South West Coast Path Day 2: Porlock to Lynmouth
Onwards we go. These 630 miles won’t walk themselves.
Today’s twelve mile walk ended up being 16.5 miles of coastal tromping along the wild Exmoor coastline, and a seven and a half hour long adventure. Being early on along our journey and still full of the purist’s enthusiasm for following the path, we retraced our steps from Porlock to Bossington where we left the path the night before to enter Porlock. This was our first mistake.
Wildlife caught our attention more than the footpath signs did and we ended up adding another couple of miles to our day thanks to a beautiful Comma butterfly and not concentrating on where we were going. This wasn’t ideal as getting the last (ridiculously early) bus back from Lynmouth to our car at the Porlock campsite was an integral part of the day’s plan.
We had only walked a few metres from the campsite when a lady in a floral blouse and postbox red jacket stopped us.
“No, you can’t have it. It’s mine.”
Pointing at her walking frame she explained she needed it for balance. Despite it being a fetching shade of shimmering blue, we reassured her that we had no intention of robbing her of it.
“Only problem is, the men can run away and I can’t keep up with them.”
Spotting her hooked walking stick balanced on the top, I suggested she could use that to pull them back in.
“My daughter says that if I do that she’ll kill me. I used to be a stunning redhead with all the boys running after me.”
With that, she wished us a nice day and made a beeline for the next unsuspecting walkers.
In addition to the Comma, our detour round and about Bossington offered us robins, swallows, goldfinches and a singing whitethroat, and as the path moved towards saltmarsh we were treated to linnets, a heron, and a flock of house sparrows guarding an abandoned barn which had been left to the elements following the 1990s breach of the shingle ridge. Community poetry commemorated the loss of the farmland and is worth some time to read and appreciate before following the shingle on to Porlock Weir.
Having faffed about so much at the start of the day, stopping for a coffee seemed like a bad idea, but I can recommend the cappucino ice creams that stepped in as a replacement from the little gift shop in Porlock Weir. Nice and portable to take with us along the beach and up into Yearnor Wood.
There were birds a-plenty singing in these woods.
The climb up from sea level is a steep one, but benches were conveniently placed so we could rest and pant in the humid forest. Fallen oaks and a tunnel led us higher, with a blue plaque in the woods to commemorate Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), mathematician and writer who worked on Charles Babbage’s early computing system and is considered to be the first computer programmer.
Landslides diverted our path several times, and led me to the cheesy realisation that the path I walked was not the same one that I first intended to walk all those years ago, nor is it the same as the one I’ll eventually finish somewhere down the line, with the path slowly and often imperceptibly shifting both ahead and behind.
An old Land Rover awaits rescue at Culborne Church. It’s not immediately obvious how it found itself there. Pretty sure it didn’t walk the coast path.
The woods wound around the 12th century church at Culborne, which would have made an excellent lunch stop had the D of E kids not had the idea before us, so we carried on unitl we found a fallen log to perch on and were treated to a soundtrack of wood warblers and wrens. The birds were out in force, with a great tit, gold crests, a chiffchaff and a black cap in good voice.
The sea remained tantalisingly out of sight for large chunks of the day, but the sound of waves reassured me that we hadn’t gone too far off course. There’s a new diversion thanks to the new King Charles III England Coast Path on this stretch, which adds an extra mile or so but very little benefit to walkers (unless you enjoy a pointless descent and ascent with no view of the sea and want to miss out on seeing the Sisters Fountain) and we wished we’d ignored HRH’s directions and stuck to the old path.
The afternoon progressed in a succession of climbs, with every downhill seemingly followed by two ups, and time left to catch the bus was disappearing at an alarming rate. By the time we reached the little church at Countisbury we still had 2.5 miles to cover and only 45 minutes left. As Ian’s legs are longer than mine, and he’s considerably fitter, we decided that he should power on ahead and try to catch the bus. If he made it, then he could bring the car back to collect his short and dejected walking companion that would hopefully have made it to Lynmouth hours later. Taxis aren’t cheap, so although it was a shame to split up, it made sense and I watched Ian disappear off into the distance.
Determined not to let the South West Coast Path get the better of me, I kept my pace up despite knowing that I was going to miss the bus, and deeply regretting not being just that tiny bit fitter. So it was with great surprise that I received a message on the power walk down into Lynmouth to say the bus was still there and the driver knew I was on my way! I saw very little of Lynmouth as I ran the last few hundred metres through town and collapsed onto the bus as the driver chuckled and the engine grumbled into life.
My advice for this section: Don’t get distracted by butterflies and poetry unless you’ve got enough pocket money for a taxi at the end of the day!
See you next time!