August 22, 1992: Coleford to Witheridge

Saturday, August 22nd, seemed to be a very grey day. Although there had been no rain overnight the skies were very low and moisture remained a strong possibility. I shaved and Gavan borrowed my shaving lather to have a go at a chin that only required attention every third or fourth day. He complained that someone seemed to have been jogging up and down our hallway in a plastic tracksuit and I vaguely recalled having heard the same sound well before dawn. However, when we went down to the dining room at 8:00 there was no one about but ourselves. Finally Mrs. Butt appeared, back in blue jeans, to bring us a monstrous portion of scrambled eggs on toast. Captain was up and answered our greetings with a demure “Hello.”

I wanted an early start again, with fifteen miles on the agenda. I had even tried to see if a Crediton taxi could save us a couple of these by giving us a lift back to the TMW – but when I used the number supplied by the barman all I got was a busy signal. So, after using my credit card to settle our bill, we pulled on our gear and headed off at 8:55.

We began a long pull up the hill to the road junction where we had come up from Ford Farm. I had decided to save half a mile by cutting out the descent to Whelmstone Barton and keeping straight ahead in a westerly direction on the Bow road until we had reached the TMW coming in from the south. Our route into the next valley required very little change in elevation as first Paschoe Farm and then Appledore Farm appeared on our left. There was not much traffic.

While we were on this stretch I introduced a new game. At various times before I had tried to get Gavan involved in the kind of verbal byplay that Jay and I had enjoyed on our walks. Heretofore Gavan had not responded with much enthusiasm but now, after a few false starts, I got him to join me in renaming college football teams. We managed to do a good job of finding appropriately ludicrous but logical names for teams in the East before running out of steam: The Harvard Squares, the Bates Motels, The Yale Locks, and so on. The game was interrupted by the beginning of rain.

We had escaped showers on each of the three previous days but rain had now caught up with us. It was necessary to take off our packs at the roadside, under the shelter of some trees, and fish out our raingear. I stowed my sweatshirt in the spot vacated by my rain pants and rain cape, both bearing the signs of ill-usage, and Gavan helped me lower the latter over my pack. The rain was persistent but not too heavy and I was able to take pictures still, and, as we left the highway at last, to keep up to date in the latest battle between gates and stiles.

This turnoff occured soon after passing Appledore Farm, where the TMW comes in from the left. We headed north around a farmstead called Sweetfield, puzzling a bit about which gap in the hedge we should use and discovering that, although there was no fence-side path to the north, there were waymarks on the telephone poles. The field had been recently harvested and the round bales of hay, like a circle of ancient monoliths, surrounded us. We emerged at one end of the Combe Fish Ponds and reached a farm track into the farmstead of Clannaborough. There were a number of quite interesting ancient buildings about, including a 15th Century church. I took a photo against a very dark sky and we used the farm access road to reach the A3072 – where we turned right on a very busy road.

After only a short distance we headed north at Lammacott Cross. I suppose we were lucky with the next stretch of road because it was scheduled, we discovered, to receive a coat of tarmac in two days, and it would not have been pleasant to have used it then. We passed Lammacott itself, generally heading in a northeasterly direction, leaving the road at a stile and entering into fields and woodland again. We also crossed a small stream before emerging on yet another road near Barn Shelley.

A path in a grassy field brought us out to the main road between Barnstaple and Exeter, the A377. This highway is also paralleled by the railway between these two spots – and thus we were getting back into territory that I had covered quite a few times by train on earlier walks. Indeed, from train windows I had learned what an attractive countryside this could be, and this had fuelled my desire to do the Two Moors Way. Nothing looked particularly attractive in today’s rain.

We crossed the highway and headed north on its verge for about half a mile. The moisture was beginning to penetrate our defenses but just as we turned away from the highway to cross the tracks at Shobrooke Bridge the sky brightened. I had paused to take a picture of a giant porker in an adjacent field but he charged over to greet me and got too close for a proper focus. And by the time I had turned to continue on the track to Shobrooke Farm the skies had darkened again and the rain was really pelting down. To add to our miseries we were having some difficulty matching up the instructions on the ground with those in the guidebook. We dutifully followed the former and soon I could tell where we were. We had to pause once in the lee of a line of trees to gain some courage before putting our faces into the rain again.

There was nothing to do but press on, but at least there was the prospect of an oasis awaiting us in the pub at Morchard Bishop, some two miles away. We walked along the edge of fences and passed Slade Farm, rising and falling in gently rolling countryside. At a pond I tried to take a picture but I failed because of poor light. We climbed a hill to reach the village of Peter Green. A road lead us north to Woodgate, but we were soon back on field paths again, the roofs of Morchard Bishop now clearly visible on the hillside in front of us. We climbed up to the western edge of town just about noon; we had maintained a corking pace, having covered just about half of the day’s distance in a little over three hours.

At the crossroads we were pleased to discover the London Inn, a long, sprawling establishment where signs asked us to use the car park entrance. We thus entered the welcome embrace of the pub, dripping wet. The bar staff were more amused than annoyed by our appearance, always a good sign, and we were soon shedding wet layers at our table. Then we enjoyed a welcome pint of lager, the first installment in a long lunch hour that lasted about an hour and a half.

Since my t-shirt was already wet I took it off and put on my dry sweatshirt; before we left I fished out the Detroit Bad Boys t-shirt one more time and put it on in the gents; the latter was reached by walking the full length of the bar and watching out for a treacherous step and a low ceiling. While I was changing Gavan had ordered us some hot food so I was soon munching on scampi and chips. It was getting time for us to leave but we couldn’t resist ordering some whiskey as insulation against the elements. After his last visit to the loo Gavan returned to whisper, “Have a look at the middle urinal.” When I had a look I could see what had excited him; there on the lip of the porcelain fixture, waiting to launch itself on any unsuspecting male organ, was a giant spider!

Gavan headed across the street at about 1:30 to buy us some more candy bars. I was always worrying about running out of food on the trail but, as in the case of the liquid I had bought in Drewsteignton, most of my provisions went untasted and they were still in my pack on the last day. We now walked the length of Morchard Bishop, a light rain still falling, and I paused briefly to photograph the church.

A Two Moors Way stone pointed the way forward over a stile and we were soon crossing fields on our way to Hill Cross. Here we crossed a road and returned to field paths, heading for a farm called Brownstone. In the pub I had noticed that moisture was getting into the case containing the official guidebook so I had put this away, expecting us to rely on Gavan’s OS map or the excellent waymarking on the ground itself. If we ran into difficulties it was because we hadn’t quite noticed the direction indicated on the waymark we had just passed. Gates had by now defeated stiles 21-19 in baseball and this gave us a chance to start a new game – which was deadlocked in the seventh inning at the end of the day.

Something was happening to the weather. The sun was beginning to reappear and before long it was obvious that there was no longer any threat of additional moisture. Our feet were soaking wet and boots continued to disappear under the water of muddy lanes but it was possible to take off the rain cape and to walk in my t-shirt again.

We had one major obstacle to overcome at a farm called Cobscombe. A giant black gate into the farmyard, which we were clearly meant to use, was so jammed that we found it impossible to budge. There was no way around to the right or the left. Gavan finally scaled the wall to have a go at the gate from the other side; it still proved difficult to budge. Meanwhile the farm dog charged up to see what this intruder wanted. It was a little like that scene in Arrian when Alexander the Great is the first to scale the wall of some hostile village in Baluchistan, with the scaling ladder breaking behind him, thus preventing his cohorts from leaping to his rescue as he comes under attack. I think Gavan’s unease over dogs now gave him the extra power, however, to kick open the offending gate and let me into the farmyard. I can usually calm most dogs and this one was not difficult to placate. All he wanted was for us to throw him a chunk of wood – which he was using as a toy. We kicked this object around a bit until we had eased our way out of the driveway and onto the road into the village of Black Dog (ours had been brown).

The village had some seedy houses, a petrol pump and a small shop and we did not tarry. Shortly beyond these buildings a track again lead north down to the Pyne Farm Footbridge. The ups and downs, and there were many now to come, were not very steep or prolonged and we were having a good time chatting and taking in the sun-bedecked scene. We passed the farmstead of Wonham and entered the margin of a rather damp Washford Wood. Here we floundered around a bit searching for the right exit onto a road into the village of Washford Pyne.

There was a lovely church here, built in 1883, and we took a little time to have a look inside. A plaque carried a list of all the parish vicars going back for centuries. The improvement in the weather and the certainty of reaching our goal in the village of Witheridge in a less than sodden state allowed us to relax and enjoy the scene at leisure and this visit to the church was a good example. We were pausing increasingly for photos (Gavan often imitating my subject matter) and snacks.

We followed a very muddy path out of Washford Pyne, descending to a footbridge and up to the farmstead of Stourton Barton. There were some Jack Russells here who wanted to make certain that we didn’t spend too much time leaving by the access road. We passed some algae-covered reservoir ponds and then climbed steeply up to a highway crossing. Then we kept to the left of Millmoor Farm, making our own path among the cowflop, to reach the B3062. All this was very easy late afternoon walking.

We now had just a mile of field walking, via stiles and fields, and we could see the large town of Witheridge before us in the late afternoon sunshine. But what time was it? Each of us offered a guess, compromising at about 5:20. When I took out my watch I had to correct this slightly; it was 5:30 – no, it was 6:30! We had been dawdling so much this afternoon that we were now way behind our usual pace.

It was not possible to make direct progress toward the Angel Inn because the TMW enters the village via a housing estate, and soon gives up on all waymarking hints. We ended up moving a considerable distance to the east in order to join the A373 as it sped north into town. It was nearing 7:15 when we arrived at the market square, where we found a church, newsagents, shops, and even a hairdresser. They were all closed and the town seemed absolutely dead for a Saturday night. Our inn was located on a corner of the square but the pub wasn’t open yet and we had to ring the doorbell. Thus we were admitted by our brassy bluejeaned landlady.

This was the woman I had spoken to on the telephone some weeks earlier. She had disdained a deposit or even a letter of confirmation and the low b&b price of £12 had lead me to expect a rather casual and not very elegant welcome. This was confirmed when we were shown upstairs to our pokey room and down a long corridor where the toilet and the bathroom were located. There didn’t seem to be any other guests so there was no race to use these facilities. Our exploded packs were soon covering every square inch of floor space. There was a wardrobe with two hangers in it and while Gavan was taking his bath I stuffed newspaper into our wet boots and put them into the closet. The room had coffee making equipment but no running water. In a rear courtyard I could see a little boy playing with two loose rabbits.

I went to take my bath and I must say that here the facilities were first rate. I had a nice bath and even jumped into the next door shower to wash the shampoo out of my hair. The toilet did take forever to flush.

The pub opened at 7:30 so the scene was getting quite lively with pool players and families out for a Saturday night treat when we were clean enough to make another appearance. Gavan asked our hostess, “What time is dinner?” and received the discouraging reply, “We don’t do dinner; we just have bar snacks.” I asked if there was any other place to eat in town and was told that the other pub just served bar snacks as well. We then spent some time figuring out how many bags of peanuts would be needed to fill us up and I flirted with the idea of hiring a taxi to take us back to the London Inn. But we next discovered, to our great relief, that “bar snacks” included fish and chips and chicken and chips.

I ordered the former and Gavan the latter and we tucked in after finishing our pints. Gavan was often drinking bitter now or, patriotically, Guinness. I usually switched to vodka and orange juice at this point. We also smoked a cigar and I went outside into the chilly night to phone Dorothy and see what time we could get more newspapers on the morrow. The pub was getting crowded with kids and so we went up to bed pretty early and before long the tiny lamp between our beds had been extinguished at the end of a very successful day.

To continue with the next stage of our walk you need:

Day 6: Witheridge to Tarr Steps