Bridport, with several curves in the road and an intermediate ascent or two between this point and the town. The cyclist who cares to take his courage in both hands, and has no desire to linger over perhaps one of the most magnificent scenic panoramas in England, can coast down this long stretch with the speed of the wind, and chance the result. But it is better to loiter here, for none of the great high-roads has anything like this scenery to show. From away up the road the eye ranges over a vast stretch of country westwards. South-west lies the Channel, dazzling like a burnished mirror if you come here at the psychological moment for this view—that is to say, the late afternoon of a summer’s day; with the strangely contorted shapes of the hills round about suggesting volcanic origin, and casting cool shadows far down into the sheltered coombes that have been baking in the sun all day long. Near at hand is Shipton Beacon, rising almost immediately beyond ‘Traveller’s Rest,’ and looking oddly from some points of view like some gigantic ship’s hull lying keel uppermost. Beyond are Puncknoll and Hammerdon, and away in the distance, with the Channel sparkling behind it, and the sun making a halo for its head, overlooking the sea at a height of 615 feet, the grand crest of Golden Cap, which some hold to be so named from this circumstance, while others have it that the picturesque title derives from the yellow gorse that grows on its summit. To the right hand rises the natural rampart of Eggardon, additionally fortified by art, a thousand years ago, whether by Briton, Dane, or Saxon, let those determine who will, with the village of Askerswell lying deep down, immediately under this ridge on which the road goes, the roof of its village church tower apparently so near that you could drop a stone neatly on to its leads. But ‘one trial will suffice,’ as the advertisements of much-puffed articles say, for the stone goes no nearer than about a quarter of a mile.
Very charming, this panorama, on a summer’s day; but how about the winters’ nights, in the times when the ‘Traveller’s Rest’ was better named than now; when the coaches halted here, and coachmen, guards, and passengers alike, half-frozen and breathless from the blusterous heights of Long Bredy, tumbled out for something warming? For this hillside was reputed to be the coldest part of the journey between London and Exeter, and it may be readily enough supposed by all who have seen the spot, that this was indeed the fact.
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The last mile into Bridport has none of these terrify-descents, although, to be sure, there are sudden curves in the road which it behoves the cyclist to take slowly, for they may develop anything in the way of traffic, from a traction engine to the elephantine advance-guard of a travelling circus.
BRIDPORT
At Bridport, nine miles from the Devon border, the country already begins to lose something of the Dorset character, and to look like the county of junket and clotted cream. As for the town, it is difficult to say what character it possesses, for its featureless High Street is redeemed only from tediousness by the belfry of the Town Hall which, with the fine westward view, including the conical height of Colmer’s Hill and the high table-land of Eype to the left, serves to compose the whole into something remotely resembling an effect.
Bridport is a town which would very much like to be on the sea, but is, as a matter of fact, situated rather over a mile from it. Just where the little river Bredy runs out and the sea comes banging furiously in, is a forlorn concourse of houses sheltering abjectly one behind the other, called variously Bridport Harbour and West Bay. This is the real port, but it matters little, or nothing at all, by what name you call the place; it remains more like a Port Desolation.
Bridport almost distinguished itself in 1651 by the fugitive Charles the Second having been nearly captured at the ‘George Inn’ by the Harbour, an ostler recognising his face, which, it must be conceded, was one that once seen could scarce have been mistaken when again met with. Charles was then trying to reach the coast after the disastrous battle of Worcester, and it is quite certain that if Cromwell’s troopers had laid their hands on him, there would never have been any Charles the Second in English history.
The tragical comedy of the Stuarts throws a glamour over the Exeter Road to its very end. The fugitive Charles, fleeing before the inquisitive stare of the ostler, is a striking picture; and so, thirty-four years later, is the coming of his partly acknowledged son, the Duke of Monmouth, to upset James the Second. Bridport was seized, and one of the ‘Monmouth men’ slew Edward Coker, gentleman, of Mappowder, on the 14th of June 1685, as the memorial tablet to that slaughtered worthy in Bridport parish church duly recounts. For their share in the rebellion, a round dozen of Bridport men were hanged before the eyes of their neighbours, ‘stabbed,’ as the ancient slang phrase has it, ‘with a Bridport dagger.’ The ghastly imagery of this saying derives from the old-time local manufacture of rope, twine, and string, and the cultivation of hemp in the surrounding country. Rope-and twine-walks still remain in the town.
Leaving Bridport behind, the coach passengers by this route presently came to its most wildly romantic part; only it is sad to reflect that the travellers of a hundred years ago had not the slightest appreciation of this kind of thing.