Heddon's Mouth, near Lynton
Then a great cleft runs inland, fenced by a bold headland on either hand, and I have rounded Highveer Point and am looking down Heddon's Mouth. Heddon is the corruption of the Celtic word "etin," which means a giant, and the Celtic spirit which so named this wild valley had indeed a sense of the poetry and grandeur of places. Sheer either side rise the slate hills, bare, waterless, and treeless. The southern hill is one steep slope of scree; the northern hill, Highveer Point, on which I stand, is covered with dead gorse and heather, which they have been burning in the spring, and the sharp smell lingers still. A thousand feet below runs the river, shut narrowly between these great cliffs, with hardly foothold for a sparse sprinkle of trees between these dark walls, and for the ribbon of white road that runs from the sea to Hunter's Inn, a mile inland. There two streams meet, and the place is as green as a little paradise, and bright with running waters, but it lies round the bend of the hill on which I stand, and what I see before me is this shadowless great gorge, without tree or shrub or flower, the magnificent shoulders of cliff lifted against the hot and cloudless sky; inland the heat shimmering on the rounded surface of hill behind hill, and out to sea a little froth of white where the blue water breaks into foam on the point of some just submerged jag of rock. A vast silence holds the place, save for the deep undertone of the rushing water far below, so deep and so distant that it is rather like a dull vibration in my brain than a sound in my ears. The heavy buzzing of a fly and the rattle of the wind in the brim of my straw hat do not break this impression of great silence; they seem to lie on it rather, like feathers on the surface of a deep pool. The shadow of a hawk goes slowly past me on the dusty white road and across the bare hillside, on an outcrop of rock, bleak and grey in this brilliant light, a butterfly, a red admiral, stands motionless, his wonderful wings of crimson and iridescent blue stretched wide, and shining in the sunlight with incredible colour.
There are scenes of a different beauty at Lynton from that of these few miles of cliff—and to me lacking something of the spaciousness and splendour of Heddon's Mouth—but beautiful none the less. Go into Lynmouth, down the steep and stony road—a true Devonshire road, still the same as Celia Fiennes described them in her tour through England in 1695: "Ye lanes are full of stones and dirt for ye most part, because they are so close ye sun and wind cannot come at them"—among the steep, tree-embowered, whitewashed houses, which with the sun blazing on their flat white walls suggest rather a little village of the Pyrenees or Northern Italy than Devonshire cottages, that and the luxuriance of the trees through which the East Lyn and the West Lyn foam down to the little beach, and the prodigal flowering of bushes and shrubs. Follow the East Lyn up to Watersmeet, which is about two miles from Lynmouth through one of the most beautiful wooded gorges in England. Past the hotels you go, and a little straggle of small modern houses, past the untidy little patch which would be the suburb of a larger community, with upturned boats and washing drying in the sun, and within five minutes a turn of the road hides Lynmouth and the sea from your backward look, and you stand in the heart of a valley and beyond signs of habitation. The southern slope is beautifully wooded, showing every range and variety of green, from the light vivid green of larches to the dull brownish tone of the oaks. The northern slope rises brown and rocky, the edges clear-cut against the brilliant sky; there is a great sound of birds, and always the noise of water running over stones.
As you ascend the river the gorge becomes narrow and more thickly wooded; the path winding along it is hot and close and still; the water is clear brown in its depths, and green in the shallows and where it slides over a mossy stone; it bubbles into foam in its tiny waterfalls and cataracts and miniature whirlpools; it is deliciously sweet and cool. The green moss grows to the very edge of its white stones, and ferns and hart's-tongues and lilies-of-the-valley clothe the sides of the hill; there are celandines and primroses and wild strawberry in flower, and the lovely white cup of the ivy-leafed bell-flower. Nowhere, perhaps, save in the west of England (I do not speak only of Devon, for I know of little valleys in Cornwall which are as fertile as the Garden of Eden, held in the rocky jaws of some bleak cliff), but in what we call "the West," is there such peculiar beauty of contrast, bold outlines of cliff and cove, great stretches of moor lying open to the sky, and wooded combe and valley or small green sheltered hollow of such blossoming fertility.
The Watersmeet, the point where the Hoaroak Water joins the East Lyn, breaking down over a thunderous small white waterfall, and a beautiful spot enough, is vulgarized by notices embodying the commercial rivalry of two different tea-houses. By one you are invited to walk on the right bank of the river, as being the only public footpath (given in the official guide of the Lynton Urban District Council); by the other you are invited to a "unique view" of the Watersmeet, and assured you will be solicited for patronage in no way.
On the loneliest, loveliest day in early summer this smacks of tourist parties, and I made haste to leave the river path and the sheltering trees and climb the road to Brendon, a road as steep and hot, as stony and glaring, as I have ever climbed. Up and up I went for half an hour, seeing nothing but the banks and hedges on either hand; every turn in the road I thought was the last span that would bring me out on the hill-tops, and every turn of the road showed me another. But at last I stood above Brendon, and before me spread the moors, brown and purple in the sunlight, and the little old grey church of Brendon just below me, in a slight dip of the high ground.
