The glorious blue Atlantic is before one, with only Lundy Isle breaking the continuity of the horizon line. In very clear weather, and before a storm, far away in faintest blue, the Welsh coast can be seen to the north-west.
Suddenly the road dips down a combe; and Morwenstow tower, grey-stoned, pinnacled, stands up against the blue ocean, with a grove of stunted sycamores on the north of the church. Some way below, deep down in the glen, are seen the roofs and fantastic chimneys of the vicarage. The quaint lyche-gate and ruined cottage beside it, the venerable church, the steep slopes of the hills blazing with gorse or red with heather, and the background of sparkling blue sea half-way up the sky—from such a height above the shore is it looked upon—form a picture, once seen, never to be forgotten.
The bottom of the glen is filled with wood, stunted, indeed, but pleasant to see after the treeless desolation of the high land around.
A path leads from church and vicarage upon Morwenstow cliffs. On the other side of the combe rises Hennacliffe to the height of 450 feet above the sea, a magnificent face of splintered and contorted schist, with alternating friable slaty beds.
Half-way down Morwenstow cliff, only to be reached by a narrow and scarcely distinguishable path, is the well of St. Morwenna. Mr. Hawker repaired it; but about twenty years ago the spring worked itself a way through another stratum of slate, and sprang out of the sheer cliff some feet lower down, and falls in a miniature cascade, a silver thread of water, over a ledge of schist into the sea.
On a green spot, across which now run cart-tracks, in the side of the glen, stood originally, according to Mr. Hawker, a chapel to St. Morwenna, visited by those who sought her sacred well. The green patch forms a rough parallelogram, and bears faint traces of having been levelled out of the slope. No stone remains on another of the ancient chapel.
From the cliff an unrivalled view can be had of the Atlantic, from Lundy Isle to Padstow point. Tintagel Rock, with its ancient castle, stands out boldly, as the horn of a vast sweep against glittering water, lit by a passing gleam behind. Gulls, rooks, choughs, wheel and scream around the crag, now fluttering a little way above the head, and then diving down towards the sea, which roars and foams several hundreds of feet below.
The beach is inaccessible save at one point, where a path has been cut down the side of a steep gorse-covered slope, and through slides of ruined slate rock, to a bay, into which the Tonacombe Brook precipitates itself in a broken fall of foam.
The little coves with blue-grey floors wreathed with sea-foam; the splintered and contorted rock; the curved strata, which here bend over like exposed ribs of a mighty mammoth; the sharp skerries that run out into the sea to torment it into eddies of froth and spray—are of rare wildness and beauty.
It is impossible to stand on these cliffs, and not cite the ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα, παμμῆτόρ τε γῆ of the poet.