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From Paddington to Penzance / The record of a summer tramp from London to the Land's End cover

From Paddington to Penzance / The record of a summer tramp from London to the Land's End

Chapter 37: XXXIII.
By Charles G. Harper
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About This Book

A first-person account of a summer journey from London to the western coast, blending practical itinerary notes with evocative scene-setting and local color. The narrator describes towns, coastal views, moors, churches, and roadside personalities encountered while travelling on foot, by boat, and by bicycle, and intersperses historical and antiquarian reflections on coaching, highways, and changing travel customs. Humorous anecdotes and brief portraits of fellow wayfarers punctuate a contemplative, conversational prose, and over a hundred pen-and-ink illustrations and reproduced engravings visually accompany the observations and sketches made along the route.

XXXIII.

Exminster lies close to the river, and from its church-tower there is a magnificent view down as far as Exmouth, and then out to sea. The scenery is very beautiful: the Exe broadens into an estuary, and at low tide the smell of the seaweed and the mud-flats comes across the low-lying fields between the river and the highway with a refreshing breeze, doubly welcome after a hot and dusty walk. There is a walk beside the estuary atop of the banks that restrict the waters to their proper channel—a walk that affords delightful views. It leads past the lock of the Exe Navigable Canal at Turf, whose buildings form a charming composition, with foreground of tall grasses, and a glimpse of the twin towers of Exeter Cathedral, distinct, though nearly seven miles away. We came to Powderham this way, and crossed the railway to Powderham church, that stands beside the road within the bounds of Powderham Park. Park and castle have been for centuries the home of the Courtenays, earls of Devon, whose family history goes back to a very remote and misty antiquity. Many Courtenays have been laid to rest in the church, and in a chapel of it is a beautiful altar-tomb, with recumbent portrait-effigy of the eleventh earl’s countess. From here was a glorious view of park and castle, with herds of deer trooping down to the waterside to drink. The light was waning, and the salt breeze blew chill after the hot and scorching day. The light from the western sky shone redly upon the windows of the castle, which, save for this, lay dark and half-defined amid the groves and alleys of forest foliage.

TURF.

We turned and gazed upon the broad and placid Exe. Lights were beginning to twinkle from the opposite shore, where lay Exmouth, the commonplace, two miles away, across channels, shoals, and sandbanks, whose treacherous surface the rising tide was swiftly covering. Gulls were screaming over their evening feast of sprats and pilchards, their harsh cries breaking the stillness of departing day.

Signal-lamps on the railway shone green and red and white, where Starcross Station lay ahead, making, with the curve of river mouth, ships at anchor behind the Bar, and the soaring tower of the old Atmospheric Railway, a natural composition which no artist could possibly resist noting. So I sat on a wall and sketched in the gathering gloom, while the Wreck (who, I fear, has no soul for these things) went on in advance to negotiate for high tea and quarters for the night.