Today the path was back to its best: plenty of climb and descent and stupendous views. I'm now just 22 miles from the finish (and less than 6,000 ft). Photos and summary on Komoot here.
Straight out of Combe Martin and up what I naively assumed was the Great Hangman, cos it looked, well big.
Shoulda read the guide better - that was only the Little Hangman. Great Hangman is about 350ft higher and is the highest sea cliff in England at 820 ft. When I got to the top of it and looked back, it was clear which was the bigger!
The apocryphal legend of a sheep stealer accidentally strangled by his booty’s tether appears not to be the origin of the name, which is more prosaically derived from old Celtic and Germanic words for sloping hill.
Leslie Charteris’ character
Simon Templar (aka The Saint) in Meet the Tiger stayed on Great Hangman in an
abandoned World War I pillbox so he could find out about a Chicago gangster
staying in Baycombe (=Combe Martin).
From here there's quite a lot of high-level walking along one of the few coastal heathland habitats in England. The early-ish morning haze was still very evident so not much in the way of views or hills. Although it feels like quite desolate terrain here the occasional sign to a car park is a reminder that the road isn't far away. One of these is near the Glass Box, marked on the OS map, which according to my taxi driver is a refuge of sorts for the comedian Bill Bailey.
But then the path dips down significantly into the heavily wooded Heddon's Cleave valley. The paths on the approach to this are very close to the edge and spectacular - not for vertigo sufferers. It goes down pretty much to sea level and then all the way back up again so it's quite a stiff climb but one that allowed me to get a steady rhythm going so it was soon done. The only difficulty is with the bugs (especially horseflies) that prefer the shade. I've read that one tip is to put double-sided sticky tape on the back of one's hat to minimise rear attack. Hmm
At the mouth of the valley is an old lime kiln. The cove here is so isolated that during WW2 a German U-Boat captain apparently allowed his men ashore for
relaxation without fear of detection. You can get some idea from this photo which shows the high level path and the valley track as well.
That was really the last big climb and from here on it was largely across open hill-top territory. The path again goes close to the edge
Approaching Lynton there are sigificant sections along roads with occasional detours into fields. This area is still being finalised after a lot of recent erosion damage. Through the estate of Lee Abbey, a Christian conference, retreat, and holiday centre and into the Valley of Rocks
The setting for part of R D
Blackmore’s Lorna Doone, it has impressed and inspired many writers, not always
with joy. As Letitia Landon put it, in 1831, "Gloomy vale! if thou couldst
be haunt for human misery, half our life were spent with thee" . Cheerful,
huh?
It has also been home for hundreds of years to a herd of feral goats. Once passed the view back is as good as any on the whole path
From here the path sadly is tarmac all the way into Lynton but I'm soon admiring the water operated Cliff Railway which joins the two villages of Lynton and Lynmouth. Once in Lynton it wasn't hard to find a tea shop for my customary re-hydration (and a Devoshire Cream Tea!) but amazingly I could find not a single pub in the whole village (boo) so I made do with the Valley of the Rocks Hotel (hooray).
Gainsborough honeymooned in
Lynmouth and Shelley worked on Queen Mab here. The Sillery Sands naturist beach
is barely (!) a mile away.
Lynton suffered badly in the
floods of 1952 (otherwise a very good year, by the way) with 230mm (9 inches in
old money) of rain falling in one day. The resulting flood waters and
accumulated debris destroyed over 100 buildings, 28 of the 31 bridges, and
washed 38 cars out to sea. 34 people died and 420 were homeless as a result. There is
a scale model of the village before the flood in the memorial hall near the harbour.
Some still believe that the event was caused by experimental cloud seeding by
the RAF.
As for Lynmouth, the well-known British rock
band InMe refer “semi-frequently” (so, probably not very much) to Lynmouth in
their songs and in James Herbert’s The Secret of Crickley Hall the village of
Hollow Bay is based on it.
There is an extraordinary tale involving the Lymouth lifeboat that I'm still stunned by:
In 1899 the three masted
ship Forest Hall was in severe trouble but the Lynmouth lifeboat couldn’t
launch into the gale that had been blowing all that day. Jack Crocombe, the
coxswain, decided to take the 10 ton vessel by road to launch from the more
sheltered Porlock, 13 miles away. To do so took from 8 pm until 6.30 am the
following day. It took 20 horses and 100
men, needed a section of road to be widened, a climb (and difficult descent) of
over 1,400 ft, the demolition of a garden wall and some tree felling. Then the
crew had to row for an hour in heavy seas but they rescued all aboard with no
loss of life. Unless you count the poor horses, 4 of which died of exhaustion.
This extraordinary story was the subject of C Walter Hodges 1969 children’s
book The Overland Launch and the feat was re-enacted in 1999, albeit in better
weather, in daylight and on better roads. Otherwise exactly the same.
Lynmouth is where Nic and I start tomorrow's walk. From up here it looks delightful but I suspect we'll have quite a climb to pay for starting at sea level!
So just the 12.3 miles tomorrow (graded "moderate") which should take about 6 hours so with an early start I hope we can again finish before 3 pm to avoid the worst of the heat. The forecasters have changed their mind, too: they say it'll be sunny and hot all the way to Sunday's finish now 😀. Yippee.
I'm certainly enjoying this final phase of the walk and starting to wonder what I might do afterwards - any suggestions?
Peter
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