Ten Mile Walk from Hawkcombe Head to the Ship Inn, Porlock Weir, via Porlock Marsh

This walk has a little of everything – bracken and heather moorland, a beautiful wooded river valley, a salt marsh, and finally a climb from sea level to fourteen hundred feet in fewer than three miles. The going to begin with, however, couldn’t have been easier as the narrow path from Hawkcombe Head, marked by the remains of a broken signpost, dives off between the heather and bracken.
Soon the coast and the sea appear, framed by the edges of the combe, and the path climbs down into ancient oak woodland.

It follows the river, and so there is no chance of missing your way. Even after the recent heavy rain, the fords were easy to cross and, where there was deeper water, we found handy footbridges.

The woods are a haunt of the wild pony herds, especially lower down the valley where there are riverside pastures. The path eventually comes out of the woods and into a lane bordered by pleasant cottages. If one called “The Peep-Out” is a typical Exmoor hideaway, with the river opposite the house falling over a succession of steep steps, another further on is not. Indeed, anyone who has been frustrated by the notorious rigour of the Exmoor National Park planning office may take comfort from this particular edifice. The setting is magical with the river flowing through the garden. The pedigree of the house, however, complete with a black and white mosaic approach, is by Walt Disney out of Ludwig of Bavaria. Ambitious Exmoor property developers will take comfort from its singular architecture.

Further on the charm of Hawkcombe becomes more conventional as the lane follows the river. The climate here seems positively tropical compared with the head of the valley. Flowers are everywhere, and in one cottage garden a waterfall cascaded between luxuriant hydrangeas.

Hawkcombe seamlessly becomes Porlock, and soon the lane tips you out into the Porlock tourists know so well with its winding high street and lethal traffic. We crossed the road and, turning right, soon came to the entry into Sparkhayes Lane which takes you away from the village and out towards the sea.

When we reached the foreshore, we turned left on to the coastal path which took us across Porlock Marsh towards Porlock Weir. On our right loomed the mass of Bossington Hill. In 1942 a Liberator bomber, hopelessly lost in dreadful flying conditions after a U-boat patrol in the Bay of Biscay, clipped the edge of the hill and crashed into the marsh. Only one member of the crew survived. You will find their memorial at the side of the path.

The grassy path also takes you past the remnants of a submarine forest. The shingle bank is deteriorating in places, and a decision has been taken to allow the sea to go where it wilt for the time being. Eventually the path disappears, and the going for the last few hundred yards is over the shingle before some steps take you onto the road just outside Porlock Weir.

Porlock Weir, even on a greyish day, is a nice spot with its backdrop of wooded hills and its tiny harbour. If you cross the lock gates, you come to a rank of thatched cottages called Gibraltar perched on top of the shingle. It must be some experience to sit there by your fireside in a winter storm, listening to the sea crashing on the shore within yards of your home. The “Anchor Hotel” closed in a hurry – the ghostly dining room tables are still covered by their table cloths – but the Ship Inn next door is very much in business. The bar is a long, narrow room with low black beams, although there are a considerable number of tables outside facing the water where most punters choose to sit. There were four cask ales available, together with the usual industrial concoctions and a remarkable series of taps which distributed draught wine by grape variety; cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay-semillon, and so forth. Living as we do in a complete backwater, this was a magical emanation of vinous progress. What next? Taps, perhaps, which spurted particular vineyards, Chateaux Petrus or Lafitte, perhaps?

Sadly, I didn’t see them in use, and we chose to drink Cotleigh Harrier. Typically, when we are all ready to taste a brew new to us, the barrel gave out as our pints were being poured. We switched to Otter, which is a strongish bitter with good, typical colour. It also came in the brewery’s charming glasses with its standing otter on the side. Meanwhile the lady behind the bar was pumping bravely at the new barrel of Harrier and so, just as we drained the Otter, we were able to move on to our original choice. Harrier is a modern version of the “boy’s bitter” I used to drink as a youth. You would have drowned in it before you were incapable. Even so Harrier is an excellent beer to choose at lunchtime. Despite its low alcohol strength of 3.5% and its lemony colour, it bursts with flavour. The brewery claims that it appeals to the “more modern, health-conscious, drinker.” Well, that recommendation should kill it dead if nothing else does but, despite that ghastly bit of copy-writing, we liked the beer.
The Ship serves plenty of grub at reasonable prices. The menu comes on one of those ugly laminated cards, but I don’t expect that it’s felt necessary to change it too often. The Ship knows what the tourist trade likes and gives it to them. That marker of pub grub prices, the baguette, comes in at around a fiver, and there is a wide selection of popular fillings. You can have them all in sandwiches if you prefer, something of a rarity in some pubs these days, and welcome to those who find eating a baguette as tiring as a visit to a dental hygienist. We also approved of the pub’s offer of all its main courses in small and large portions, suitably priced; something others would do well to imitate.
We eventually accepted the inevitable and set off to climb to Pitcombe Head. We walked up past the Porlock posh noshery, “Andrews On The Weir”, (lunch a reasonable £10 for two courses,) and turned right towards Worthy tollhouse. After only a short way a narrow path started upwards to our left, and we began to climb. It’s a steep haul, and I soon found myself thinking of President Sarkozy of France, a mere sprog compared with a bus card holder like myself, collapsing while jogging a few days previously. I consoled myself by remembering that I wasn’t married to Carla Bruni, either, and eventually the track became wider and the gradient more tolerable as we approached the toll road above Yearnor Mill.
After a few yards on the road, we turned up the no-through road towards Pitt Farm, where a team of builders was refurbishing the old house and buildings. Behind the farm we turned left, and then we followed a broad track up through forestry until we reached the main Porlock-Lynmouth road opposite the old AA box.

It stands redundant, a reminder of a more gracious period of motoring when AA men rode to the rescue on motor cycles with sidecars, dressed in khaki uniforms like despatch riders of the Great War, deferentially saluting drivers like my father who sported the chrome and yellow AA badge on the radiator grille of their Morris Minor shooting brakes. We crossed the road and passed a lovely mare and her foal as we walked from Pitcombe Head along the bridleway back to our truck.