Barnstaple, says Mr. Warner of the eighteenth century, “is by far the most genteel town in North Devon.” This is a very happy word; though why a town whose history includes the days of Athelstane, a town that has had a castle and a priory and a life by no moans dull, should be “genteel” when all is said, is hard to understand. The nice public gardens and open spaces, the air of clean prosperity, and the colonnade with the fluted pillars give it an eighteenth-century air, at latest. Yet, if we look behind the church with the crooked spire we shall find the brown stone grammar-school where Bishop Jewell and the poet Gay learnt their lessons; and in the narrow street near the Imperial Hotel are some almshouses whose granite pillars and beautiful moulded gutters date from 1627; and spanning the river is the “right great and sumptuus bridge of stone” that was “made long sins by a merchaunt of London caullid Stamford.” Nothing is left of the priory where Sir Theobald de Grenville was excommunicated with bell, book, and candle; nor of the castle that belonged at various times to Judhael of Totnes, and the Tracy who murdered Becket, and Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. Even at the beginning of the Civil War it was “a place of small strength,” and during the struggle it led a hard life. The Colonel Basset who defended it while it was in royalist hands figures among John Prince’s Worthies. “This gentleman as to his stature was somewhat short, but of an high crest and noble mind. As to his religion he did not boast great matters, but lived them … he being as plain in his soul as he was in his garb, which he resolved should be proud of him rather than he of it.”
The road that crosses the hill between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe leaves the town by the suburb of Pilton, whose white houses and gaily painted shutters and high walls have rather a foreign air. There is a long but well-graded hill before us, and a surface that is not very good. Each flowery village is followed by another as gay, and each green valley leads into another as green, and still we climb higher and higher till we come to the heather. For a little time the scenery is dull; then the road winds down a deep valley, and we see Ilfracombe in a gorge below.
Ilfracombe, like everyone’s grandmother, was lovely when it was young. That, however, was some time ago, and at present its charms are a matter of taste. That thousands love its piers and pierrots is evident at a glance, but some of us can only look sadly at its bluffs and sparkling sea, and long for the days that are no more. The change must have come very quickly, for only fifty years ago George Eliot thought Ilfracombe the loveliest sea place she ever saw, and found Tenby tame and vulgar after it. “But it would not do,” she adds, “for those who can’t climb rocks and mount perpetual hills; for the peculiarity of this country is that it is all hill and no valley.”
There are hills, and valleys, too, in astonishing numbers along this coast. The contour of the road between Ilfracombe and Porlock makes a sinister picture. But those thirty miles include some of the finest scenery in England; and by making them more than thirty, one may avoid some of the worst gradients without missing any of the beauty.
For the first few miles the road clings to the brow of the cliff, twisting round curve after curve, and mounting and falling and mounting again. All the colours of the rainbow are in the landscape. There are headlands of every shade of purple and red, foliage of every tint of green, shadows that are intensely blue, sands that are really golden, and a sea of a colour that has no name. We swing round a curve and see the white houses of Combe Martin wedged between the brown cliffs, and a few minutes later we turn away from the sea and mount the long village street. Combe Martin may be defined as length without breadth; for though it is a mile and a half long it is in no place wider than two little houses. It has contributed in its day to the honour of its country, for Edward III. and Henry V., it is said, made use of the silver-mines of Combe Martin during their wars with France. Elizabeth gave cups of the same silver to her friends; but Charles I., though ingenious in the art of extracting the precious metals, sought here in vain.
The road, as it climbs up to Exmoor, grows rather rough. From Blackmoor Gate the direct way to Lynton is of course through Parracombe, where there are two hills of some renown, a descent and a climb. The inconvenience here is in the fact that the change from the downward to the upward gradient is in the middle of the village, and a run is out of the question. None the less this hill, though steep, is quite practicable; but the still more famous hill between Lynton and Lynmouth thoroughly deserves its reputation, and, after personal experience, I strongly advise motorists to avoid it unless they have absolute confidence in the staunchness of their car, the power of their brakes, and the scope of their steering-locks. Its difficulty lies, not only in the gradient—though at one point that is steeper than one in four—but in the extremely acute angle that occurs at the steepest spot and makes it impossible, if there should chance to be so much as a wheelbarrow by the wayside, for a car of any size to turn without pausing. An added difficulty is the looseness of the surface, for the constant use of drags has ploughed the road into a mass of stones and sand. It is possible now to take cars on the “lift,” or funicular railway that runs up and down the cliff; but it seems to me that the simplest plan is to drive round by Simonsbath to Lynmouth. There is shelter there for both man and car; but those who prefer to stay at Lynton—and they are many—may leave their cars at the bottom of the hill, and mount it themselves, with their luggage, in the cliff railway.
At Blackmoor Gate, then, instead of taking the road to Parracombe, we must go straight on till we turn to the left at Challacombe. The country is not inspiring. Technically, I suppose, this is part of Exmoor; but there is nothing in these undulating fields and hedgerows to suggest the hunting of the red deer by Saxon kings, or the jealous guarding of forest-rights by the Conqueror. For William, though he gave away these lands, was very strict about the hunting. “He loved the tall deer as though he had been their father,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. His love was like that of the little boy who was so fond of animals that he always went to see the pigs killed.
LYNMOUTH.
At Simonsbath there is a sudden outburst of beauty. The tiny village lies in a hollow among the fir-clad hills, and makes an idyllic picture with its stream and bridge; and here the road turns and winds up to a fine expanse of true moorland. It is sterner than Dartmoor. There is no luxuriance of bracken here, nor acres of purple, but mile beyond grassy mile of stately, rolling hills, very austere at noonday, but in the light of a summer sunset transfigured into splendour. The new road to Lynmouth turns abruptly back upon the hillside, and on it we plunge into the green depths.[17]