Ten Mile Walk from Nutcombe Bottom to the Foresters Arms, Dunster, via Clicket

Weird places, woods. One minute you know exactly where you are, and the next you’re completely lost. It’s no wonder that children’s literature is packed with multiple tots lost deep in the forest, constantly waylaid by cross-dressing wolves, or enticed to sample bits of cottages made from doubtful, if not illegal, substances. We hardly endured any major psychological trauma in search of the lost village of Clicket, but one member of the party suffered several critical sense of humour failures while uttering those words well-known to all walkers, “The map must be wrong.”
We parked at the spacious Nutcombe Bottom park off the road between Dunster and Timberscombe. Our intention was to walk south west through the woodland, keeping the road from Nutcombe to Luxborough on our right, until we were in striking distance of the footpath which would take us to Clicket. The trouble with walking through forestry is there are too many paths to choose from, and Sod’s Law decrees more often than not that, the broader and straighter the way, the more likely it is to lead you in the wrong direction. Our chosen path just fizzled out, but we knew that the road was somewhere on our right, and a step or two took us to it.
The woods here are a pleasing mix of trees, especially in late September, and we cut our losses by sticking to the narrow road, meeting only one or two vehicles in the process. After a longish climb we found ourselves walking along the edge of the wood, and we could look down over Timberscombe towards the sea.

The path to Clicket is clearly signposted, and we walked down a farm track, keeping to the left when we came to the farm itself and unhindered by quite the oldest collie dog in the world. As we passed beyond the farm buildings, to our left we saw a remarkable tangle of beech trunks, oddly reminiscent of a Henry Moore sculpture.

The ruins of Clicket can be found at the foot of the valley. There’s not much left of the little community which once numbered six dwellings and thirty inhabitants. Clicket once boasted a mill, but now there is little more than the ruins of a cottage and a little pack-horse bridge. There has been considerable speculation on why the village was abandoned sometime in the late 1800’s, one theory being that it was wiped out by a diphtheria epidemic.

One suspects that the truth is more mundane. Clicket Mill at the bottom of its narrow valley was inaccessible even then, and the grain was brought to it on the back of a donkey. The miller of Clicket obviously didn’t recognise the connection between commercial success and good communications. The real puzzle of Clicket is why they built the mill and the village there in the first place. Water supply on Exmoor is never a problem.

We crossed the river by the little bridge and took the footpath towards Bakers Farm, keeping the water on our left.

The track wound through woodland until it tipped us out into the road again and, when the Beech Tree crossroads was in sight, we turned left off the road and started to climb up to the forestry on Croydon Hill. Here Christmas trees stand in regimented ranks but there are good views to the right over Luxborough and the Brendons.

Soon we reached the open moorland of Withycombe Common. There is a bewildering choice of paths here, but we took the track signposted to Dunster which led past the summit of Black Hill and down past the deliciously named Withycombe Scruffets. There were grand views over the Bristol Channel towards Hinkley Point and then the track passed into old woodland.

We are still not sure where we went wrong. It may well have been where we forded a gated stream and went straight on up a steep bank. We probably should have turned left, to take us as intended to Withycombe Hill Gate. Instead we floundered along on to Withycombe Hill itself and only the use of a compass led us back in the right direction.
At last we found the Gate, and took the footpath down towards Dunster. It led us over the mediaeval Gallox Bridge, a rather more grandiose example than Clicket’s, and then a lane between some attractive cottages brought us down one side of the Foresters Arms.

The Foresters Arms is a long way from the centre of Dunster, and it must be difficult for it to gets its fair share of the tourist pound. It’s a big pub, recently refurbished, with plenty of seating for diners, but also all the trimmings of a “local”; darts board, pool table, and skittle alley.

There was a choice of two real beers, either Cotleigh 25 or Theakston’s Old Peculier (sic.) I was tempted by the Theakston’s, which had come a long way from Masham in North Yorkshire, but that dark and heavy old porter didn’t seem the thirst quencher which the occasion required. Cotleigh 25 is one of those golden beers which make a good lunchtime drink, but I wouldn’t fancy them in the evening. The brewery originally produced it as a celebration of twenty five years in the business, but it proved such a success that it was kept on as a permanent brand. It was created to appeal “to younger consumers” – oh dear – but it’s pretty good for all that. It wouldn’t hurt to be lower in alcohol than its 4%.
The Foresters helped us choose by providing a couple of free tasters in shot glasses, a courtesy which is always much appreciated. The Rock House at Dulverton and the Staghunters at Brendon are two more obliging hostelries which have done this for us recently. The Foresters had that slightly unworldly ambience that pubs tend towards on a Tuesday lunchtime in late September. Everyone seems slightly larger than life, as if you had stumbled on to the set of a television soap opera. Chief amongst the Foresters’ cast was that popular pub standby, the garrulous Irishman. His flight of verbal fancy so winged him away that the girl behind the bar was obliged to pull him up with, “Are you going to stand there all day talking or are you going to order a drink?” I have no idea what we had said which had attracted his interest, but suddenly he was there before us, like some Celtic genii, listing all the showbiz “artistes” which he particularly admired and had travelled the world to see in person...Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones and “ I tell ye the greatest of them all” – long pause for dramatic effect – “Barry Manilow.” It was probably our total indifference to the talents of the Brooklyn cantor that encouraged him to retreat to his table where thereafter he sat with his wife in rigid silence. Any quiet moments in the Foresters are filled by the pub parrot, who flaps and whistles away near the television set above the pool table. Only in this part of the world would a pub TV be tuned into the Countryside & Equestrian channel, showing a documentary about the Cheshire Draghounds. A blackboard proclaimed that there was no food that lunchtime. The pub website, the bar furniture, and a fully laid-up dining room glimpsed in the recesses of the building, would imply that this famine could be only temporary.
It should have been a couple of miles back to the car park at Nutcombe Bottom but we managed to make a trek of it. After retracing our steps across Gallax Bridge, we set off into forestry again where a wide track, guarded by a wooden bear, seduced from the true way and we landed up at the wrong end of Kings Hedge Coppice.

For the second time that day, the compass saved us.