‘I had great fun with maps’
To mark National Walking Month, Hilary Bradt puts her best foot forward on a coast-to-coast trek from Devon to Somerset
Did you know it’s National Walking Month? Me neither, but it makes it extra appropriate that I had chosen May to “burst out of Covid”, and from my home in east Devon head for the Bristol Channel. Also – and everyone knows this – from tomorrow we are allowed to eat indoors, making pubfocused walks even more attractive in our irrational May weather.
Long-distance walking is addictive. Having done three national trails recently I wanted more, but I wanted it local because of Covid restrictions, and anyway as I near my 80th birthday it’s nice to sleep in my own bed.
And there it was: look at a map of the West Country, or indeed of the whole of Britain, and it hits you in the face. The peninsula that makes up Devon and Cornwall, along with west Somerset, has been squeezed into a narrow waist at my home town of Seaton. So that’s the next walk: a new coast-to-coast route from Seaton’s seafront to Watchet in Somerset (“To watch what?” asked a friend, mystified, when I told her.)
It’s 33 miles as the crow flies but could be double that using footpaths and lanes. The trio – Pippa, Penny and the two dogs – will base ourselves at home for the first four days, using two cars to shuttle between start and finish, and have rented a self-catering place in Watchet for the last part.
I’ve had enormous fun devising the route along three Ordnance Survey maps, through three Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, visualising the bluebells and lemon-green leaves of May, ignoring the tightly packed contour lines, and the weather forecast. Perhaps it’s significant that my phone’s predictive text changed “self-devised walk” to “self-deluded …”
We’ll see. You’ll see.
MAY 4
SEATON TO WILMINGTON 10.1 miles
A totally successful day, from low tide for the walk along Seaton’s beach to finding a bench for our picnic in the warm sun by the River Coly. For the first five miles I was on familiar ground. Holyford Nature Reserve, our local bluebell wood, was a haze of blue and bursting with birdsong. Wild east Devon, which manages this wood, prides itself on its bird-friendliness, with nest boxes and a variety of trees and vegetation to provide habitat for a range of species. It certainly pays off.
Both Bonnie, a collie-mix, and Thurza, a labrador, take their duties seriously and race back down the path to check on the old lady if I lag behind.
MAY 5 WILMINGTON TO HOWLEY 11.8 miles
Not a good day. It started off beautifully
because I’d routed us through woods which I know as the best in east Devon for wild daffodils. These have now given way to bluebells, and some prints in the mud showed that a deer had preceded us. I’d booked a pub lunch in Stockland, and we planned a direct route on footpaths but in this sparsely populated farming area they were little used: tummocky pasture which took ages to walk across, usually to the wrong gate, while battered by a hail storm. We reached the pub just before the kitchen closed. “Outdoor dining” doesn’t really conjure up the image of sitting hunched against the icy wind, eating once-hot, soon-cold chips. I had a surge of longing for pub normality: a comfy chair by the fire, drifting to the bar for another drink … You, lucky readers, have that from tomorrow!
Crossing the River Yarty into Somerset we found our chosen footpath blocked off, the signs removed, and a field of frisky cows being serviced by a very large, protective-looking bull. A local resident said the farmer was “a bit awkward” and owned all the land in these parts. Indeed he did. For the rest of this day we climbed over padlocked gates, crawled under electric fences, and diverted around more bouncing cows. An unintentionally very long day.
MAY 6 HOWLEY TO STAPLE HILL PL ANTATION
7.3 miles
A hard morning with more footpaths blocked by cows behind electric fences, and the alarming prospect of crossing the A303. But after that the farmland ended, the woods and flower meadows began, and a scattering of early purple orchids revived our spirits before a gourmet lunch at the Candlight Inn in Bishopswood. Marginally less cold. We were now in the heart of Somerset’s Blackdown Hills and in the late afternoon joined the East Deane Way, a national trail. Bliss! Well-marked, wellused, passing through mixed woodland of beech and oak up to Staple Hill, the AONB’s highest point.
MAY 7 STAPLE HILL TO TRULL, TAUNTON
8.3 miles
The East Deane Way is a circular route of 42 miles devised by the Taunton Deane Ramblers. They’ve done a splendid job with good waymarking so the trail is in regular use. Today we walked along broad tracks through Staple Park Wood and the enticingly named Piddle Wood, picnicking in Corfe, a compact village whose sweet little church has a pyramid top to its tower. The excitement of the day, certainly for Bonnie, was crossing the M5 on a footbridge. So many cars to bark at – she was ecstatic.
MAY 8 TRULL TO HESTERCOMBE GARDENS. 8.5 miles
We missed a trick at Trull. Its waterfall (actually a weir) has rejuvenating properties. If only I’d had a splash I might have found I could hop over stiles.
The West Deane Way passes through Taunton’s shopping area and then a pleasant walk along the River Tone to Hestercombe Gardens, one of Somerset’s most notable, although at the end of a long day’s walk all I wanted to do was sit down and eat cake. Established in the 18th century by the splendidly named Coplestone Warre Bampfylde and later developed by the horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll and the architect Edwin Lutyens, Hestercombe normally has plenty to enjoy including an art gallery and restaurant. Both should be open by the time you read this.
MAY 9 HESTERCOMBE TO THE SOUTHERN QUANTOCK HILLS.
8.3 miles
Briefly joining the West Deane Way we had quintessentially English views across the fields and multicoloured trees to the church tower of Kingston St Mary, and walked through a field of yellow rape. Then up and up to the top of the Quantock Hills, England’s oldest AONB. I don’t know why this 12-milelong lump of heathland, shaped like a bread loaf, criss-crossed by trails and cut by deep, wooded coombes, is not better known. It’s gorgeous.
We left the West Deane Way and joined the Macmillan Way, a 290-miles trans-England trail which runs from
Boston to Dorset, and includes the full length of the Quantocks. We passed through sheltered woodland before reaching the highest point, Will’s Neck, at 384m (1,260ft) and teetering down a precipitous descent of 174m (570ft) to the car at Triscombe. Poor knees.
MAY 10 SOUTHERN QUANTOCK HILLS TO ST AUDRIES BAY, WATCHET
8.8 miles
The final leg, into the teeth of the Arctic wind, but with grazing Exmoor ponies
and far-reaching views over Somerset’s patchwork of fields: brown, yellow, and all shades of green, with our goal the Bristol Channel glinting on the horizon.
We didn’t actually finish in Watchet – we did much better and followed a “To the Beach” sign to St Audries Bay where parallel lines of sea-smoothed rock are intercut with tide pools and sand. Off with the boots and into the water, then a hurried retreat from the fastest moving tide in England. And that glorious, smug feeling of accomplishment that has you planning the next long walk.
And there we were. We’d walked 63 miles in a week, we’d seen sublime scenery looking its very best in the May sunshine, the dogs had had the time of their lives, and we’d never walked in proper rain. Now that “outside dining” and B&Bs can be reserved for warm weather, this sort of self-devised walk will be even more enticing.