Near the shore is the unpretending manor house of Martinhoe: the church of that parish being situated high above, away among the wild commons of a little-visited hinterland. It was here and at Trentishoe, many years since, that the future Bishop Hannington, who met a martyr’s fate in 1885 in the wilds of his African diocese, was curate. He dressed the part unconventionally, in a manner fitting a neighbourhood where there were no Dorcas Societies, mothers’ meetings, or any of the quaint machinery of a modern parish. Only rough farmers and their men, and wild and unfrequented footpaths formed everyday experiences. The typical curate would have soon found his conventional dress very much out of place. Hannington wore Bedford cord knee-breeches of a yellow hue, yellow Sussex gaiters with brass buttons, and great nailed boots that would have suited a ploughboy. A short jerkin of black cloth and a clerical waistcoat that buttoned up the side gave just a professional hint. In this costume, covered with the surplice, of course, he would take the services as well; not from any eccentricity, but simply because the conditions of these rustic parishes demanded it. They demanded much walking, too. “I see you’ve got fine legs,” Dr. Temple, the rather grim Bishop of Exeter, said: “mind you run about your parish.”
Over the wooded hill called Wringapeak, the way now lies on to Heddon’s Mouth.
WOODA BAY.
There is no hint of monotony in this grand stretch of coast scenery. Here nature is full of resources and surprises, and each cliff-profile, valley, wooded hillside, or little bay is strikingly different from the last. Leaving Wooda Bay behind, having already, as you think, tasted every variety of scenic splendour, yet another aspect of these boundless resources is revealed, in an exquisite wood of dwarf oaks. Through this delightful boscage, delightful in itself and in the shade it gives on fervent days, the way lies, as a grassy path. Great grey boulders, covered with lichen, show on either side, in the half light, and the foliage of the oaks grows in wonderfully large lustrous leaves, by favour of this wonderful climate. It is all so quiet. Few people are ever met here; but, here and there, at infrequent intervals one finds a retired villa, three-parts hidden behind the shrubs of its ample grounds. One such you pass, and see amid the woodland trees a little tombstone to a pet dog; “‘Bruiser,’ a good dog”: concise, yet all-comprising.
When rounding successive points, new and ever more beautiful views are disclosed, and sublime thoughts rise, but they do not find full expression in that form, because of the loose stones and fragments of rock that everywhere prodigally strew the cliff-paths. Midway between Wooda Bay and Heddon’s Mouth, a lovely waterfall comes spouting down the face of the cliff, in a little bight, the sides of it fringed with moss and ferns, and at the foot a tangle of trees and bushes that have found a precarious foothold. Here fragments of rock, like some prehistoric rubbish-heap, threaten unstable ankles.
These cliffs are simply huge masses of loosely compacted rubbish—laminated stone embedded in ochreous, friable earth—held together largely by surface vegetation: gorse, grass, and rock-plants, and in places the hillsides resemble engineers’ spoil-banks. But the horned breed of sheep that browse here keep a wonderful foothold, in places where no human being would dare trust himself on the slopes, covered with slippery grass. The cliff-path is usually solitary, and the occasional, nearly human cough of these only living creatures is therefore at first somewhat startling, in its apparently half-apologetic note, like that of some Paul Pry, who “hopes he don’t intrude.” Their clattering walk along the loose flakes of stone, so plentifully strewn about, is oddly like unseen people roughly handling piles of dinner-plates.
HEDDON’S MOUTH.
Presently Heddon’s Mouth bursts upon the view, with all the force of a revelation. To observe the coast-line from the deck of a vessel—for example, from one of the big steamers that pass quite close in, on the way to Ilfracombe—may seem (and is) a luxurious way of seeing these cliffs and their openings. No foot-soreness, no scrambling amid incredible rocks: only a patronising passing in review from an easeful attitude of observation. But then, strangely enough, this majestic succession of headlands, of bays, and “mouths” is flattened and fore-shortened and depreciated in a degree incredible to those who have not tried both methods. Heddon’s Mouth, for example, looks by no means remarkable from the sea. But viewed from either above or below, on land, its grandeur is exceptional. From this cliff-path on High Veer, whence you first see the deep and narrow valley, or gully, or, as a Central American might say, “cañon,” you look far up the valley in one direction, and in the other out to sea. The hills on either side are not rocky. They impress rather by their enormous size and simplicity of outline. Shelving down steeply to where the Heddon flows at the bottom, only an occasional outcrop of rock stands up. For the rest, they are clothed in patches and streaks with bracken and with a short, wiry innutritious grass, and very largely strewn from top to bottom with countless thousands of tons of rocky rubbish, blue-grey in general effect of colour, and in appearance like the refuse on the tip banks of mines. Oddly enough, such a generous distribution of waste material does not help to spoil the scenery. The hillsides end, seaward, in grey, red and yellow-brown cliffs, where an old limekiln, like a stone blockhouse fort, lends a specious air of historic assault and battery to the scene. Here the Heddon stream comes trickling down among the boulders of the beach; sometimes indeed, when thunderstorms have vexed the uplands, swirling down in a coffee-coloured tumult and staining a calm sea for a long distance out.