Exmoor Pubs & Walks – Nine Mile Walk up the Barle Valley to the Exmoor Forest Inn, Simonsbath

This is the classic river valley walk on Exmoor. The path in the opposite direction from Withypool to Tarr Steps will have its enthusiasts, as will the Exe valley between Winsford and Exford. Neither of them, however, have the haunting and lonely beauty of the stretch of water upstream from Withypool past Cow Castle to Simonsbath. We started at Bradymoor Gate, the stretch of moorland above Landacre Bridge, where it is easy to park. Quixotically, you won’t find Bradymoor named on any map, just on the meet cards of the local hunts. If you can find a space in the car park at Withypool, however, you would enjoy the walk up the river to Landacre, and you can celebrate the addition of three miles to your journey when you return by having a cream tea in the excellent tearoom opposite the shop. On your outward journey you would walk up the steep hill from Landacre Bridge past Lanacre Farm, which is spelled without the consonant that no one ever bothers to pronounce, and at the top turn left into the track which we followed ourselves.
The track is easy to follow. Where it divides at a broken signpost, we veered left and then downhill towards the river. On our left we could look down towards the bridge, the sun glinting silver on the water before it glided through the ancient stone arches. In front of us stretched the deep combe of Sherdon Water running down to meet the Barle at Sherdon Hutch.

The track passes down a longish stretch of sheep-grazed moor before eventually falling into a sunken road which leads into a large block of conifers. The way through the regimented pines is necessarily gloomy but the river is always visible to your left and the monotony is constantly broken by streams breaking across the path. You emerge from the trees at Horsen Ford with its footbridge, on which you can stand and watch the dark and silent water rush towards Landacre between banks crowded with montbretia. The path itself, however, continues through the plantation until it leads across some marshy ground towards the two mounds of the Calf and Cow Castle. The bridleway passes behind the hillocks, but it’s not difficult to follow the bank of the river if you prefer, with just a few rocky places to scramble round past the deep and still pools in the elbow of the river.

This is the best of the moor as the dark river flows through the high and rounded slopes of the hills. The path runs on until just before the mass of Flexbarrow rises above the river there are the ruins of the buildings of the Wheal Eliza. It is one of the many testaments on Exmoor to industrial vanity. “Wheal” derives in Cornish from “huel”, and simply means a mine working. The Wheal Eliza was opened to extract iron ore but the quantities were never viable. The spot was also notorious as the place in 1858 where one John Burgess buried his daughter, Anna, after murdering her as the girl disliked his mistress. Thankfully, only a last few crumbling signs of the mine remain, and the spot remains as isolated and beautiful as ever.

Nearby were patches of wild cornflowers.
Just beyond Flexbarrow we encountered a large group of primary schoolchildren sitting on the grass and receiving a local history lesson. It is an easy hike from here on into Simonsbath, finally through woodland which leads to the road just below the Exmoor Forest Inn. It’s not an inn, of course, it’s quite plainly a hotel, but none the less pleasant for all that. It’s made very clear to you at the entrance that you should take your boots off, but you will not feel in the least out of place padding about in your socks. There is even a large cupboard just inside the door with towels to clean off your dog. The bar is very much a hotel bar, but even so there are enough stuffed animals and hunting prints on the walls to create that essential Exmoor drinking ambience of sudden death.

There are also three real beers on tap. On that morning you could choose between Otter, Cousin Jack, and, its pump marked by a handwritten card, a mystery tipple named as “Honey Buzzard”. The very pleasant chap behind the bar explained that it was a Cotleigh porter, difficult to move in summer, and on offer at £2 a pint. If there is one thing in this world which I cannot resist, it’s a pint of porter. It came up with a creamy, frothy head which we were invited to slurp off so that the glasses could be topped up to a full measure. That beats waiting for ten minutes for a pint of Dublin Guinness to be drawn and have its twee shamrock dribbled on the top. The Buzzard was a dream of a pint and, of course, we had two each. Given half a chance, I would have made off with the whole cask. Presumably, the “Honey Buzzard” is the same bird usually called by the Cotleigh brewery plain, simple “Buzzard” and, thankfully, generally available in bottles if a rare sighting on draught.
We are beginning to be able to grade Exmoor grub by price. At the top end of the market in the premier league there are a few establishments with the pretensions, and pretentiousness, of keeping a starred chef. You will leave them with a much lighter wallet and an empty tummy. Then there are places like the Exmoor Forest Inn in the “championship” league where you can spend a bit if you wish – fresh fish and seafood will always cost – but you can get a good plateful for less than a tenner if that’s more your mark. In the autumn we went back for supper. We enjoyed two excellent starters; a cheese pastry basket filled with waldorf salad, and wild field mushrooms in garlic, each with tasty brown bread and a dish of butter, at £5.50. We both had panfried fillets of local trout with a big dollop of dill mayonnaise at £12.95, which came with a side serving of vegetables including new potatoes, butternut squash, leeks, and calabrese.
We walked back the way we had come. We could have taken for the sake of variety the high route via Winstitchen and Picked Stones, but it would have been an anti-climax after the river. After all, even when it’s a there and back again walk, you enjoy two ways of seeing the same thing. As we climbed back from the river up on to Bradymoor, the herd of ponies which is always on these heights came straight at us down the lane, veering off into the heather only at the last moment.