We walked back through the village and turned left over the pack horse bridge. The lane quickly dwindled into a narrowish track, bordered by ivy and briar covered banks, but the footing is solid, and this would make a good walk in any season. Above us to the north was thick woodland, and to the right there were far-reaching views over Horner woods and Dunkery.
We ignored the track which promised to take us straight to Selworthy Beacon, and pressed on into Selworthy village itself to see its landmark church. Painted white and standing on an eminence, the church can be seen for miles from the south. Not surprisingly, therefore, it is much visited, and the National Trust owns the village and large hunks of the surrounding country. Sir Thomas Acland, once the landowner, built most of the cottages in the 1820’s to form a “model” village, but now that they have stood for almost two centuries, you would have to be some kind of carping Marxist to dismiss them as just a paternalistic fake.
The church’s airy interior is marked by a splendid gallery into which, sadly, the general public are prohibited from ascending. A lengthy Roll of Honour generously includes those parishioners whom God permitted to return, as well as those He didn’t, although a former rector must have spent many hours pondering on the irony that his son fell in the South African War in some dusty dorp on the veldt with the name of Bethlehem.
The track up Selworthy Combe starts just on the western side of the church. It makes a pleasant climb through ancient woodland, with a stream splashing through the floor of the combe, until the path divides. Here we turned right and soon emerged on to open moorland. When you reach the road which crosses North Hill from Minehead, you need to bear left, and not take the metalled lane straight ahead. The track then takes you up to Selworthy Beacon, from which there are grand views to the south.
We followed the Coastal Path onwards towards the sea, meeting more walkers than you would normally expect in a month of bank holiday Sundays. The reason probably is the handy proximity of the car park and view point at the terminus of the “Hill Road” which comes over from Minehead. The sea was soon below us and, beyond, the Welsh coast, crystal clear in the north easterly breeze. As we picked our way down steep and stony Hurlstone Combe, the cliffs beyond Porlock Weir, and then Porlock beach itself, swung into view.
At Hurlstone Point we turned left and the path took us through woodland and over a foot bridge into Bossington village. The road winds round towards Porlock and at a sharp left hand turn we went straight on where it was signed “No Through Road” to pick up the Coastal Path again. Here it is a wide, grassy, lane between high banks covered with brambles. Exmoor can be a desert for dedicated blackberry pickers like ourselves as the altitude, and the carefully tended beech hedges, mean that briar patches are few and far between. The rotten weather of the past two summers hasn’t helped, either. Here, however, at sea level, there was an abundance of ripe fruit which provided rich pickings on our return from Porlock.
It is best to keep to the Coastal Path until you reach the top of Sparkhayes Lane before turning left into Porlock. If you take an earlier turn, you will land up in a maze of social housing projects on the eastern fringe of the village. We walked up Sparkhayes Lane until we reached the main street, and turned left into the Royal Oak.
The Royal Oak has claimed to be “the only pub in Porlock,” something which “The Ship” at least would feel entitled to dispute. The thrust of some lively internet exchanges between Porlock drinkers appears to be that “The Ship”, known as the “Top Ship” to distinguish it from the “Bottom Ship” at nearby Porlock Weir, is more of a hotel, and only fit for people “over sixty five.” With just three years to go before I can “go down the post office” as some pensioners put it, I can see their point.
The “Royal Oak” is undeniably a pub. Locals were sitting at the bar holding a lengthy conference about association football, and at the far end of the extensive room there was the hallowed collection of fruit machines, pool table, and jukebox, the sine qua non of any self-respecting boozer. None were in use. Out the back there is a skittle alley.
Makers of industrial beers and lagers appear to be competing to create post-modernist beer taps of remarkable size. They are so tall that a careless slip on a wet floor might find you impaled on one like a hooked fish. The surprises among the real beers were Adnams Explorer and Courage Best. As a sort of Bristolian, I have a sentimental attachment to Courage beer. I know that it is now brewed in Reading, or even in Yorkshire, wherever that is, but I can still remember the thick malty cloud which hung over Bristol on a Monday morning when they were brewing in what was the old Georges brewery. I had a pint of Courage, and my wife went for fashionable Adnams. I had called it right as the Adnams, although statistically stronger, failed “to punch its weight” as Sheila summed it up in a favoured family phrase. Indeed, the Adnams was a curiously feeble lemon colour, suspiciously like the dreaded lager, and a far cry from the manly bitters which made the name of the Suffolk coast brewery. The Courage was a good, honest pint, the sort of thing no one would be ashamed to be seen drinking, from Portishead to Peasedown.
You can eat as well as drink at the “Royal Oak”. There were three “specials” chalked up, but I expect that the “caff” food is the most popular on the menu. You can even get an all-day breakfast if you like which includes, miracle of miracles, the ultimate constituent of that glory of English cuisine – fried bread. Let’s face it; how many of us would choose to go to the gallows, or face the revolutionary firing squad, after a plate of lemon cucumber tofu salad? The diners that lunchtime, however, didn’t look exactly as if they were carrying a torch for the politically incorrect. They sat round the edge of the room, side by side and in pairs as if in charabanc seats, staring morosely at the disputants at the bar. The grey pound had never looked greyer.
We retraced our steps to Bossington, picking blackberries as we went. Half way down Sparkhayes Lane, we spotted at the gate of a camp site a flag of St George, torn in half by the winds. It seemed a ragged but appropriate emblem of our country of today - half-price England. That afternoon at Lords, our national cricket team, clad in its red and blue jimjams, was being humiliated by Australia yet again.
We were behind schedule when we reached Bossington, and headed back through the village with its remarkable tall chimney stacks down the lane to Allerford.
If we had had more time, we could have turned into the woods again at West Lynch and walked back past St Agnes Fountain.
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