The route, day 36
All day on the South-West Coast Path. 14 miles/22.5 km, 752 metres ascent.
Clovelly Dykes
An Iron-Age hillfort in Upper Clovelly, a large circular enclosure of dykes and ditches. No signs of agricultural use when I was there, but closed off to the public with barbed wire on the gate.
Plan: Wikimedia Commons from the Victoria County History of Devon
Clovelly
The steep street to the harbour. Clovelly, a privately owned village, was already a tourist honeypot 60 years ago, when my parents took me. To avoid the crowds, stay overnight in one of the two inns or get there early, as we did.
Transport sleds. At first sight they look like a collection of discarded plastic trays or pallets, but these items with a wooden base and runners are used to take goods down the steep cobbled alleys of the village.
Low mist over the coast, another "Atlantic rainforest" day.
A drinking fountain "to the honoured memory of a great queen", Victoria "regina et imperatrix".
Clovelly harbour.
The Red Lion Hotel, an 18th-century inn rebuilt in 1928.
Clovelly Court, the ancestral seat for centuries of the Cary and Hamlyn families, in its present form rebuilt after a fire in 1798.
Cliff Walk from Clovelly
Northwest from Clovelly, 11 a.m. and still misty
A lime kiln at Mouthmill beach
Constant ascents and descents on this coast
Blackchurch Rock, a pierced pyramid
Consolation for the wet weather. Late morning in late June, but the sun has not broken through and burned the dew from spiders' webs.
A View of Lundy Island
and some sunshine at last
Hartland Point Lighthouse
The east-to-west walk from Clovelly turns south at Hartland Point, where waves roll in from the Atlantic Ocean and conditions become rougher. The coast from here to Hartland and beyond is a dramatic landscape, the scene of many dramatic stories of shipwrecks. The lighthouse was built in 1874. Before that, it is reported that a light burned at night in the Merchant's House at Hartland Quay, and by day ships lowered their ensigns when passing the place in a gesture of thanks. As recently as 1982 the Dutch ship Johanna carrying wheat to Cardiff was smashed on the rocks here. An RAF helicopter and the Clovelly lifeboat rescued the crew.
Glenart Castle Memorial
Walkers on the Southwest Coast Path pass many memorials and information boards relating to the Second World War. This is a rare one commemorating a disaster in the First World War. His Majesty's Hospital Ship Glenart Castle was sunk at night in February 1918 by a torpedo from the German submarine U-56, although it showed the red light of a hospital ship. Only 29 persons survived out of 182 on board. In the previous year the Glenart Castle had hit a mine in the English Channel, but all of the 700 crew and patients were saved and the ship was repaired.
Photo of the Glencart Castle, right: by Beken, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Cliff Walk - Hartland Point to Hartland Quay
Blegberry beach seen from the east
Blegberry beach looking back from the west, the coast path clearly visible
Damehole Point
Landscape and Geology
Abbey River Valley
Hartland Abbey, which gave the river its name, is not visible here. It was dissolved in the reign of Henry VIII and turned into a country house, now owned by the Stucley family, lords of the manor of Hartland. The tower seen on these photos belongs to the parish church dedicated to St Nectan, a hermit who is said to have come from Wales in the 5th century. This is the tallest church tower in Devon at 128 ft/39 metres. The ruin (right) is the remains of a folly known as the Pleasure House, possibly built in the 16th century, used as a place where the owners of Hartland Abbey could take their guests.
Hartland Quay
This is a powerful place. I would like to have stayed longer in this rugged spot with its tales of wrecks and smugglers, to dwell on the history of the now-vanished port and admire its spectacular geology.
The geology: an excellent little book published by www.thematic-trails.org, Geology at Hartland Quay, provides explanations in the form of a guided walk. In brief: sandstones and mudstones laid down 350 to 320 million years ago were compressed and folded in a collision of continental plates 300 million years ago. The acute-angled zig-zag folding is visible even on the bad photo that I took in poor light when arriving late on an overcast evening (above left), and the so-called tunnel slab below left is no less impressive.
The history: in times when overland travel was laborious, this coastal area was supplied by sea The lords of the manor built a stone pier and port buildings here in the late 16th century to bring in lime, slate and coal, and to take out agricultural products. Storms damaged the little harbour repeatedly, and when the pier was completely destroyed by tempests in 1887 and 1896, the Stucley family of Hartland Abbey decided not to rebuild. Grainly black-and-white photos of the little port survive. There was a lime kiln, a malthouse and stores, briefly even a bank that issued its own banknotes. The buildings were converted into the Hartland Quay Hotel in the late 19th and 20th century. I stayed in the former labourers' cottage block opposite the main building (view from the window, bottom right).
The photo below (file: Hartland Quay, Rock formation 3 - geograph.org.uk - 5926336.jpg) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons shows once-horizontal sediment rock that was folded to be near-vertical, with veins of quartz filling the cracks.
The bridge over Titchberry Water. Richard Morris and John Sykes were here, 24 June 2024.
