This coastline has something for everyone ( everyone that is, if you happen to be me). It has hills and it has the sea; Great Hangman rises above the cove at Coombe Martin to a massive 1,043 feet. Why then did I decide to leave it?

I had got it into my head that I should take in some of the inland parts of Devon as well as the coast. With this aim in mind I had decided to cross the headland made by the River Taw going due south across country, leaving out Ilfracombe and Woolacombe from the route. I realise now that I made a mistake.

I was enjoying the coast and I did not really have a route for taking me from Coombe Martin to Barnstaple. But I stuck to my guns and came inland wandering up a steep lane past the church at Coombe Martin . Like Mister Micawber I hoped that something would come up.

It was an uninspiring walk to Barnstaple. I found a few good bridleways to take me away from the cars but I always found myself coming back to the roads as I came to the villages. I was really becoming quite sick of the sight of speeding cars. Anyone would think that roads were made for them.

Barnstaple was prose after the poetry of the cliffs. While other towns on this coastline have been preserved in aspic, Barnstaple has been deep-fried and served with chips. I warmed to its ordinariness as it reminded me of home. It was Sunday. It was dead. It was Leighton Buzzard. The shop fronts were protected by security screens and a handful of people wandered the streets eating at the town’s impressive array of burgerbars and kebab shops.

In an old wood-panelled pub in the town centre I got into conversation with the locals around the bar. By now I stood out in any crowd with my wild bush hair. I was happy to play a minor celebrity waxing lyrically about the coast path and even decided to buy a round of drinks.

The evening wore on and things livened up and everyone in the pub had the opportunity to beat me at a game of pool. I felt like I was running for mayor and I found myself slapping backs and furiously shaking hands with everyone. My new found friends were happy to drink my money. The landlord called time and everyone drifted off and I found myself on my own with a woman who seemed determined not to let me go. I was not sure what surprised me most as we stood outside the pub. The fact that she propositioned me or the fact that she would sell herself for a night for fifteen quid. When I recovered my politician’s poise I smiled and raised my eye brows and then legged it up the high street trailing the woman’s curses.

Next morning I crunched down a cinder track looking out over the exposed mud flats of the River Taw. This part of the coastwalk ran along the line of an old railway that laboured under the title of the Tarka Trail. The marketing boys knew their stuff. As I walked watching the wading birds gathered on the ooze I caught myself looking out for signs of the fictional otter.

I was heading for Instow for the ferry ride across the River Torridge. As I walked the Far South West I got to enjoy these little ferries more and more. I liked the fact that I now depended on the tide and could sit still in the sun without feeling guilty about not moving until the small open boat made it across the water. It was only a short bob across the harbour to Appledore but it felt as if I had come fresh to the shore.

After wandering the harbour of Appledore the coast path took me on a wide sweep around the sandy head land of Northam Burroughs before twisting back on itself along a pebble ridge.

I was excited to be coming to Westward Ho! For one thing it is the only place I know that has any punctuation in its name and for another this was the place that featured in my earliest memories.

I wasn’t sure whether I actually remember Westward Ho! or not. I have heard it mentioned so often in stories about family holidays that I am fairly sure that I could have constructed my memories out of fragments of anecdotes. So as I sat up on the seawall outside the arcade I did not feel disappointed that I did not remember anything around me.

I watched some surfers working a weak wave. The sea looked different from my memories. It looked small and grey like a tired old man. I knew I would not get any hints out there in the waves as I had always been happiest on the shore in my knitted swim suit. I watched a bingo-caller work his audience in the arcade and felt memories flooding back from any number of childhood visits to the sea. Nothing in these recollections, however, was specific to this place.

I gave up trying to grab the fluffy remnants of my recollections and prepared to set off again. I ducked down to do up a shoelace and as I lifted my head suddenly there it was. Suddenly I was at the right height. I had right perspective to see Westward Ho! as a four year old. I remembered where Georgie the Giraffe, the slot machine ride I had loved as a kid, had stood.

After that I was sure. I walked west away from the arcades passing clumps of young families holidaying in my past. There were the chalets, the potting sheds with pretensions. There was Nanny off to play bingo. There fixed to the sky was a boring old single-string kite. There was that feeling of being totally safe, of being immersed in a large family.

After Westward Ho! the path became wilder, a clifftop roller coaster. As I lumbered on I looked down over the ragged rocks of Cornborough Range. I had a long way still to cover and pushed on with the wind in my face.

I must have dozed as I walked that afternoon because I don’t remember much other than the sun until I came to the woods around the Hobby Drive. A small private road that twisted away from the sea into a fine wood before coming to a viewpoint that looks down to Clovelly.

The harbour wall at the bottom of the cliffs was framed by the trees and it cried out to be photographed. Here was a Tudor village that had retained its original form with bobbing boats resting in its shelter. A charming place. A curiosity.

I wish I had walked past Clovelly so I could have preserved that first image.

The village was built on a slope more commonly associated with gull colonies and as I walked down into Clovelly that evening the steep descent of roof tops below me gave the impression that Clovelly had actually fallen off the cliff at sometime in the past.

It was the harbour of course that provided the original wealth of Clovelly. Charles Carey, an Elizabethan century lawyer paid for the pier and developed this port in an era of speculation in maritime enterprises. The swashbuckling times of Drake and Frobisher were also a time of expansion in the fishing fleets of England. Carey and his kind made a fortune out of the seas.

There are still a few working boats nestling behind the sea wall, though Clovelly’s main catch now is the silver shoals of tourist’s money. Its ‘nets’ now are its tea shops and endless postcards. I was jostled, pushed, hemmed-in by the crowd. I felt like a sardine as I made my way down to the water. I had been landed and canned before I realised that I had been caught.

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© Gavin Stewart 1996-2004