One beautiful spring day, Mum, Dad and I decided to head up to Exmoor to go for a walk. It's about an hour or so drive from my parent's place. The walk started in a little fishing village called Porlock Weir, which took us all by surprise by how nice it was!
We started off the walk, which went around the coast path to a place called Culbone. The first part went through a field, and then past Worthy Toll Gate. This gate is for the Worthy Toll Road, a quiet road that was constructed in the 1840's. It is almost 7km long, and was built because the other road into Porlock is very steep. Nowadays, people use it as a kind of sightseeing thing I think, judging by the people we saw driving it for £3!
The Coast Path was bright and sunny and we had the ocean to one side so we concentrated on walking up and down the hilly path. We passed under an old bridge, and up some logging roads. We crossed a river over to the Culbone church.
This church is thought to be the smallest parish church in England, with only enough room to seat 30 people. The church was apparently written about in the Domesday Book, a survey completed in 1086 of the holdings of men in order to determine their tax. So the original parts of the church must be pretty old! Other bits were added on in the 13th and 15th centuries, and it was refurbished in the 19th century. It is Grade I listed, and the cemetery outside is Grade II.
From the church, we had to walk uphill. It was steep and seemed to go on for ages! I left my parents behind and set off, thinking the sooner I got up the top, the better! I sat waiting for them under a tree. Then we were out onto lanes. There wasn't much in the way of traffic on these lanes, so we just wandered along in the Spring sunshine. It was lovely. We stopped for lunch on a grassy corner, unwrapping the sandwiches that we carried with us and enjoying the view.
From the lanes, we turned left to walk down the Worthy Toll Road. There was a walking path alongside so you didn't have to walk on the road, and the walk was lovely. Then we were back in Porlock Weir.
We got back down to Porlock Weir and had a look around. It was a lovely looking fishing village, with several thatches cottages out by the water, and accessible by a bridge over a lock.
We stopped at a pub that had tables outside and had a drink in the sunshine. Honestly, life is so good in the UK on the rare sunny days!
We jumped back in the car and went on a scenic drive home. On the way, my parents asked me if I'd been to Selworthy, a National Trust village of thatched cottages. I hadn't, and it was nearby so we dropped in to have a look.
I thought I would also post here a couple of photos from a walk we went on earlier in the week that didn't really warrant a whole blog post. We went to Belstone, one of my favourite Dartmoor villages, and walked along a river to a little village called Sticklepath, where we stopped to have a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea before heading back. It was a lovely walk, but for some reason I didn't take many photos on my camera - not enough to tell a story anyway....
And with that, it was time to go back to London on the train.