June 29, 1997: Sidmouth to Seaton
The Fountain Head Inn, Street
There was plenty of stewed fruit and Alpen waiting for the breakfast crowd in our dining room on Sunday morning. We met, as usual, at 8:30, and by this time I was down to scrambled eggs on toast as my breakfast order too. I was first down with my pack, but it took Harold some time to pay off the oldest receptionist lady on the coast and I stood outside under a monkey puzzle tree waiting for the others to get ready. We had no sooner rejoined the seafront than the others attacked a kiosk, which wasn’t quite open for business yet, in search of postcards and a hat to replace the one Tosh had left in Budleigh Salterton (our landlady later sent this on). It was 9:45 before we were able to cross the bridge over the river Sid and make our assault on the first of the day’s nine black arrows.
As we climbed upward I began to feel that the Way had perhaps been rerouted through suburbia; the coastal route had suffered from erosion and evidently there was now some debate over whether it was environmentally sound to reopen it. In the meantime the Lees had a chance to gawp at a number of gardens and to chat with a chap out trimming his hedge. Eventually the waymarks lead us back to the coast and we reached the top of Salcombe Hill Cliff, a wonderful vantage point if you don’t count the dispiriting site of a deep valley that separated us from Higher Dunscombe Cliff.
The route lead us a little bit inland here and Harold and I had to wait some time for the women to catch sight of us as they made their plunge. A similar inland diversion at Little Weston combe allowed us to evade a full descent to sea level and put us among flint chippings from old mines as we rounded a corner and climbed down in damp, dark woods to Weston Mouth itself. Again I had to wait quite some time for the others to catch up; this is noteworthy only because on most occasions the walking pattern is quite the reverse – with the Lees out in front, me third, and Margie, taking the baby steps which she had learned from Dorothy, bringing up the rear on such descents.
We were briefly on the beach at Weston Mouth and then began a steep, step-aided ascent of Weston Cliff. It was a pleasure to reach a long level stretch for once but this was dimmed by the approach of drizzle, which required us to don full battle gear midway. As the path slanted inland I began to look for a turnoff to the village of Street; this was waymarked and so we turned our back on the coast and headed further inland on a muddy track; this stretch looked simple on the map but I would have had great difficulty navigating it had it not been for some aggressive waymarking that provided us with a variety of surfaces before bringing us down, at 1:45, into the car park of the Fountain Head Inn.
I was relieved to discover that there was still time to order food and so we found a quiet corner inside and had our usual pub repast; Harold and I had fish and chips; Tosh a cheddar ploughman’s. She was sitting beneath a leaking pipe but as she liked the position, with her back up against the wall, she merely reversed the direction of her baseball cap and caught the occasional drip on the bill before it had a chance to go down her neck. Last orders were called for at 2:30 and shortly before 3:00 we were back on route – which meant a descent on tarmac through the village of Branscombe.
Branscombe
The sun was out now and it was quite warm. There were some wonderful flower-bedecked cottages to photograph and a church for the Lees to visit. While they did so I had a conversation with another walker about the inland route back to Branscombe Mouth and he was very helpful. Still, we got only as far as a crossroads before the others were seduced by loos and a craft fair in the town hall. We never made it as far as Ye Old Mason’s Arms – where the Linicks and the Platts had spent a night in 1970. Instead we turned off to follow well-marked paths back to the sea. The others ordered ice cream at a tourist enclave at Branscombe Mouth but, to tell the truth, my stomach wasn’t so hot – too much stewed fruit and Alpen at breakfast time were now having their effect. As we resumed our walk on the coast path I had to place myself last in order not to blow anyone else off the path with backfire.
Approaching Beer
We chose the initially steeper route to the top of Hooken Cliffs and continued forward in a brisk wind that had brought out the kite fliers on Beer Head. Another new way to destroy the peace of the countryside: kites that sound like dive bombers in the wind. Beer village seemed to take a long time to appear and the last stages were on tarmac. We decided not to pause for refreshment here, heading uphill again to the discouragement of a collection of fatty trippers on a bench who promised, “It gets worse ahead.” We wound around another headland and reached tarmac above Seaton Hole. There was a kiosk here and we paused for refreshments. I had a Diet Coke and made an unsuccessful assault on the loo. Harold was obtaining information from the locals about the whereabouts of Seaton Heights Hotel and the news was not good.
There was a map of Seaton at the picnic ground and we could see we had a long way to go – it is vitally necessary, when getting hotel recommendations from tourist information, to ascertain the precise location of the recommended establishment. “The hotel guy said it was right on the path,” Harold now said. “He lied,” I replied. What should have been a nine mile day now turned into a ten and half mile one as we made our way, sometimes with pavement, sometimes without, uphill and away from the sea – Harold (who passed his mile 1400 on this stretch) inquiring frequently from locals how much further we had to go and not receiving very encouraging responses. It was shortly past six, my stomach still in turmoil, when we topped the highest of the hills and beheld, next to a converted water tower, the hostelry in question. It was a motel.
Mr. Gripton tried to put us all in a single room but we soon straightened him out. There wasn’t any problem with alternate arrangements as there seemed to be no other lodgers. However the water took some time to heat up and our host insisted on giving us an explanation of the intricacies of this system while, next door, I was trying to find some relief at last on his toilet seat. I rather liked the motel and Mr. Gripton was an accommodating host who was trying to repair the damaged image of this establishment – after taking over only nine weeks earlier. I had a lot of trouble at dinner and left most of my food on my plate. I was still feeling pretty punk when I completed my call to Dorothy and returned to my room at 9:00, just in time to watch another repeat episode of Jewel In The Crown. When it ended at 10:00, I went straight to bed.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: