The Last Mile to Lynton

If I ever came into a fortune my first move would be to hire a chauffeur. Driving from Cumberland to Devon has been long and boring and stressful. But then arriving on Exmoor at dusk with a thin rain sighing in the wind and the landscape blurred with tiredness has its own feeling of coming home. Stopping at Countisbury gives time to unwind a bit and take stock before the bustle and meetings of arrival. Park by the wall, stones set herringbone in the green bank, then walk to the heavy oiled push of the metal wicket gate into the churchyard, past the squat church porch, where swallows nest in summer, between graves with familiar names and out of the back gate onto the smooth cropped undulations of iron age garden plots. So many people that have left a piece of themselves on this piece of rocky coastline. The radio mast gives a goal for stamping some feeling back into cramped legs and arms but it’s the sight of the twin villages perched at the top and bottom of their steep valley, the dizzying drop down to Sillery and the endless wash of the grey sea, that quietly merges into softer grey headlands that catches your breath.