This way, uphill, past the old church, is the pleasantest exit from Minehead, on the way to Porlock, but it is by no means the usual or the easiest one, as the stranger will perceive when he is reduced to enquiring the proper choice among several roads that presently confront him.
LYNCH CHAPEL.
“Y’ant coom up yur to get to Parlock?” asked an old rustic cottage woman of the present writer, with some astonishment. Being reassured that one really knew this to be a very indirect route, she abandoned the sarcasm she was prepared with, and was reduced to satire on visitors in general. “Some on ’em doan’ niver think of asking the way. They jest goos arn, an’ then they goos wrong. I often larfs in me sleeve at ’em, I do.”
Saucy puss!
Yes. I suspect the simple countryfolk enjoy many a sly laugh at visitors, quite unsuspected.
To Selworthy, over North Hill, is a rugged way, of narrow woodland lanes. Selworthy, as its name sufficiently indicates, is a village amid the woods; woods around it, above and below; the woodlands belonging to the Aclands of Holnicote—i.e. “Hollen-cot,” or holly-cot,—that seat lying down beside the main road to Porlock. Here are ancient oaks and other trees, and more recent plantations that have now matured and clothed the hillsides with fir and larch. These were planted by that Sir Thomas Acland who died, aged 89, in 1898. A wild region is that of Selworthy Beacon, rising to a height of 933 feet, above the village.
PACKHORSE BRIDGE, ALLERFORD.
The village itself is a small and scattered one, with a large and handsome church, neighboured by a monastic tithe-barn. A “Peter’s Pence” chest, hinting, by its size and iron bands and triple locks, great expectations, is one of the objects of interest here. But tourists from Minehead and Porlock do not come chiefly to see the church, beautifully restored with the aid of Acland gold though it be. It is rather the fame of the pretty thatched cottages bordering a village green that attracts them. These owe their origin to the late Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, who built them as homes for servants grown old in his employ, and pensioned off by him.