It was 4 o’clock in the morning at the Strand, Barnstaple, a promenade beside the river, all underneath the unblemished yet dark night sky. Nearby was the eighteen-arched, medieval packhorse bridge and under this flowed the Taw, in the twilight like a giant river of Guinness, topped in parts by a thick, frothy head, visibly agitated by the peremptory call of the estuary and the sea, six miles away. In this quest, it meets its neighbour, the River Torridge, just four miles away, before their great, united emancipation in Barnstaple (or Bideford) Bay.
At the far side of the Taw begins that magical land of the otter. This is, without doubt, the land of Henry Williamson and Charles Kingsley.
A police van slowed as it drove past, its single officer aroused to suspicion by the strange spectre of two middle-aged male adults standing around, now scrutinising the millennium dial on the pavement of the mini-piazza: Time Capsule Below. The town council had done a fine job in documenting and encapsulating the meaning and history of Barnstaple in a series of colourful and intricate mosaics in this, however humble, the Trafalgar Square of Barnstaple. Mostly seafaring, of course, with references to the trade with Africa, Australia and the Americas; they must have read
Westward Ho!, putting aside any rivalry with the town's great neighbour, Bideford, just nine miles yonder.
Barnstaple and Bideford are like two twins - identical twins if you account for their geography - linked since 1988 in trade and tourism by the umbilical chord of the A39, now branded the
Atlantic Coast Highway, in honour of the famous Atlantic Coast Express train service (ACE). My mission tonight was to cover both towns before returning to Exeter.
This great road is reached from Exeter most easily by joining the A361 - the North Devon Link road - somewhere around Tiverton, if tourism is your primary motive, since you can also take advantage of the sublime, alpine scenery of the A396 Exe Valley road. It's a fifteen mile, slow drive but you get to take in Bickleigh and some great views of the River Exe, gradually hemmed in more and more by the hills as they close-in the further up the valley you go towards Exmoor.
The A361 itself is another new, fast road - though single carriageway - and it takes you to Barnstaple in under thirty minutes. It must've cost tens of millions to build, judging by the number of streamline, high-altitude viaducts and crossings. Regretably, however - like the Ilminster by-pass - it is one of those roads that can't make up its mind whether it should be a dual-carriageway or not; in many sections, it is actually three lanes so you wonder why they didn't just go dual.
In Barnstaple, after putting in another £4 of fuel - 55 miles in this ten-year-old, Renault 19 Biarritz TDI car - I asked the sixty year old man at the petrol garage, protected by bullet-proof glass, if he knew of anywhere to buy a cup of tea at four in the morning.
'urh... narrgh', he mumbled through the intercom, all too much effort. A pathetic response. I said nothing more.
There is always somewhere to buy a cup of tea in a town this size. And so there was, later on, at a BP/Spar, modern, supermarket-garage the other side of town, on the way out. £1.15 for a self-service tea - tea bag, water, paper cup and UHT milk capsule - is a bit pricey, but just about worth it, even on my minute budget.
Westward Ho! is a curious place to visit in the early morning in late November but, even under these conditions, it is still an attractive town, like an enlarged, more successful - though less commercial - version of Dawlish Warren. Its whole existence is owed to the holiday (and convalescence?) trade, as seen in the enormous number of both caravans and holiday chalets, little huts providing, I should imagine, very cosy and quaint accommodation. Henry David Thoreau, the Walden transcendentalist, could quite enjoy himself here.
The chalets - all white and wooden - stretch in a narrow line, five-deep, along about two miles of the end of Atlantic Way and then Merley Road, a small dirt track leading right down to Rock Nose and the Mermaid's Pool, just where the rugged, rocky coast begins. There is a lighthouse at work somewhere at the end, too. It is like the Nova Scotia coast in that film,
The Shipping News (2001), with Julianne Moore.
Back in the 'town centre', they are accompanied, or complimented, by a number of large holiday parks and amusement arcades - Fantasy Island, Surfbay and so forth - that reach down to Pebble Ridge, the four mile long coast of boulder sized pebbles, and the golf links. Unlike the 'big', Portland end of Chesil Beach, and its potato-sized pebbles, here they are dinosaur pebbles, large enough to break your leg or foot.
Maybe, back in about 1400, the corporations of Barnstaple and Bideford did a deal with the same bridge builder, for they look identical, the latter now supplanted by the vast,
100 ft tall 1988 bridge of the A39, just a mile down the Torridge, towards Appledore and the estuary. The two towns have a symmetry, like a mirror image of each other, both with a long, old bridge; in Barnstaple the town is on the north side, in Bideford the town is on the south side.
There is no other part of England that has so many inlets and estuaries, most harbouring a fine town near the mouth. You think of Dartmouth and Kingswear; Falmouth, Wadebridge, Padstow, Salcombe, Kingsbridge and so on. All of these great Westcountry towns were once served by the railway, too, though that is forty years gone, now.
For some stupid reason, I never used to like Bideford, probably due to its odd name (and my old manager at ABC in Exeter, Dave Griffin, came from here and spoke with a terrible accent). But that was before I had a car and before I ever went there, since the old railway line stopped at Barnstaple.
Bideford is a beautiful, fascinating town, climbing its steep hills with some fine Georgian and Edwardian buildings, none ever troubled by the fortunes of war. As Charles Kingsley noted, its Quay is lined with many, many pubs and inns and you could easily pass a fine summer afternoon here just drinking (if only you could return to Exeter without driving), admiring the spectacular quay and exploring the town itself, up the hill.
Perhaps a stroll over the bridge to East-the-Water. Then, you could look back on the 'little white town' and see it in all its glory, the wide Torridge and mile long quay quay framing the town, stretching up two hundred feet to be capped by fine woods. To your left, you have the river heading off upstream to more wooded valleys.
I never like returning on the same route out. Fortunately, Bideford to Exeter offers the A386 to Great Torrington. One day I will explore this famous old market town and give it the respect it deserves; but that is all for another day trip and not at 5 o'clock in the morning.
The valley of the River Torridge is undoubtedly magnificent, mostly wooded and lined with many white water cascades and weirs. And otters. And the old railway line, its stations still visible along most of the road.
At Torrington, the B3220 to Copplestone is a long, twenty mile stretch of pure darkness, no street lights and no traffic. This is what I have always termed 'real driving', that which involves a lot of gear changes, a lot of steering and lots of gradients.
Beaford and Winkleigh also deserve further exploration, the former, I imagine, typical of the remote Devon village favoured by
John Betjeman. The great Metroland evangelist made a film once in Northlew, near Okehampton, and to visit the place is still to step back in time, even though you know the main road is only five miles away, full of juggernauts and fast cars. His film was black and white, made in about 1960, and to watch it is to see a Westcountry remote from the hustle and bustle of metropolitan and industrial civilisation.
At Winkleigh, the B3220 crosses the old second world war aerodrome, a few huts and hangers still there. There is no sign of a run-way, but this was a large, significant airfield in its day - now an industrial estate - used mainly for secret missions. I imagine it covered both the Atlantic and the English Channel and northern France. There are still some Polish people around, right here, bang in the middle of Devon; just look at the phone book. Sadly, the old airfield has no memorials of any description and no tourist information; not a single information point or anything.
If you have time, stop off at the incredible, 15th century, thatched Kings Arms pub, in the village. It is in the middle of the village square, surrounded by the deserted road - all traffic by-passes this village - yet inside you are transported back to the age of giant wooden timbers, enormous open fires. This is the sort of sizeable village that still only has about three shops - in this case, a butchers, general store and another.
Apart from a superb restaurant, it has the most amazing, unofficial yet very professional collection of military memorabilia, books and records from the last two hundred years of war. When I was here in July, with J on the return from his driving test, on the subject of the original cost of a first world war officer's cap, I guessed 40s; on the inside it was marked 32s. Not a bad guess!
Nearer Copplestone, and the end of the journey, you pass North Tawton, the home of another, late poet laureate, Ted Hughes. He loved
Dartmoor and one of his favourite spots - his memorial is there - is the source of four major Devon rivers, the Torridge (Okement), Taw, Dart, Teign, two flowing north, two flowing south.
This whole hinterland - mid-Devon - must be explored more fully at some point. And Dartmoor.
The Atlantic Coast Highway website (contains some excellent tourist and historical stuff on the great highway and all of the towns along the way to Falmouth):
http://www.atlantic-highway.co.uk/ Dartmoor Walks. This site is brilliantly produced with superb photos and walks with maps. Has a section on the Ted Hughes memorial, found at SX 609865
The John Betjeman Society website:
A civil engineer's report on the Bideford A39 bridge, with some superb pictures, including some of the old bridge by the quay:
