There was only one other guest but he proved to be a delightful chap, Joe Cosgrove, a banker from the City who had been abandoned by his family this week and who was abandoning his yacht in favor of some solo walking on the coast path. We spent a great deal of time with him over the next few days. It was fun to hear his reactions to the same scenes which we had traveled only a few hours after he had been through them. Today he had been menaced by two Alsatians barring his way as he climbed out of Buck’s Mills. When he had complained the lady in charge of these animals had rounded on him, “You can’t expect to have the footpath all to yourself now, can you?”
Tosh had to be dragged away from the Channel 4 News at 7:45 so that we could eat and let our hostess finish her labors for the day. We had soup and sole caught that day by Clovelly’s fishermen. After dinner I switched to lemonade as we sat around the fire chatting with Joe and the barman and one other local. The tattooed barman was describing all his efforts at avoiding visits to the dentist. Joe had discovered that the tenants at the bottom of the hill couldn’t get the village landlord to put in hot water or even indoor toilets. No wonder there seemed to be something of the Middle Ages along this coast.
At 10:00 Tosh, Harold, and I went into the lounge to watch the final episode of Hill Street Blues on the telly. It was very cold in the room, with a gale howling outside, and Tosh went upstairs to borrow a blanket from one of the empty rooms. (This caused the cleaning staff no end of puzzlement the next day). We sat side by side on the sofa, the blanket tucked up to our chins, and enjoyed the end of an excellent series. Then it was time for bed. There was some heat still coming from the radiator in my room so I slipped into my bed and had a pretty comfortable night.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need:
Day 11: Clovelly to Stoke