The stony white road from the station and from Lynmouth struggles up the hill to a small open space—what in any Italian hill-town would be called a piazza, though it is only a few score feet in extent—opposite the church and the Valley of Rocks Hotel. This, I believe, is the only level spot in the village, save a club tennis-ground, which has been levelled out of the hillside, for the few shops or houses run precipitately down the little side-streets, or up towards the top of Hollerday Hill. It is also the original site of the old village of Lynton, when it had no fame as a holiday resort, and barely a history, being left alone on its lofty cliff, as of no special value to anyone; for, although the present parish church is partly Perpendicular and partly of a later date, while the chancel is modern, it stands upon the foundations of a small earlier church, which, surrounded by a few poor cottages, with walls of cob and roof of thatch, a rough ladder leading to a sort of loft, which was the sleeping apartment of all the family, and a little patch of herb garden in front of each, comprised the village of Lynton when we find it first, in the thirteenth century, mentioned as a parish in the "valor" of Pope Nicholas.
Below it, then as now, lay the small fishing village of Lynmouth—or Leymouth, as it was formerly called—a similar group of rude small cottages, clustered in isolation, with the sea before and the great moors behind, the people subsisting chiefly on coarse bread, salted meat, and fish—often stale fish, for fish was the one thing of value that Lynmouth yielded, and that would go to some representative of Ford Abbey, under whose rule Lynton and Lynmouth came. Yet it should surely have been easy, with a little help and instruction, to have grown many varieties of vegetable food, for flowers grow in abundance, and evergreens grow to a great size and beauty, while the variety of trees is remarkable—larch, chestnut, sycamore, oak, ash and birch, elm and beech, showing the fertility of the soil and the temperateness of the climate, in spite of the seaward position of the village.
But it is not the history of Lynton, nor its old associations, which calls us to it, but its beauty entirely. Stand upon one of the terraces of Lynton on a still summer evening, looking east to Countisbury Foreland, and see the water of the bay still and gleaming in the evening light, the great headlands ruddy and golden above it. The steep sides of the gorge of the East Lyn are warm and sunlit, they glow richly with purple and russet; over the rocks of the valley a faint flicker of grey mist begins to hang above the stream. From the trees around and below comes a great cawing of rooks, drowning the rush of the water below; they settle into their nests in the great green elms, then suddenly there is a caw, a scurry, a rush, and they fly up as if shot out of the tree-tops. There is a flapping of wings, and much angry sound; they circle once or twice, and then sink back to their homes again. It is a beautiful sight to watch a rook volplaning down to a tree as you can watch them from the terraces at Lynton; moving on a level with your eye, you can see the detail of each movement of their wings, see them let themselves drop through the air, yet with muscles taut and legs and claws stretched ready for a foothold on the particular slender branch which is home.
As you watch, amused and interested, as this protracted nightly programme is enacted—and never yet, throughout England, have any rooks gone to bed quietly—the colour fades from the headland and the sea, the mist has gained on the valley, drawing its grey wisps and streamers higher and higher up the sides of the gorge; the tide has gone out, very smooth and still, leaving a broad flat stretch of wet shore in the little bay, which shines with the last of the daylight like a clear mirror; the lights of the houses in Lynmouth begin to show through the trees, pale yellow in the twilight, patches of soft colour, rather than light; and the rushing of the river sounds very loud because of the silence of the birds. Inland the hills lie, fold behind fold, in gentle, misty curves; it is that exquisite hour which only northern summers give, when the slowly-fading twilight and the slowly brightening moon hold earth and sky in a faint pellucid light.
Or take a walk, on a bright May morning, from Lynton to Heddon's Mouth, along the cliffs, and see open before you, step by step, seven miles of the loveliest coast scenery, perhaps, in England.
First there is a wooded strip of road, called the North Walk, which runs round the side of Hollerday Hill. The shadows are dewy in the early morning, and birds are singing from the green mass of the trees on either hand; there is a faint smell of wood-fires from the houses below, acrid and very pleasant; the chestnut leaves are just opening, and the sycamores have still the early flush of red on their tiny leaves; it is very cool and fresh under the trees. Then the wood stops abruptly, and the road runs out on the bare hillside and winds round the great headland to the Valley of Rocks. Behind, the wall of cliff rises steeply, great boulders and outcrop of rock, fantastic in the sunlight; below it falls sheer to the sea, where the misty blue turns green at the base of the cliff. Looking down the sheer slope, which is dull brown with last year's heather, and grey with the wiry grey grass that grows on moors and mountains, I could see the grey backs of the gulls, flying far below me. It was a very still morning, but I saw a fishing-smack, which had been lying motionless, catch a sudden rise of wind and come about, leaving a white circle of foam in her wake. From the height where I walked she looked infinitely little, like a ship in a fairy-tale, no bigger than a walnut shell; I could see the clear small reflection of her tiny hull in the smooth water, her sails rosy-tinted in the morning sunlight, very beautiful and magical. There was no fleck of cloud in all the wide blue of the sky, but the horizon was hidden by a faint haze, sunlit but impenetrable, and from somewhere in the mist came the reiterated wails of a siren, from some ship groping its way up the Bristol Channel.
I rounded a corner from shadow into sun, and below me lay a tiny creek, a churn of foam round its rocks, the blue water running green and sandy in the shallows, and a flock of wheeling gulls to possess it; before me rose the great crag of the Castle Rock, each plane and angle of its twisted slate pile cut sharply in light and shadow, and against this sullen grey background a newly flowered gorse bush blazed in the sunlight.
