Note that all maps on this site are only
indicative. You should never set out without the correct OS map.
After writing a couple of Poppy
Appeal related articles for the WMN in the past week the whole subject of the
great conflicts of the last century seemed to loom large and loud for me, so I
thought it might be a good idea to adapt a walk into a kind of personal act of
remembrance.
There are opportunities to do
this all around our peninsula. Just the briefest of trawls through this website
reveals half a dozen war related hikes. There’s the remarkable Mullion to
Kynance Cove walk that passes the “helicopter graveyard” at the old WW2
Predannack airfield, and the even more remarkable Hope Cove to Salcombe route
which takes in another airfield at Bolt Head, to name but two.
But I thought I’d revisit
Porlock Marshes to see how, and if, a small WW2 memorial stone has been coping
with life in the newly flooded zone which has been described as England’s
fastest changing environment.
Basic Hike: circular route from
car park in Bossington around Porlock Marsh following new permissive path to
West Porlock - and back along the woodland paths to the village of Porlock and
beyond via Sparkhayes Lane.
Recommended Map: Ordnance Survey
OL 9.
Distance and going: five miles
easy going.
Food and drink: plenty of choice
in Porlock - excellent pint in Ship Inn.
We parked in the National Trust
car park at the centre of Bossington and walked down the main village street
which, after a quarter of a mile, turns into a dirt track and leads to the sea.
The area that stretches to the west is Britain's newest large expanse of
wetland since the shingle barrier, which has protected the lower part of
Porlock Vale for centuries, was breached some years ago.
In a storm it is a wild and
somewhat hazardous place - and I advise anyone who wants to explore the shingle
ridge to be careful, especially at spring tide.
If you want a circular walk then
the old line of the coast path is no good. The breach is dangerous. You can
cross at low tide, but it’s not really advisable. The coast path, however, has
been realigned to avoid the marsh on an inland route – and this is the one we
ended up following.
But not before we’d walked out
to the breach anyway because right out there in the middle of all the primeval
wilderness there used to be a small memorial commemorating the courage of man.
Eight men to be exact - the crew of an American bomber that crashed in thick
fog somewhere hereabouts in 1942. It used to be the most forlorn memorial
imaginable, stuck out there on the muddy edge of the brackish lake – but on our
visit last weekend we were bemused to find it had vanished.
I’m happy to report though that
we later found it relocated further inland – someone has sensibly moved the
stone and saved it from being swept out to sea.
The bomber wasn't the only WW2
aircraft to have come to grief in Porlock Bay. A German Junkers 88 was
intercepted by three Spitfires out over the Bristol Channel and shot down. The
Junker's pilot, Helmut "Acky" Ackenhausen, managed to crash-land his
machine on the beach and, 30 years after the war, he returned to Porlock to
visit the grave of his gunner Wilhelm Reuhl who died in the crash.
A local couple had tended the
grave in the intervening years and Mr Ackenhausen thanked them and described to
a journalist how he'd ditched the plane and climbed out to be confronted by the
Home Guard. Some of the men were armed but he was more worried about the man
with the pitchfork. He also said he'd like to meet the Spitfire pilot who'd
shot him down, and was genuinely saddened to learn that Pilot Officer Eric
Marrs had lost his life over Brest in 1941.
This lonely, desolate, location
- where the waves never cease to rattle a million stones, where the curlew
cries its melancholic call - may seem like an odd place to remember the
calamity of human conflict. And yet it as good as any - at least you are left
alone to ponder the violence that man bestows upon his brother.
The tide was out when we were
hunting the stone down at the breach, which meant that the huge tidal lake
which now stretches across the meadows was temporarily out at sea. This allowed
us to splash our way south between the grazing lapwing and curlew to the line
of dead, saline-poisoned, trees which mark part of the route of the newly
aligned path.
From here we proceeded west along the new footpath towards
Porlock Weir, passing the newly located memorial stone on the way. This is a
permissive path allowed under a new management agreement that Exmoor National
Park has with the owner, and it takes walkers around the southerly limits of
the salt marsh to meet an existing right-of-way just north of a place called
Allerpark Combe.
This was our next destination.
Up the old drover's road we went - across the Porlock Weir road - and on up
track until we reached Allerpark. Here we turned left along a footpath that
follows the bottom edge of the woods all the way to Porlock.
Time for a much deserved pint in
the wonderful old pub known locally as the Top Ship. The poet Robert Southey
sat here by the fireside 204 years ago and wrote: "This place is called in
the neighbourhood ‘The End of the World’. All beyond is inaccessible to
carriage or even cart. A sort of sledge is used by the country people, resting
upon two poles like cart-shafts."
He went on to describe the
delights of the old inn - where he was so favourably impressed by the local
seaweed delicacy laverbread that he became almost addicted to the stuff. He was
forever writing to his friend, the poet Coleridge, to see if he could glean
supplies.
We marched east down Porlock’s
main street to the place where Sparkhayes Lane departs to the left. Now the
boom of surf grew louder and we could sniff the scent of its salt as it pounded
through the breach.
From the end of Sparkhayes Lane
we turned east again and made our way along the public footpath to Bossington
in the gloaming light of a November afternoon. The place was so fantastically
beautiful I thought for a moment of those who’d paid the ultimate price
fighting for a cause out there on the lonesome skerries. Cut off in their
prime, there were to be no more beautiful afternoon walks for them.
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