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Note that all maps on this site are only
indicative. You should never set out without the correct OS map.
Villages don't come much higher, wilder or windier than lonely
Hawkridge, perched 900 feet up in the vastness of Exmoor's ancient
Forest. If Heathcliff hadn't haunted Bronte Country's Wuthering
Heights, then this would have made an ideal location for his brooding
shenanigans.
On a winter's day when the rain is coming off the Atlantic horizontally,
nowhere is more grim. The car shook in the teeth of the gale that
lashed its way down what passes for the hamlet's main-street. The
camera refused to raise itself off its lowest setting: a 30th of
a second at an aperture of 2.8. Darkness at midday.
But down the centuries Hawkridge has been famed for its tough
hunting parsons - you can almost feel them mocking you across that
forlorn, windswept churchyard. Parson Boyse, the Reverend Joseph
Jekyll and the mellifluously named Rev. D.S. Sweetapple-Horlock
- not one of them would have given a toss about a full-blown blizzard,
let alone a dampish gale.
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It rained, and rained, and rained. Indoors,
the internet beckoned with cheap, last-minute airline deals to the
sunshine; digital TV offered 180 channels of easy, unchallenging
tat; and a cosy log fire spoke of books that ones been meaning to
read for years...
What better then than to turn your back on that lot and go to
the highest, wildest, windiest place you know and feel the sting
of the rain upon your cheeks, rather than the tears of self-pity.
Basic Hike: from Hawkridge (between Dulverton
and Withypool) around Hawkridge Common and down to Tarr Steps to
return via Great Cleave and up Marshclose Hill.
Recommended Map: Ordnance Survey Outdoor Leisure
Map 9 Exmoor.
Distance and going: four miles fairly easy going,
steep and muddy in on or two places.
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| Putting on our stiffest upper lips we vacated the
trembling car. Five minutes into the hike, we were glad to be out
of doors - breathing the finest, purest, air in Europe - which,
by the way, Exmoor can actually boast according to local lichen-experts.
We saw the gravestone of Ernest Bawden - a man who most certainly
would have shrugged off this little hurricane with the merest contempt.
Ernest was a legendary huntsman who would sometimes ride with his
hounds until long after the moon had ascended into cold Exmoor skies.
Whether you agree with the sport or not, there is something swashbuckling
about the art of venery - at least, the way it was practised in
days of yore. On one memorable occasion Bawden's hounds followed
a stag over the sea-cliffs at Culbone. They disappeared in the pale
light of a new moon and the stag, and a handful of hounds, were
never seen again.
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| Each of the parsons mentioned above was crazy about
hunting - Sweetapple-Horlock even used to attend sermons wearing
riding boots under his cassock - and so it is a little ironic that
the church in this village of venery should be dedicated to the
saint who saved a hind from hounds.
A hundred metres to the left of the church gate, a lane leads
off north-west towards Hawkridge Cross, and this we follow for a
minute until we see a footpath heading due north across the fields.
This is part of the Two Moors Way and it leads around the flanks
of Hawkridge Common above the upper margins of Great Cleave wood.
After a while the steep grove on our right turns into Row Down
Wood and at this point the path crosses the terminus of a paved
road. A track continues down through the trees, and you could take
this track to Penny Bridge, but we continued straight ahead into
the woods that took us around to Parsonage Farm.
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| Here there's a choice of paths, but we proceed
due east around the hill before descending across fields to Exmoor's
most famous bridge. The 180 foot long, 17 span, slab structure is
believed to be of mediaeval construction. Occasionally the 'stone-planks'
as the writer Richard Jeffries called them, are washed away by a
flood, but each one is now numbered so that National Park workers
can put them back again.
Tarr Farm, just across the bridge, is one of Exmoor's superior
watering-holes and in winter the log fire there makes a welcome
haven from the buffeting gale. As you sip your soup you can ponder
upon the upwardly mobile life of a local farm-boy - George Williams
(later Sir George), of Ashway Farm - who became renowned as the
founder of the Young Men's Christian Association.
Now we must cross back to the west side of the clapper-bridge
to complete our short, but exceedingly sweet, circular walk. The
paved lane - which enters the ford at Tarr Steps (do not attempt
it in anything but a four-wheel-drive and even then don't do it
in winter) - heads south-west past Tarr Steps Hotel before joining
the river again on its way down to Penny Bridge.
Both water and road now curve south-east and the valley opens
slightly before it reaches Marshclose Hill. This is a particularly
beautiful part of the National Park and from here you can (or could
- the footpath is closed for some reason) walk all the way down
the riverside to Dulverton. But our hike takes us up the road the
mile or so back to Hawkridge - and a pretty steep old climb it is
too. Never mind. You regain your car with a feeling of great well-being
and accomplishment.
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