Everyman's England Read online

  On the map a footpath was shown leading up from the left of the valley, across Cloutsham Ball and on to Dunkery. I found the footpath and very quickly lost it. I did not care. All the day was mine and I could see the great dome of Dunkery hanging high in the sky before me.

  I climbed out of the valley and into the dead bracken and heather. From the valley behind me a cuckoo called incessantly, and I met no one all the way to Dunkery except a schoolboy carrying a specimen-tin, who asked me the time. I told him, noted the faintly-concealed surprise on his face, and long afterwards, as I sat sucking my eggs on Dunkery and watching the silver glitter of the sea where the Bristol Channel lost itself in the haze about the Welsh coast, I discovered that my watch had stopped early that morning. For the rest of the walk it remained silent and still.

  I do not know what there is about Exmoor that is more satisfying than Dartmoor. Perhaps it is that Exmoor is richer and has more life. The hills are gently rounded until they fall to the deep valleys and then the slopes are almost precipitous. Nowhere is the eye brought to rest with a jerk and everywhere it is pleased by a succession of royal and soothing colours, the brown sweep of dead bracken, the growing purple of the heather, the sheen of the sea beyond the hills and the yellow-green oak masses in the valleys.

  Beneath the heather was the bright green of the whortleberries. Whortleberries are the walker’s greatest enemy. In the autumn it is impossible, for me at least, to walk far; the temptation to lie down in a patch and laze away the hours looking at the sky while a hand moves over the shrubs picking off the berries and carrying them to a never-satisfied mouth is too strong. In Devon this sin can be indulged, though more rarely, when the wild strawberries are in fruit.

  I was reluctant to leave Dunkery. I did not want to lose my feeling of exultancy, to pass from the region of the winds that came straight in from the sea, so that I could smell the salt in the air, and to give up my view… but I had to move on.

  I found an old cart track and began the long dip down into Exford. On the way I put up a stag and two hinds. They were not very startled and bounded away for a time and then circled to windward of me and stood, their heads in the air, sniffing the wind and eyeing me curiously. Dartmoor has no wild life to compare with the red deer of Exmoor. That is Exmoor’s glory, though some might consider it her shame, since the deer are preserved to be hunted. Whatever one’s opinion of the ethics of hunting, it is useless to deny that the hunting of deer has so far prevented them from complete extermination in England. Yet I feel that the deer might equally well have been preserved by more humane methods. From a humanitarian point of view, hunting is a barbarous sport which can give enjoyment only to those people who wish to exercise those primitive instincts which were only excusable in our dim forefathers, since they had need to hunt in order to eat. Such desires should be repressed in a nation which likes to call itself civilised and has no need to hunt for food. It is logical, however, to assume that a certain amount of cruelty must always exist in the world to give force to virtue, and whatever one may say about civilised man, there is no denying the spiritual exhilaration which is roused in mankind by the moving pageantry of the hunt and the wild clamour of hounds. You may hate all blood sports, yet the sight of a pack in full cry across open country touches something too deep within one to be analysed, in the same way as the blare of trumpets and the steady rhythm of a marching regiment has surprised more than one pacifist into cheers. Until mankind has learned to be critically aware of its early social history and has gained the ability to control the predatory atavism which lies so near the surface of its stream of desires, we shall always have hunting and fighting.

  Exford is a sleepy little village; it is not big enough to be called a town. Its whitewashed houses and hotels stand in the valley about the river. I had tea at the White Horse. The room was hung with Cecil Aldin drawings of hunting scenes and there was a smell of horses and riding boots to remind me that I was in the heart of the hunting country. The waiter who served me looked very sorry in his dress suit and was probably, I thought, longing to take it off and get out into the sun.

  From Exford I took the road along the skirt of the moor to Simonsbath. Halfway along the road the map marked the Red Deer Hotel, and I planned to make a stop there and refresh myself before going on to Simonsbath. It was still hot and the road was uphill for a good way. I walked, thinking of the long cooling drink which should be mine at the Red Deer Hotel. The tantalising vision danced before me in the sun-motes and spurred me on. I was due for a disappointment. When I got to the hotel, I found only a dark-looking farmhouse, surrounded by a few beech and fir trees. There was no drink for me there of the kind I had imagined. I decided that a glass of water would be welcome, and knocked at the door. But it was a house of the dead. The sound of my knocking echoed hollowly through the house and suddenly, in the bright sunshine, I was afraid and my mind rioted with thoughts of plague and sunstroke, of farmers running amok and killing their children and wives. I left the house and got back on to the road again, telling myself that the family had probably gone into Taunton for the day.

  I hurried on to the security and companionship of the inn at Simonsbath. The village lies right down in a dip of the hills, surrounded by trees and serenaded by the noise of the rushing Barle. All along the inland border of Exmoor the wild moor is fighting with man. In some places the fields reach up into the moor territory, and, more often, long peninsulas of the moor sweep down into the valleys, forbidding agriculture and defying man. At Simonsbath, there is a truce for a while and the woods and river make a peaceful haven where meadows spread their green and houses stand securely with their backs to the moor and their windows looking over the fields.

  It was in the hotel bar at Simonsbath that I got the stain on my map. An almost toothless labourer was telling of the destructive, wanton habits of the deer, how they came from the moor at night and trampled down the peas in the gardens, spoiling what they could not eat. The night before I arrived a stag had got into his turnip field and had eaten a few turnips, and then gone systematically along some of the rows, catching the turnips by their long leaves and tossing them from the ground in play. The old man described this tossing motion.

  ‘Ay, wicked as young boys, they be. A-tossin’ and throwin’ of the turnups over their ’eads-like this!’ His head dipped and his arms flayed the air and my glass of beer was knocked over on to the map. The catastrophe stilled him and he looked at me sorrowfully.

  ‘What a wicked sight. It doan’t do to waste beer,’ and he was trying to mop the stuff off the table and my map, but the stain would not be removed.

  From Simonsbath I went up the valley of the Bade towards Challacombe. It was late now, the sun had dropped over the far edge of the moor and the sky was a pearl-grey. That valley, to me, seemed the loneliest and loveliest in England. It was wild, open and alive with the movement of birds. I walked on contentedly smoking and entirely alone. The only house I saw was at Hearlake, where a cottage fronted the road, and where a small girl held me to ransom for a penny, which had to be paid before she would open the gate across the road and let me through.

  In the meadows by the river grew patches of marsh grass. Now and then a bat would come flittering from the sky to brush close to me and from the moor a corncrake called once and was silent. The mystery of the moor and the river closed in around me and I was filled with that trembling, delightful fear which comes to you when you are alone and far from houses and people. Had I been sensible, I should have turned back to Simonsbath and spent the night there. I kept on towards Challacombe, and before long I knew I should never reach it that night. I had walked a long way, the great gusts of fresh air were making me sleepy, my legs suddenly began to rebel and the pack on my back grew heavier with each step. The map showed no place to bed in before Challacombe, and I decided that I would sleep out.

  It was a warm night, there would be no rain, and a tiny slip of a moon was coming up behind me. Once before I had slept out without cover. That ha
d been between Salisbury and Bournemouth when I was cycling and found myself – through the grace of a hole in my pockets – without the money for a night’s lodgings. It had been an unpleasant night, surprising me at three o’clock with a sharp frost against which the warmth of my bicycle lamp did not avail.

  Now I decided to sleep out because I was tired and did not want to go any farther. I slept that night with my head in Somerset and my body in Devonshire, for the boundary line, I found from the map, ran across the ditch in the lee of the hedge which sheltered me.

  I pulled long grasses and dead bracken and filled the ditch with a soft mass to sleep upon. I stuffed my pack with grass to make a pillow, took off my shoes and wrapped my feet in a sweater and then pulled my raincoat over me. I lay as comfortably as I might have done upon a feather bed. Away to the right was the road and between it and me was a small spring that flowed into a stream that meandered through a deep tree-lined cut towards Challacombe. I could hear the noise of the stream and the calling of peewits from the moor behind me. A spider crawled over my face and inspected my eyelids until I blew it away and, as I lay quietly on my bracken, a young rabbit came out into the moonlight and sat up as though it were imitating a Chinese Buddha. I fell asleep looking at the rabbit.

  I woke what must have been three hours later, to find that my feet had come loose from the sweater, that my raincoat was covered with a thick dew and that the pillow had grown curiously hard. I wrapped my cold feet up and lay watching the moon through the trees. I watched it so long that the impression began to grow upon me that if I were rash enough to persist in my staring I should suddenly find myself flying through space, drawn towards the moon by its attraction. I turned my eyes away quickly and congratulated myself upon my lucky escape. Three or four times since I have had that feeling when looking at the moon. I know it is imagination, of course, but the conviction is strong enough to force me to turn my eyes away.

  The growing cold that night soon took my thoughts from the moon. The cold started with my feet and worked along my body. I burrowed into the bracken and slept for a while. The cold did not leave me alone for the rest of the night. I slept fitfully, cursing my folly. I took the grass from my pack and strapped my feet into it for warmth, and I used the sweater as a pillow. I twisted and turned. The cold persisted.

  I got up before the sun that morning and stumbled to the stream. The water was like ice. I forced myself to wash in it, gasping and panting for breath as the icy douche touched my skin. I ran around the moor in circles to get warm, and when my face was red and the blood biting through my body once more, I sat down and ate chocolate and two stale sandwiches and watched the sun come up. She crept very unwillingly into the sky and before she was high enough to give any warmth I was on the road to Challacombe.

  I passed through it as though it were a village of the dead. There was no one about. Not a hen crowed nor a dog barked, and I felt myself inexpressibly elated at my earliness. While others slept I was on the road, enjoying myself. I was warm by now and surprised to discover that my night had refreshed me.

  There is nothing in this world which gives a feeling of superiority more than getting up in the morning before the rest of the world, and there is nothing more annoying than to rise early and be met by the scoffing remark of a friend that he has been up for hours. Friendships have to be firm to withstand the irritation of such remarks as: ‘What? Only just got up? I’ve been up hours.’ Or ‘Lovely now? Yes, but you should have been up at six this morning. It was grand.’ Or ‘Just because you’ve got up early for once, must you let everybody know about it?’

  Of course, you must let everybody know about it. I had been up before birdsong, before the earliest bird, and I longed to tell someone about it. I met no one until I reached the crossroads at Blackmore Gate. There I fell in with a young man who had been up before I had. He was motor cycling to Berrynarbor to see his sweetheart and had been up since three o’clock. Just why he did not say. It may have been that he had come a great distance, or his impatience to be with his love had not let him lie abed. His machine had broken down at Blackmore Gate and he had started out to walk the rest of the way to Berrynarbor. He was resting on a gateway along the road to Combe Martin when I caught him up and we kept company the rest of the way to Combe Martin, where he left me. I was not sorry when he left me, for his idea of good conversation was to regale me with the details of all the road accidents he had ever seen and to mark the various twists and turns of the roadway with stories of crashes which had taken place. If his stories were to be believed the road between Combe Martin and Blackmore Gate must be the most dangerous in the world, travelled by a fine collection of maniacs. I thought of him later during the day and wondered if he and his sweetheart were sitting on the cliffs beyond Berrynarbor, looking out to sea and, as they held hands, telling one another of the accidents which they had seen since last they met.

  Combe Martin must have the longest main street of any village. It is nearly two miles long and its characteristic features are the boards outside almost every house proclaiming that the price of Bed and Breakfast is four shillings and sixpence. In some establishments, I noticed, the price was higher. In none did it sink below four shillings and sixpence, and I wondered if the people of Combe Martin had met in solemn conference and decided on this minimum charge. Someday, I thought, a daring landlady would offer Bed and Breakfast at a lower price and then the village would turn upon her and refuse to serve her with food or accord her the amenities of life until she was forced to raise her price to their minimum.

  I walked the hot length of street resisting the signs of breakfast, for I was determined to eat within sight of the sea. I did; through the open doorway I perceived the legs of the passers-by and the rocks and blue of the sea. I took a long while over my breakfast; I felt I had that much time in hand.

  At Combe Martin I decided it was time to turn back towards Porlock. The map showed a footpath leading along the coast to the road that curves around to Trentishoe. I could tell by the look of it on the map that I should lose it, and lose it I did somewhere near the top of the Great Hangman, where the cliffs run out to Blackstone Point. It was a hard climb to the Hangman, with the sea and the gulls on one hand and the great sweep of country running away from the other until it met the pale sky miles away. The heat came off the rocks in shimmering waves and, as I clambered over a scree of loose stone on my way down the steep side of Sherrycombe, an adder slithered away before me, leaving a moment of coldness behind. The sides of Sherrycombe are composed in most places of loose drifts of stone and to descend to the small beck at the bottom of the combe is to walk with the mutter of tiny avalanches all around one. I had to empty my shoes of grit at the bottom and again at the top… The rest of that day is a brilliant memory; Hunter’s Inn, when I was dying of thirst, lunch by a tiny stream with a pair of yellow wagtails to keep me company, and tea at an hotel in Woody Bay, where an immaculately dressed serving-man eyed my unshaven face and crumpled clothes with cold wonder, which did not disappear even when I proved able to pay my score. My consumption of jam and cream must have caused him consternation.

  I returned that night to the comforts of civilisation at a farmhouse standing on the hill high above Watersmeet. A shave and a hot bath took the day’s fatigue from me. From the farm the land fell away into the deep wooded valley that stretched back to Lynton and, above Watersmeet, divided into two arms, one running up to Brendon and the other towards Cheriton. The air was so clear that I could make out the cars moving up and down the shoulder of Countisbury across the valley. The trees were a greenish blue in the evening light where the shadows massed in the valley.

  Before lunchtime the next day I was moving across Brendon Common, setting a course by the sun and doubting my accuracy every fifteen minutes, for the Doone Valley. If you enter the Doone Valley by way of Brendon it loses most of its surprise and wild splendour. The proper way – at least I shall always think so because that is how I saw it first – is to come down Hoccombe C
ombe, across the springy turf, taking drinks now and then from the pools along the tiny stream where the boulders are covered with a soft feathery moss. At the head of Doone Valley, before reaching Badgworthy Water, there stands a ruined house, said to have been the home of the Doones. It was near this ruin that I found the skull of a deer. At least I have always maintained, against the opinion of all my friends, that it is a deer’s skull and not a sheep’s. I packed the skull in my sweater for safety while I walked, and I treasured it for years. At last it was lost, but I do know it was a deer’s skull – not a sheep’s.

  I crossed Badgworthy Water, jumping from one stone to another. The water slide up which Jan Ridd worked his way catching loaches does not exist, and the Doone Valley, although it is remote enough, is not so inaccessible, nor ever could have been so hidden, as Blackmore made it. It was the ferocity of the Doones that secured them from interference rather than the difficulty of finding their little valley.

  I did not go down to Oare. I struck away across the moor and dipped to the valley at Robber’s Bridge and then climbed through an oak wood on to the main Porlock-Lynton road, and that night I was many miles from Exmoor.

  I have been back to Exmoor since then. I have made my pilgrimage to the church at Oare, seen the window through which Carver Doone shot Lorna Doone, and signed my name in the register. I have stopped at Exford again and made friends with the waiter who looked so hot in his formal clothes, and I have even found the spot where I slept so uncomfortably under the hedge and, as I looked at it, wondered what magic there was in that blue evening to make me welcome such discomfort. But I can never forget my first acquaintance with this country, the momentary unreality of wild deer, the potency of cider drunken at midday, the long rolling sweeps of purple and brown moor with the solitary scrawl of a twisted may tree to break the line of hills, and the music of swift streams boiling and threshing over the boulders in their beds and flinging up spray to wet the low branches of birches… I sat for a long time by the cupboard with the map in my hand. Those three hot, walking days over Exmoor were a long way behind me. I put the map down. Perhaps it was all a dream and had never happened outside my mind. My arm touched an unsteady pile of books and they fell flapping to the ground. By the wall behind them something white showed, and from the gloom two sightless eye sockets fixed me with a sad stare and a mouth full of white tusks grinned at me. It was my old deer skull, the cranium covered with a fine mantle of webs and dust.