Monday 16th April: Weather 10°C to 15°C: Overcast and cold with sunny periods in afternoon
Barnstaple to Westward Ho!: 21k walk: 6hrs 30 mins: 9.30am to 4.00pm: Ascent/Descent Flat as a pancake
Accommodation: Mayfield House
From Barnstaple to Westward Ho!
Straight and flat along Tarka Trail
Mud hut for morning coffee
Hot coffee with sun on back
Ian likes this sign
Tarka Trail along old train line
Low tide at Instow and no ferry
Old train station at Instow
Padded paw symbol of Tarka Trail
Cornish Pasty for lunch
Followed by a Cappuccino
Looking across to Appledore
Arriving in Westward Ho!
We like this sign
Beautifully decorated room in Mayfield House
Local pub for a pale ale and nuts
Highlight was getting to the beach of Westward Ho! and seeing how wild and rough the surf can be on the south west coast of England. Any wonder Devon and Cornwall are havens for surfers. Today we completed 126k in 6 days of the South West Coast Path at an average of 20k per day. Just another 380k to go!!
This morning we’re awake at 6am. There’s blue sky outside our window but it doesn’t last for long. Booking.com showed no breakfast at the hotel, so we had a simple in-room breakfast of muesli and yoghurt that Ian had bought late last night at the local Tescos Express. We’re out the door at 8.30am, but spend an hour dilly dallying around Barnstaple checking out all the super markets hoping to find dried full cream milk at the local Tescos, Co-op or ASDA stores but no luck. It’s 9.30am before we start the Tarka trail by walking over the Long Bridge, one of the largest medieval bridges in Britain.
The Tarka Trail, apart from being the route of Tarka the Otter in Henry Williamson's famous book written in 1927, was also an old train line from Barnstaple to Instow until 1982 and consequently it’s straight and flat and a very easy walk. It's busy with day walkers, dog walkers, through walkers and cyclists, many of them stopped at the Fremington cafe on route. At 11.30am after 10k in 2hrs, we’re looking for a spot for coffee out of the wind. Most of the track is exposed and windy but soon we spy a mud hut - yes a small mud hut. There was no signage so we have no idea whether it was a pre historic dwelling, a purpose built bird watches den, or a high school project in mud house building. But it was perfect for our morning coffee out of the wind with places to sit.
It’s only another 10 minutes til we reach the village of Instow at the junction of the Taw and Torridge rivers. The village consists of a strange collection of timber bungalows used as beach houses in summer, but the water quality in the rivers never passes the UK standard so most of the activity is windsurfing. During summer a ferry service operates across the Torridge estuary from Instow Quay to Appledore slipway, only running two hours either side of high tide. But we are there at midday, and the ferry won’t start until 5pm - too long to wait. So we decide to continue along the Tarka Trail down the Torridge estuary to Bideford, home of Charles Kingsley (12 June 1819 – 23 January 1875) who was a Church of England priest, a university professor, social reformer, historian and novelist.
In 1854 Charles Kingsley came to Bideford, hired a house at the end of the Strand (now Stella Maris Court) and wrote his best-seller Westward Ho! So successful was it that readers came to Bideford as tourists to see the real sites used by Kingsley for his story's setting. The new resort town of hotels and villas built further on from Bideford at the mouth of the Torridge in the late 19th Century was named Westward Ho! in recognition of his novel. But Kingsley never approved of the resort. His simple philosophy on life was reflected in such famous quotes as:
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
How true! I like that quote!
Arriving in Bideford at 1.30pm, it’s windy and cold and we decide to give our usual picnic a miss and retreat to a cafe for a Cornish pasty and a barista cappuccino. Checking the map we make another collective decision - to avoid the sand dunes ahead and walk straight to Westward Ho! via the footpath alongside the B3236. In less than 1hr we’re at Mayfield House in Westward Ho!, our home for the night and met by our host Sally, who shows us to our beautifully decorated room. It’s too nice to spoil with a picnic dinner, and besides we’re still full from our lunch time pasty, so it’s off to the local pub for a pale ale and nuts, before returning to our room for a tea and cake that Sally had given us when we first arrived.
The room is large, with plenty of space to spread out and blog and plan for tomorrow before turning in at 9.00pm.