A private road, however, engineered some forty years ago by Colonel Blathwayt through his domain of Whitestone Park, ascends the hillsides by a long series of zigzags, and thus admits of easy gradients. The distance is twice as long, but the ruling gradient is only one in ten, and the surface is good. The scenery also—the “New Road,” as it is called, running through woodlands for the most part—is much preferable to that of the old road. In order to provide funds for keeping this “New Road” in repair, certain tolls are payable: a penny for a cycle or a saddle-horse; fourpence for carriages, etc., with one horse, and threepence for every additional horse; and a shilling for motor-cars.
But, before leaving Porlock behind, it will be well to visit Porlock Weir. Porlock Weir, or Quay, as some style it, is the port of Porlock. It is not, commercially speaking, much of a port, for the basin is neither large nor deep, and only the smallest of sailing-vessels may enter it.
As you come along the mile and a half of pretty country road that leads from Porlock to Porlock Weir, passing many remarkably picturesque cob-walled and thatch-roofed cottages on the way, you catch glimpses of the kind of place this port is. Porlock Bay lies open to the view, and is revealed as a two-and-a-quarter mile semicircular sweep of naked pebble-ridge between Hurlstone Point and Gore Point. Under the last-named wooded bluff, which forms the buttress, so to speak, on which rests the romantic domain of Ashley Combe, the village and harbour of Porlock Weir are snugly placed. “Weir” stands, in the minds of most people, for a foaming waterfall on a river; but there is no stream whatever at this place, and the harbour that has been given the name is just a natural basin formed by a long-continued action of the tides in heaping up a great impervious outer bank of pebbles under this protecting bluff, where the bay finds its western termination. Left to itself, the trench-like inlet thus formed would fill automatically with every flood-tide, and empty again with the ebb; but the mouth of it was closed, perhaps three centuries ago, by a wall and sluice-gates, by which the water could, at ebb, be kept in the harbour so easily constructed. That is Porlock Weir, upon whose primitive quays look a few picturesquely dilapidated waterside buildings. The spot is quiet and delightfully unconventional, and is frequented in summer by visitors who appreciate those qualities and the sea-fishing that is to be had off the beach. The old “Ship” inn is a counterpart of that hostelry of the same name at Porlock, and is generally old-fashioned and delightful. You catch a glimpse of copper warming-pans as you pass, and are in receipt of an impression of that kind of comfort which was the last thing in innkeeping life of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The “Anchor Hotel” is a gabled building, obviously built about 1885, when architects found salvation in gables, red-brick, rough-cast plaster, and a general Queen Annean attitude. Besides these, there stands an omnium gatherum shop that will supply you at one end of the scale with a ton of coals and any reasonable requirement in fodder and corn-chandlery, or with a pennyworth of acid-drops at the other. The romantic-looking old cottages that face the road and have quaintly peaked combs to their thatches, display luxuriant gardens in front, and the sea on occasion clamours for entrance at the back; for it can be very rough here at times, as the pebble-ridge heaped up against the stout sea-wall protecting the road sufficiently witnesses.
The little harbour, although apparently so derelict, is not altogether a thing of the past, for Porlock is some seven miles distant from any railway, and it still remains cheaper to bring coals into the place by sea than by any other method. And this, it would seem, must always be the case, for coal comes to Porlock direct from the quays of the South Wales coalfields. But, except for this class of goods, and for a few other miscellaneous and casual items, the harbour of Porlock Weir is nowadays practically deserted. It forms a curious spectacle. Old vessels lie rotting in the ooze, with no one to clear away their discredited carcases; the Caerleon of Bridgwater, lying at the quay awaiting a discharge of her cargo of coals, the only craft obviously in commission.
PORLOCK WEIR.
Life certainly does not run with a strong current at Porlock Weir. Overnight you may see jerseyed seafaring men sitting in a row on a waterside bench, their backs supported by a convenient wall. They are engaged in contemplating nothing in particular. Vacuity of mind is set upon their countenances, and expresses itself in their very attitudes, hands drooping listlessly over knees, heads sunk upon chests. There they have sat, with intervals for refreshment, all day, and there they are sitting as twilight fades away into darkness. When the visitor comes down to breakfast at the “Anchor” or the “Ship” opposite, they are discovered in the selfsame place and in the same attitudes as before. They seem to hold constant session, but rarely speak; not because they hold silence to be golden, but for the simple reason that all subjects are exhausted.
This silent companionship is not often broken, the chief occasions of the break-up being those exciting times when some terrified, panting, hunted stag comes fleeting down out of the woods with the yelping hounds at his heels. The sea is the harried creature’s last resort, and in it he is generally lassoed and dragged to shore, where the hounds tear the unfortunate beast to pieces, amid interested crowds of onlookers. Such is “sport.”
But this death of the stag on Porlock beach is now very much a thing of the past, since the strong line of fencing that runs through the woods of Ashley Combe and Culbone, as far as Glenthorne, has come into existence, preventing the fugitive stags from taking this last desperate refuge. Nowadays, more commonly, they take to the water at the eastern end of the beach, coming down through the Horner valley to Bossington. Here, then, the hunt often ends, and spectators are treated to the extraordinary sight of huntsmen in scarlet clambering about the rocks of Orestone Point, or wading in hunting boots in the sea.