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 few36 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, but37 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.
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 scientific38 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,39 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 little40 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 man?uvring; 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; and41 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 grounds42 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.
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 shade43 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.