Day 11: Morwenstow to Bude

Weather: Rain to start, gradually improving through drizzle to cloudy

Distance covered today: 14.6 km (9.1 mi)

Last night's B&B :Bush Inn

% Complete: Cumulative distance: 21.0 %: 212.5km

Total Ascent/Total Descent:  541m/652m

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 4 (click!)

Little did I realise it at the time, but the image of the house and church towards the end of yesterday’s post is quite significant. The house is the vicarage which housed the rather eccentric and humanitarian Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875). He married a woman of 41 when he was 19. She died when he was 60, and he then married a woman of 20 and had three daughters with her. More importantly, he appears to have almost single-handedly changed the attitude of the locals to the smugglers and wreckers on this savage coast. Up to this point, the locals made no attempt to rescue any bedraggled survivors and they were often left to die on the jagged rocks where they lay, their bones bleached by the elements. He introduced Christian burials for them, though I find no evidence that he actually saved any lives.

His vicarage and church lie near the village of Morwenstow, and I chose it partly because it was close to where I wanted to be, but also because I was attracted by the name for a very silly reason. Some years ago, I became very fond of a TV serial based in Cornwall called “Doc Martin”, a funny, ironic and sometimes moving account of life in a Cornish village involving a socially awkward, but clinically brilliant physician, his wife and the village locals. A particularly attractive character, who acted as his secretary was called Morwenna and I grew fond of the name. A few days ago, my younger daughter played a movie for us called “Saving Grace”, which I very much enjoyed and I was surprised and amused to discover that Doc Martin was conceived as a result of this film and Martin Clunes plays the doctor in both. Hence I came to Morwenstow, which is actually inland from the coastal path, only to discover that the Rev. Hawker named one of his daughters Morwenna.

Amongst his other accomplishments, the Rev. Hawker also initiated the “Harvest Festival” as we know it today in the village of Morwenstow in 1843. The first service took place on 1^st October of that year and bread made from the first cut of corn was taken at communion. This festival is now honoured throughout England and indeed my mother-in-law is very much involved!

More than all of this however, Hawker was also a poet and is best known for his poem “The Song of the Western Men”, which includes the classic line “And shall Trelawney die? There’s 20,000 Cornish men shall know the reason why”.  It’s a line I remember from school and haven’t heard of for more than fifty years. Although he published this anonymously, his name was acknowledged publicly by none other than Charles Dickens. Today, I came upon his little hut on the coast, constructed by him of driftwood, and discovered that it is the smallest property owned and preserved by the National Trust in Britain. It is where he thought up his poetry while smoking opium. He excommunicated his cat for mousing on Sundays! The only black clothes he owned were his socks! I think I would have liked him.

To see his little hut I had this morning to retreat via a slightly different path back to the coast. I learned that the coastal path itself has just recently collapsed into the sea near the hut, which meant I had to climb over locked gates and disobey no-entry signs to achieve my objective. I felt sure Hawker would have approved! Subsequently, to avoid the collapsed path I had to make my way back to Morwenstow and thence to an enchanting little valley where I followed a stream back to the coast path. I was enjoying my little adventure so much that I hardly noticed the rain. Two huts for two poets in two days! 

Much later, the rain had lifted to intermittent showers and drizzle and I found myself once again confronted by a series of roller coaster cliffs and valleys above that cruel, grey coast with its razor rocks.  I was wet and tired, and my mood was deteriorating. There was no-one else about at all and I was wryly deciding that the English are sufficiently used to their bank holidays being rained off that they no longer even attempt to go outside. No point in going to the cliffs, because you can’t see anything through the mist and rain. Then I spotted a red jacket coming towards me on the cliff opposite.

We met at the stream below, and Jill introduced herself to me. I guessed she was from Holland but she told me she was Flemish and she was walking from Land’s End to Minehead. Finally, a long-distance walker! We swapped war stories and she restored my faith in my mission. Then, just as I was exuberantly wishing her bon voyage, she told me her destination for the day was Hartland Quay, i.e. two days walking for me. I winced and bade her good luck with the difficult terrain and her response shook me rigid. She said that after what she had experienced on the way from Land’s End, this was a walk in the park! She saw the look on my face and immediately suggested that it would get easier as I got fitter, but I wasn’t completely buying that.

As it later turned out, I had literally reached the point where the jagged, high cliffs of the Hartland headland were metamorphosing into a gentler, pastoral undulation above sandy beaches, so this easier walking had been her immediate experience. Her comment may therefore not be all that alarming to me, but if that really is the case, she will be one tired lady tonight!

I had one or two further encounters as I approached Bude, in particular, one with a young couple, Maya and Colin from Exeter. My kind of people, we were into philosophy in seconds. Colin wanted to know why he was going to have to work for the foreseeable future to earn money that he would just fritter away in his old age, and I was onto him in a flash with my good friend John’s theory of twenty summers. Maya looked on compassionately at both of us.

She has a point.

Rev.Hawker's hut,the tiniest property owned and maintained by the National Trust

The view from the hut

My re-acquaintance with a Cornish stile, consisting of very slippery rocks 

A bridge crossing the stream in the idyllic Tidna Shute

Only to be faced with the climb up to Oldwalls

The view forwards from Oldwalls: magnificent!

At last,some respite! An accident of nature produces a land bridge so that I don't have to descend to sea-level before the next climb!

The sign should have read "Danger. Cliff liable to subsidence". It saw me and read Aas. Point taken!

The cliff had collapsed at this point. The grass clearly got a big fright,imitating the hairstyle of a hipster teenager! In fact,it was the wind, howling up the cliff, continuously blowing the lank grass until it sustains this extraordinary pose. 

GCHQ Bude, a joint venture between the USA's NSA and the UK's GCHQ for the "interception" of satellites

Looking down on Stanbury Mouth

and the bridge across Stanbury Stream

Colin and Maya

Looking down the desolate coast towards Bude

The path on a vertical cliff edge

Gradually the coastline softens, the cliffs are lower and the beaches are sandy

The cliffs gently undulate

A common migratory species returns; surfers at Bude

Bude at last! For little crooks? (They've heard that before....)