ON THE ROBBERS ROAD - SOMERSET

A scorching sun was burning my back on a Spanish beach when I first read R.D. Blackmore’s novel Lorna Doone. As I perspired profusely I envied young John Ridd, lying "under a grey patch of stone with a fringe of dry fern round it", as he watched the shadowy Doone outlaws ride past in an Exmoor mist.

That was how I came to be in Somerset on the Robbers’ Road.

From Luccombe, a tiny hamlet buried with it’s old church in a wooded valley behind Porlock, I had climbed a path through copses of trees on to the rolling moors of Dunkery Hill. There were squirrels in the pines and collared doves calling softly somewhere far below. A light breeze ruffled the clustered heather. The bare crest of the moor was sharply etched against a turquoise sky.

The track west was wide and rocky. There was no one in sight. Small bunches of bright yellow gorse peeped through a carpet of purple on either side. The Bristol Channel at Porlock Bay was a faint grey smudge in the coastal haze.

Dunkery Hill, at 1,700ft the highest point on Exmoor, lies on an east-west ridge running parallel to the sea.

White-tailed wheatears were flitting around its massive cairn of mortared stones when I arrived. Nearby stood a concrete OS pillar and a metal view-indicator erected by the AA. After all, the summit is well within reach of even the most sedentary of motorists who leave their cars a mile away on the unfenced road at Dunkery Gate.

A mile farther on were two more small cairns at Rowbarrows, the western end of the ridge, and I followed a narrow path, with the spiky heather brushing my breeches, along the edge of Codsend Moors until I met a lane running down to Hillhead crossroads.

It was somewhere on this part of Exmoor that 12 year old John Ridd, the hero of Lorna Doone, travelling from school in Tiverton to his home in Oare, came across the Doone gant – "heavy men … with leather jerkins, and long boots, and iron plates on breast and head".

From Hillhead Cross my route, in a north-westerly direction, headed for Almsworthy Common. Beyond the fence that lined the lane on my left lay the valley of the river Exe, a narrow stream that rushes over reedy shallows, where salmon spawn, towards the little town of Exford and eventually the sea at Exmouth. 

Another Valley

I crossed a road near a cattle grid and climbed the open moor to Larkbarrow at the head of Long Combe. A sea of heather stretched in all directions. Here and there were a few stunted trees. "Like bushes with a wooden leg to them" wrote Blackmore.

At the foot of the combe lay Badgworthy Water, a pleasant tree-lined stream that was joined by another rippling moorland tributary, Hoccombe Water, running due east below Trout Hill. It was a remote, almost primeval, spot buried in the heart of Exmoor. A heron lifted itself silently from the shallows and swept gracefully down the valley. The breeze played among the tossing heather.

I crossed a wooden footbridge to the west side of the stream. A mediaeval village once stood here -–archaeologists found the remains of 14 ruined houses some years ago – but only a few low mounds give any indication of the site today. Some authorities have argued that this was the site of the Doone outlaws’ hideout, but most people believe that Blackmore, who distorted the facts a little for literary effect, had in mind another valley two miles downstream.

A popular footpath climbs the side of bracken-cloaked Badgworthy Hill and crosses Brendon Common, but I turned north and walked along a grassy, terraced path with the burbling stream playing hide-and-seek through a frieze of hawthorn and birch on my right.

Ahead lay thick woodland, covering both sides of the stream. As I was about to enter the trees I stopped for a moment when a small, smooth snake about a foot long, chestnut-coloured with a tiny reticulated pattern along its skin, wriggled across the path. It vanished as silent as a ghostly serpent, in the long grass.

Another wooden footbridge, this time over a fierce, foaming little stream rushing down Lank Combe, then I was amid silver birch, alder and oak in Badgworthy Woods. Badgworthy, incidentally, is pronounced "Badge-erry" in the Exmoor area.

A few yards up the Lank Combe stream is the Water Slide, a series of moss covered, steeply pitched slabs of smooth rock. In Lorna Doone, John Ridd "stood at the foot of a long, pale slide of water, coming smoothly to me, without any break or hindrance, for a hundred yards or more, and fenced on either side with cliff, sheer, and straight, and shining".

With great courage the little boy fights his way up this barrier – very nearly drowning – to penetrate the dreaded Doone Valley. The stream does indeed topple through a gorge, but is of pygmy proportions compared with Blackmore’s description. Nevertheless, this shady spot, deep in the woods, with tree-roots cascading along the banks like an army of octopuses, is undoubtedly the location the novelist had in mind.

Lank Combe, the green valley that opens out above the woods, is generally thought to be the site of the Doone outlaws’ hideout. I climbed a small knoll at the edge of the wood and sat in the bracken with a rock at my back.

Heather covered the shoulders of the Little Black Hill and Withycombe Ridge. There were bright red berries on scattered rowan trees. Stunted hawthorn bushes lined the bank of the stream that, deep in its channel, meandered down the valley through clumps of tall spiky grass and vivid green ferns.

"A perfect oval", wrote Blackmore. "A fence of sheer rock standing round it, 80 feet or a 100 high, from whose brink black wooded hills swept up to the sky-line". Again, not quite the view we have today, but many details in the novel indicate that the author seems to have had Lank Combe in mind.

I munched a biscuit, soft and crumbly, that I found in a pocket and watched a buzzard circle lazily, high overhead, before dropping down through the wood to the side of Badgworthy Water and resuming my walk to the north.

Badgworthy Water is an archetypal Exmoor stream. Its tumbling waters and bracken-covered banks were painted by Sir Alfred Munnings, the artist famed for landscapes and studies of horses, who went to live on Exmoor in 1939.

Blackmore used poetic licence to conjure up the scene. The forest was "the blackest and loneliest place of all that keeps the sun out… it hung around us like a cloak containing little comfort". John Ridd and his Uncle Rueben, travelling up the valley with an ancient pony, encountered "bulks of rugged stone like great sheep".

The riverside path, dappled in shade under the overhanging branches of elm, birch and ash, now opened out as I walked farther down the valley. A solitary grey boulder protruded from the daisy-speckled grass like a giant’s gnarled thumb. Engraved on a plain square of slate were the words Richard Doddridge Blackmore. This somewhat incongruous stone memorial – "extolling to all the world the joys of Exmoor" – was placed here in 1969, just a hundred years after Lorna Doone was first published.

Near Cloud Farm another well-maintained wooden footbridge crossed the stream. I kept to the west bank and climbed along the hillside until I reached a little tree-shaded lane running down to the hamlet of Malmsmead.

This is one of the most beautiful spots in all Exmoor. The view of Lorna Doone Farm from across the river must have appeared on more lids of biscuit tins and chocolate boxes than any other.

There is a twin-arched stone bridge so narrow that any vehicle wider than a standard car is almost bound to scrape the low parapets.

I sat on the bridge parapet, listening to the soft gurgle of water flowing below, and pulled a paperback copy of Lorna Doone from a rucksack pocket.

Well Hidden

I looked up at the forbidding coastal ridge to the north, along which the A39 road runs from Minehead towards Countisbury and the steep drop into Lynmouth, and then at the gentle meadows bordering the stream with their grazing sheep. This must have been one of the scenes Blackmore had in mind when writing his memorable novel.

During high summer, however, the small car parks at the side of the bridge and behind the farm are so packed that the little village begins to resemble Southport beach on a Bank Holiday Monday.

A hundred yards along the lane brought me to a signpost and a path that led down to the river by the side of a cottage. Rather than follow the lane, which was entrenched in high hedgerows, I crossed the stream and walked over open fields to rejoin the lane at Oare House.

This substantial private dwelling is well hidden from the road. It has extensive gardens and commands a fine view of the valley. This, we are told, is the site of John Ridd’s home, Plover’s Barrow Farm, where he carried his sweetheart Lorna Doone when rescuing her from the outlaws.

" How pleasant and soft the fall of the land is round Plover’s Barrow Farm. All about is strong dark mountain spread with heath, and desolate, but near our house the valleys slope gently and open warmth and shelter."

The farm, which Blackmore saw, was demolished in 1883 and the stone used to build the present house, but some of the original farm buildings can still be seen.

I walked up the lane to Oare Church, a tiny grey building behind a row of high trees. There were plain box pews inside and a wagon-roof chancel. Most interesting of all, however, were two narrow slit windows. Through one on the south side of the church the evil Carver Doone shot Lorna as she stood at the alter, the chancel extension had not yet been built, during her wedding ceremony.

"The sound of a shot rang through the church… Lorna fell across my knees… she grew so cold".

I closed the book with a snap, recalling that Lorna survived her ordeal and went on to live happily ever after with handsome John Ridd. Out in the sloped graveyard the grass had been freshly cut and I sat with my back to a tombstone.

My walk had taken me from the high moors where the Doone robbers rode to the tranquil meadows of Malmsmead and Oare. It is little wonder that R.D. Blackmore found solace in this part of Exmoor. The tranquil atmosphere that inspired the writer of Lorna Doone is still there.

Information

Distance: 14 miles

Time: 7½ hours

Difficulty: No steep climbs, sturdy boots or shoes required.

Maps: OS 1:50,000. Landranger 180 and 181.