If they ever invent a time-machine I’m promising myself a
trip backwards to make a journey – to take a train from the West Somerset port
of Watchet up the old Mineral Line to the 1200 foot high Brendon Hill
escarpment. It’s not much more than ten miles in length, but it passes through
some of the most lovely and unspoilt views in the region.
The bed of the old line is still apparent in many stretches
– in some sections it has been converted into a public right of way, in others
it has been used as a road and in just a few places it runs through private
property – but basically it is traceable and therefore follow-able for most of
the way.
And that is the basis of the truly magnificent one-way hike
which I’ll be covering this week and next in honour of the fact that much of
the line was completed exactly 150 years ago. We, you might be relieved to
hear, are going to reverse my dream train ride and walk the easier route from
the top to the bottom.
Note that all maps on this site are only indicative.
You should never set out without the correct OS map.
Basic walk: from the old engine house near Naked Boy Lane
down The Incline past Comberow, Roadwater, Washford to Watchet and the sea.
Recommended map: Ordnance Survey Exmoor Explorer OL9.
Distance and going: ten miles easy going.
For a moment you may think you have become inexplicably lost
and ended up in Cornwall – the old engine house standing lonely in the high
fields of the Brendon escarpment is an exact copy of the ones you see dotted
all over our most westerly county. Which shouldn’t perhaps be surprising as it
was built with help of Cornish experts.
It marks the beginning of this long linear walk from the
high hills to the Severn Sea – a walk that follows a glorious and little known
Westcountry railway line that puffed and panted a living for just a few short
years back in the 1800’s.
West Somerset’s Mineral Line was built to convey iron ore
from the Brendon Hill mines to the port of Watchet – a job which it did most
effectively, if not miraculously, between 1865 and 1898. I say miraculously
because it descended over 1200 feet in just ten or so miles – the biggest drop
being down a dramatic section still known as The Incline.
We’ll see this 1-in-4 engineering wonder – or what remains
of it - in the first of our two walks, but first I wanted to locate the old
engine house which stabs at the heavens like a salute to this long lost
industry. You’ll find it just south of the main Ralegh’s Cross/Wheddon Cross
road that traverses the ridge of the hills. Just a mile west of the place where
the Bampton road peels off to the south there’s a small terrace called
Sminhayes that used to house iron miners, and next to this is strangely named
Naked Boy Lane.
A few yards up this byway, on the crest of the hill, the
lane crosses an old railway bridge and beneath this there’s a cutting which you
can follow to the west. Half a mile along that cutting you will come to the
engine house.
Having paid a visit to this lonesome place, we must retrace
our tracks to the lane and turn left down past the Naked Boy Stone – a large
marlstone boulder that you’ll see on the right. Legend has it that community
elders from Old Cleeve would beat the bounds of their enormous parish once a
year and carry out the rather painful business described by the name of the old
fashioned practice – they would literally beat some hapless youth at every
touch and turn so that the young of the parish would never forget the borders
of the homeland to which they belonged.
The Naked Boy is said to refer to the habit of pulling a
lad’s trousers down so that he would feel every inch of his beating – and the
stone marks the very southerly corner of a large parish that stretches all the
way down to the sea.
A hundred metres north we cross the main road and turn right
to follow its wide verge the half mile to the old winding house. This ruin
marks the top of the Mineral Line’s famous incline.
The lowland part of the railway, from Watchet to the village
of Roadwater, was completed in just over a year in 1856 – and it was in 1857
that the engineers finished the section of to Comberow which was – and still is
– one of the most remote communities in the Westcountry.
From this deep bowl in the hills there was only one way to
go and that was up – quite literally three quarters of a mile up a 1-in-4 slope
to the crest of the Brendons.
The basic idea was that the heavy trucks laden with iron ore
at the top would be attached to the empty wagons down at Comberow by cable and
be able to swap places with the aid of gravity and a large steam engine.
To my amazement someone has put a No Admittance sign up on
the gate that allows an entrance to the Winding House – I don’t know why – I’ve
been walking through the place and down The Incline for decades. If you want to
be law abiding then you must now take your life in your hands and continue
along the narrow main road for 500 metres until you come to the bridleway on
your left just past the entrance to Hill House.
This takes you north and downwards – into the vast
amphitheatre of forests which surround lonely Comberow. After half a mile it
crosses The Incline and you can look down its overgrown length and wonder at
one of the region’s greatest feats of Victorian engineering.
All the tracks around here lead down to the hamlet where
there used to be a busy station. It is hard to believe in the silence of the
place nowadays, but by 1872 this place was seeing 19,000 passengers a year
passing through – not to mention thousands of tons of iron ore.
You are now deep in one of the best kept secrets in the
entire Westcountry – a deep and forgotten valley system that wends it way north
out of the hills towards the sea. You walk down three miles of utter rural
tranquillity until you reach the old railway’s first real village.
And next week we’ll continue the walk from Roadwater to
Watchet and the coast.
Read part 2
Go to the top of this page