There was a motor road to the Valley of Rocks. I had seen very few people all day; but this place, on every map, because Shelley had praised it and because it had a parking lot, had a hundred people clambering over the rocks and yelling. The rock piles had good names, such as Mother Meldrum's Cave and the White Lady and the Devil's Cheese Ring, but I skipped on to Lynton just the same.
There was once a railway to Lynton. It was not open long, about sixty years. There was still a club in the village called the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway Association. Normally I had no interest in railway clubs and I avoided the company of railway buffs; but I liked the motto of this railway association in Lynton: "Perchance it is not dead, but sleepeth…"
***
At about five-thirty in the afternoon, just after tea, everyone left Lynton. It became a deserted village and seemed to slumber there on the crest of the hill until the next morning, when it woke again with the hullaballoo of people. I thought the people went to Lynmouth, four hundred feet down the cliff on a small harbor. Old guidebooks called Lynmouth "one of the loveliest villages in England." But the people did not go to Lynmouth — that village was empty, too, full of VACANCIES signs and very quiet saloon bars and dim whispers; the only full-throated sound was that of the tide battering the seawall. The light was strange in these sister villages above and below the pinnacles of cliff; facing north and tucked into a cove, they lost the sun in the afternoon, so they were lit by the gleaming Channel and the near-mirage of Wales. But Lynmouth remained a cool glade, rather damp and sheltered on the banks of the two rivers that rose in Exmoor and converged among a battered and rather scoured-looking water course.
Lynmouth had a rearranged, half-put-away appearance, because thirty years ago much of it had been demolished by a torrent of water. Even now, people visited the village to examine the damage done by the Great Lynmouth Flood Disaster. But where did they go after tea?
A street-sweeper named Mr. Bedge told me the people were from Butlin's Holiday Camp in Minehead, eighteen miles away.
I said, "But there are thousands of people!"
"It's a big camp," Mr. Bedge said.
I liked the liquid evening light in Lynmouth, but the village was clammy and full of shadows. Lynton had a whiter light, more sky, and a breeze; and even deserted, it looked rather dignified and old-fashioned on its clifftop.
Next month there would be a movie one day a week in Lynton.
"But if there are thirty people at that film show the owner will be pleased, and if there's fifty it'll be a bloody miracle," Sid Henry told me.
Mrs. Henry said, "We're dying on our feet."
There was a great deal of talk at the Henrys' and all over the village of Lorna Doone, which was set just down the road toward Porlock. But it was another example of literature giving an area an importance that in time had displaced the book. No one here had read Lorna Doone, but that didn't matter, because the district had already been hallowed by it, and now it was seen in a kind of blurred and respectful way. How could you possibly disparage a place that had inspired a famous novel?
But there was a greater source of interest at the Henrys'. This was the honeymoon couple, a frail young man and a big laughing woman who was about five years older than her new husband. A silence fell over the dining room when the couple came down to breakfast: the Campbells stared into their porridge (they were Australian — nervous and uncritical); the Hibberts, from London, became small and watchful; and I pretended to read the newspaper. B. and G. Chandler (that was how it went in the Guests' Register, always one of my favorite books at any overnight stop) were the honeymoon couple. They took their seats at breakfast, and she talked and he squinted. Mr. Chandler looked terrible — pale, squinting, rather beaten; and Mrs. Chandler was robust, rosy-cheeked, full of talk, as if perhaps she fed off him at night. She made the plans—"Let's go to Clovelly today" — and he just sat there, grimacing.
We wanted to hear him say something. We wanted to know what he was thinking. Most of all we wanted him to assert himself ("I can't take much more of this!"), but in two days he never spoke. He listened, he squinted, he grew a bit smaller; but that was all. And then the Just Married signs that had been stuck to their bumper and the Honeymooners! that had been scrawled in soap on the car doors vanished, and by the time they left Lynton, the Chandlers looked as though they had been married for twenty years.
I left Lynton on the Cliff Railway, a cable car that descended to Lynmouth. I took a bus to Porlock, ten miles away. The road cut across the north of Exmoor, a rather brown forbidding place, and down the long Porlock Hill. The roads were so steep, there were signs on ramps saying, "Danger — Escape for Runaway Vehicles — No Parking" and "Warning to Pedestrians — Do Not Loiter Near This Bend — Danger from Vehicles Out of Control."
Porlock, the home of the man who interrupted the writing of "Kubla Khan," was one street of small cottages, with a continuous line of cars trailing through it. Below it, on the west side of the bay, was Porlock Weir, and there were hills on all sides that were partly wooded.
A hundred and seventy years ago a man came to Porlock and found it quiet. But he did not find fault. He wrote: "There are periods of comparative stagnation, when we say, even in London, that there is nothing stirring; it is therefore not surprising that there should be some seasons of the year when things are rather quiet in West Porlock."
I walked toward Allerford, and on the way fell into conversation with a woman feeding birds in her garden. She told me the way to Minehead — not the shortest way, but the prettiest way, she said. She had light hair and dark eyes. I said her house was beautiful. She said it was a guest house; then she laughed. "Why don't you stay tonight?" She meant it and seemed eager, and then I was not sure what she was offering. I stood there and smiled back at her. The sun was shining gold on the grass and the birds were taking the crumbs in a frenzied way. It was not even one o'clock, and I had never stopped at a place this early in the day.
I said, "Maybe I'll come back some time."
"I'll still be here," she said, laughing a bit sadly.
There was an ancient bridge at Allerford. I by-passed it and cut into the woods, climbing toward the hill called Selworthy Beacon. The woods were full of singing birds, warblers and thrushes; and then I heard the unmistakable sound of a cuckoo, which was as clear as a clock, striking fifteen. The sun was strong, the gradient was easy, the bees were buzzing, there was a soft breeze; and I thought: This was what I was looking for when I set out this morning — though I had no idea I would find it here.
All travelers are optimists, I thought. Travel itself was a sort of optimism in action. I always went along thinking: I'll be all right, I'll be interested, I'll discover something, I won't break a leg or get robbed, and at the end of the day I'll find a nice old place to sleep. Everything is going to be fine, and even if it isn't, it will be worthy of note — worth leaving home for. Sometimes the weather, even the thin rain of Devon, made it worth it. Or else the birdsong in sunlight, or the sound of my shoe soles on the pebbles of the downward path — here, for example, walking down North Hill through glades full of azaleas, which were bright purple. I continued over the humpy hills to Minehead.
9. The West Somerset Railway
TO THE EAST, beyond the gray puddly foreshore — the tide was out half a mile — I saw the bright flags of Butlin's, Minehead, and vowed to make a visit. Ever since Bognor I had wanted to snoop inside a coastal holiday camp, but I had passed the fences and gates without going in. It was not possible to make a casual visit. Holiday camps were surrounded by prison fences, with coils of barbed wire at the top. There were dog patrols and beware signs stenciled with skulls. The main entrances were guarded and had turnstiles and a striped barrier that was raised to let certain vehicles through. Butlin's guests had to show passes in order to enter. The whole affair reminded me a little of Jonestown.