THE COAST, TO COUNTISBURY AND GLENTHORNE
The six miles or so of the North Devon coast between Lynmouth and
Glenthorne, where it joins Somerset, may best be explored from
Lynton by taking the coast-line on the way out, and returning by the
uninteresting, but at any rate not difficult, main road. The outward
scramble is quite sufficiently arduous. The road sets out at first,
artlessly enough, full in view of the sea. It rises from about the
sea-level at Lynmouth, steeply up to a height of some four hundred
feet at Countisbury, passing beneath a rawly red, new villa built on
the naked hillside by a wealthy person whose hobby it is said to be to
visit a fresh place almost every summer, to build a house, and then
to move away. The name of the house I forget; suffice it to say that
the Lynmouth people, gazing with seared eyes upon it, know it as “The
Blot.” Below, on the left, is the strand known as “Sillery Sands,”
which sounds like champagne. Some style them “Silvery” sands, others
even “celery”; but they are not “silvery”; and no celery, and still
less any champagne, is to be found there.
At the summit of this steep road are the few scattered cottages of
Countisbury, or “Cunsbear,” as the old writers have it. Few would
suspect that the names of Countisbury and Canterbury have an origin
nearly akin; yet it is so, “Kaint-ys-burig”--the “headland camp,” being
closely allied to the original Kaintware-burig, the “camp of the men of
Kent.” But to the writers of a generation ago, who wrote in a blissful
age when there were no students of the science of place-names to call
them to account, the name was set down as a contraction of “county’s
boundary.” Distinctly good as this may possibly be as an effort of the
imagination, it is not borne out by facts; for the county boundary did
not exist at the time when the name came into being, county divisions
having been settled at a much later date. Moreover, the boundary is a
good three miles distant. Old Risdon, writing in 1630, is even more
delightful. He takes what the scientific world styles the “line of
least resistance,” and gaily dismisses it with “probably the land of
some Countess.”
But there is not much of this Countisbury, about whose name there has
been so much said. Just a bleached-looking, weather-beaten church,
the “Blue Ball” inn, typical rural hostelry of these parts, and the
school-house. For the life of me, I do not know which drone the loudest
on a hot, drowsy summer afternoon; the bees or the school-children
at their lessons--the bees, I believe. And that is all there is to
Countisbury, you think. This, indeed, is the sum-total of the village,
but the parish itself ranges down to the Lyn, which forms the
boundary, as the curious may duly discover, set forth on the keystone
of the bridge that spans the stream, just outside the grounds of the
Tors Hotel, which itself is, therefore, in the parish of Countisbury.
[Illustration: THE “BLUE BALL.”]
There is little within the old church, with the exception of some
fine old characteristic West Country bench-ends, one of them bearing,
boldly carved, the heraldic swan of the Bohuns and the bezants of the
Courtenays.
We here come to that great projection, Countisbury Foreland, past the
school-house and by footpaths. A lighthouse, very new, very glaring,
with white paint and whitewashed enclosure-walls, near the head of
the point, sears the eye on brilliant sunshiny days. It was built so
recently as 1899, and equipped with the latest things in scientific
apparatus. It casts a warning ray on clear nights, it moans weirdly in
foggy weather, like the spirits of the damned; and, in addition, it has
machinery for exploding charges of gun-cotton at regular intervals.
It is wound up once in four hours, and then proceeds to automatically
produce thirteen explosions in the hour. So, in one way and another
it will be allowed the shipping of the Bristol Channel is well looked
after. From this point, the coast of South Wales is distinctly seen, or
is supposed to be. Visitors to Lynmouth have no desire to see it, for
the sight is a prelude to rainy weather. The Mumbles is twenty-three
miles distant, and yet the hoarse bellowing (or mumbling, if you like
it better) of the lighthouse siren there in thick weather is distinctly
heard, like the voice of a cow calling her calf.
Like all approaches to modern lighthouses, the cart or carriage-road
made to this at the Foreland is a stark, blinding affair of glaring
rock and loose stones, very trying to wheels, hoofs, or feet; and
the hillsides are covered with an amazing litter of loose stones
that have resided there ever since the very beginning of things. The
place looks like Nature’s rubbish-heap. The way to Glenthorne by the
coast-path, therefore, looks more enticing. Something was wrong with
the explosive-signal machinery, the day when this explorer chanced by;
something that refused to be speedily set right, and the lighthouse
man who was attending to it was not averse from ceasing work to give
directions and, incidentally, to get a rest. So, quitting awhile his
labours with refractory cogs, winches, and springs, he gave elaborate
guidance by which one might keep the path along the rugged cliffs to
Glenthorne. Not often does he find a stranger to hold converse with,
and his directions were so long and full of parentheses that one quite
forgot the beginning by the time the end was reached. But the burden
of it was, “You go through those woods--they don’t look like more’n
bracken from here, but they’re fair-sized trees, really--or else you
can get to the road at the top.”
“I’ll take the woods,” said I, having had enough of the glaring
sunshine; “they’ll be shady.”
“Yes--and full of flies,” returned the lighthouse man, “the place
fairly ’ums with ’em.”
How true that was: how entirely true! They are charming woods of
scrub-oak, hanging on the side of the scrambly cliff; and one
would fain rest there awhile in the shade, on a moss-covered rock,
beside the springs that trickle down the side of the cliff. But the
celebrated “hoss-stingurrs”--the large grey horse-flies--that inhabit
the place in force, and bite you through the thickest stockings,
forbid any idea of resting in that tormented spot, and the beautiful
thoughts that might have found expression in scenery so provocative
of literary celebration, are lost in the defensive operations that
accompany an undignified retreat. It is in places a very clamberous
path to Glenthorne, and at some points more than a little difficult
and dangerous. So few, evidently, and far between are those who come
this way, that the track kept open by the occasional explorer who
brushes aside the brambles and the branches that bar his path, is
almost overgrown by the time the next stalwart forces a passage. Here
and there a steep little gorge requires careful manœuvring; in some
places, where the track emerges upon the open, bracken-grown hillside,
descending alarmingly, and without a break, to the sea far below, it
traverses broken, rock-strewn slanting ground, where a slip would
send the incautious hopelessly rolling into the water; and at other
places all signs of a track are lost. It is here, as the stranger goes
chamoising up and down amid the tussocky bracken, that he feels sorry
for himself. The excursion steamboats passing up and down Channel, half
a mile out, command a fine uninterrupted view of these cliffs, and
the adventurer, questing perspiringly up and down for any sign of a
track, is fully aware that some fifty field-glasses are probably turned
upon his efforts. He, therefore, unostentatiously drops down amid the
bracken until those steamboats pass out of sight, beyond the Foreland.
One of the cruellest dilemmas is that which Fate is capable of
presenting the stranger in these perilous ways. He slips on a mossy
ledge under the shadow of lichened branches, and, to save himself,
grips in the half-light what he thinks to be a foxglove, but is really
a thistle. “Hold fast to that which is good,” say the Scriptures; and
although in other circumstances a thistle is scarcely a desirable grip,
yet, between the prospect of rolling down some hundreds of feet and the
certainty even of excoriated hands, there is but one possible choice.
In the middle of July, when the bracken is come to full growth, the air
is filled with the exquisite odour of it; a peculiar scent, heavy and
sweet, like that of a huge making of strawberry jam. And presently,
after much toil, you come to a broad green ride, where you may rest
awhile and luxuriously inhale that fragrance.
Point Desolation is the name given to one of the headlands on the
way, and “Rodney” the name of a cottage, now deserted, in a dark
cleft, overhung with trees. Finally, the green drive conducts to a
very welcome granite seat overlooking a wide expanse of sea, and
thence through a gateway marked “private.” This is the entrance to
the Glenthorne grounds, which are not so strictly private as the
stranger might suppose. Through the gateway, the path continues,
bordered here with laurels and fir-trees, and so dips down toward the
mansion, built in 1830, in the domestic Gothic style, on a partly
natural terrace, three parts of the way down the wooded cliffs and
hillsides that go soaring up to a height of five hundred feet. The
house is situated exactly on the borderline of Devon and Somerset, and
is in the loneliest situation imaginable; having, indeed, been in the
old days a favourite spot with the smugglers of these coasts. It was
built, and the grounds enclosed, by the Reverend W. S. Halliday, a
person whose eccentricities may yet be heard of at Lynmouth. One of his
peculiar amusements was the sardonic fancy for burying genuine Roman
coins in places where it is thought no Romans ever penetrated, with
the expressed idea of puzzling future antiquaries. It seems--since he
cannot be there to chuckle over the jest--a strange kind of humour.
[Illustration: GLENTHORNE.]
The long ascent from Glenthorne, through the woods, is extraordinarily
tiring, beautiful though those woods be, and aromatic with piny odours.
The carriage-drive, zigzagging up, is steep, and a halt by the way,
every now and then, more grateful and comforting than even a famous
cocoa is advertised to be. But that ascent in the shade is a mere
nothing to the further treeless ascent to the coach-road, under the
July sun. Bare grassy combes, and white roads that wind round the
mighty shoulders of the hills exhaust the wayfarer, who at last, taking
on trust the prehistoric camp of Old Barrow, perched on a steep height,
gains the dull highway with a sigh of relief. I daresay a good many
of the sardonic Mr. Halliday’s Roman coins are buried in Old Barrow,
awaiting antiquarian discovery.
The way back to Lynmouth, crossing Countisbury Common, has some
beautiful glimpses away on the left, over the wooded valley of the East
Lyn.