It was going to be a sunny autumn day, and so an adventure-ette was called for. The Sunseeker bus was running from Ilfracombe to Lynmouth – it’s an odd design with just open sides at the back. Friendly OAPs with their bus-passes, including a solitary grey-haired lady in strong boots ready for a good day’s walk, and an atmosphere of a proper jolly (a great term).
Some smart manouvering was required to get down Lynmouth Hill, reversing at a corner, and scattering oncoming cars onto the pavement. My hands were numb by Lynmouth, but thawed them out under a hot tap in the Gents. Felt nostalgic for the Bath Hotel where I had worked as a hall porter when I was 15 in 1969, like Manuel in Fawlty Towers, including the incompetence.
I never stop being amazed at Lynmouth Cliff Railway, though I have been using it all my life. It is powered by water, fed by a stream into the car at the top of the slope, and so is completely silent except for the sounds of the wheels on the rails. When I worked in Lynmouth we used to use it as a simple means of transport up the hill at the end of each working day, rather than a tourist trip, making friends with the conductors (whose names I have sadly forgotten).
I walked out of Lynmouth, past villas and hotels built by Victorians, for whom Lynton and Lynmouth was a classic picturesque landscape, and who came up with names like ‘Valley of Rocks’.
Walked on past the Christian community at Lee Abbey, along the private road (toll £2) towards Woody Bay, a holiday resort which never quite made it, being developed by fraudster Benjamin Lake. Although it had its own railway station on the Barnstaple-Lynton line, which is now open for short steam train rides – I was so excited to see the train when we went past in the bus.
Then on past this strange sign in the rhododendrons at Woody Bay. The path went from dense woods, past waterfalls, then out into bleak open cliff paths. Just a few walkers, extraordinarily peaceful and beautiful. I was not dawdling, calculating in my head how far I had to go and how long it might take me, with the aim of meeting the bus at Parracombe without an undignified rush. Marching along in a determined way, clicking my walking stick in a rather smug manner, feeling so pleased to be able to surge up a hill without getting too breathless.
Turned inland at Heddon’s Mouth, past the Hunter’s Inn, then along a fine path towards Parracombe, that felt like an ancient bridleway that had never been turned into a proper road. The usual satisfaction at walking along a public right-of-way that runs up a private drive, this one to Heddon Mill, and then down into Parracombe. Then 15 minutes later, right on time, the bus came along and took me to Barnstaple. Only one brief stop for a sandwich on the cliffs, and so faster than my usual rate, doing 15km in just over 3 hours. Pleasantly tired.