The Coleridge way
It’s 250 years since the birth of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great poet and lover of nature and landscape. Ben Lerwill celebrates by exploring a spectacular hiking route named in the poet’s honour, through the lovely hills of West Somerset
‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.’
These words, conjured in a 1797 postopium haze by a Romantic poet and subsequently taught to generations of inky-fingered schoolchildren, still echo with the exotic strangeness of distant lands. But the poem’s roots are far closer to home. The lines were penned – or rather quilled – in a squat Exmoor farmhouse overlooking the Bristol Channel, in a part of the country deeply familiar to the poem’s moon-eyed author. Jump forward to today and I’m leaning on a five-bar gate at the edge of the same farm, enjoying billowing views across the sea towards Wales.
The writer in question, of course, was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a man whose literary reputation still ripples through the centuries. His works, such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, will continue to be referenced long into the future. Coleridge was born in the Devon town of Ottery St Mary in October 1772 – almost exactly 250 years ago – and grew up He remains highly influential today, despite the fact that his 61 years were plagued by both anxiety and addiction. “His genius,” wrote the 19th-century critic William Hazlitt, “had angelic wings.”
LIFE OF A TROUBLED GENIUS
Born on 21 October 1772, Coleridge grew up in rural Devon. He was just eight years old when his father – avicar and headmaster – died suddenly. A place for him was arranged at Christ’s Hospital School in London, where his love of reading blossomed. There followed a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, which saw him develop a deep interest in both poetry and politics.
He married Sara Fricker in 1795 – despite four children, the union was not a happy one – and started a long acquaintance with William Wordsworth. Coleridge began exploring Romantic ideas in his writing and, after moving to Nether Stowey, worked with Wordsworth to produce the hugely influential Lyrical Ballads. He spent time living in the Lake District, and despite long-term drug use and financial troubles, continued to write in his later years, drawing wide praise for Biographia Literaria, a collection of his thoughts on literature. He died in London on 25 July 1834, aged 61, of heart failure.
A WRITER’S LANDSCAPE
The soft valleys and coastal meadows of West Somerset and North Devon might lack the lavish Mongolian palaces of Xanadu, but they clearly held enough to enchant Coleridge, who passed some of his most fruitful years here. I’m finding this out in one of the most enjoyable ways possible, by spending three late-summer days meandering along the 51-mile Coleridge Way. The trail begins in the Quantock Hills before undulating gently – and occasionally steeply – across Exmoor to the coast.
The walking route ostensibly links various locations associated with Coleridge’s life, although its creators have, to their credit, given equal priority to the joys of a scenic ramble. On a prosaic note, the route was opened as recently as 2005 as a means of attracting more visitors (‘In Somerset did county clerks/ A stately hiking trail decree’), but the end result, in any case, is a path that combines the sweet wilds of the West Country and the lingering ardour of the Georgian era with the steady, salty aired stomp of a long-distance walk.
My journey begins in the village of Nether Stowey, above which some of the last martins of the summer, shortly bound for Africa, are flitting through blue September skies. Beyond a terrace of neat stone houses I find the stocky, cream-coloured dwelling that marks the trail’s official start point: Coleridge Cottage, where the poet lived with his wife Sara and young son Hartley for three years, from 1797. It’s closed on my visit, for reasons unexplained (Romantic poets’ houses, it seems, are as capricious as Romantic poets themselves), so I don’t get to see first-hand the open fireplaces and wildflower garden that helped the little place to feel like a home. It’s known that Coleridge’s great friend and contemporary William Wordsworth was a regular guest here with his sister, Dorothy.
The locked front door, however, is not a major issue. Despite composing many of his best-known works here in Somerset, Coleridge seldom wrote at home, preferring to seek inspiration beyond his four walls. He was a prolific walker, not just here in the West Country but in Snowdonia, the Lake District, Scotland and even the German highlands. It’s said that, while living in Nether Stowey, he would sometimes cover 40 miles just to pick up books from Bristol Library. I turn, tighten my pack-straps, and follow the path into the hills.
Within minutes of climbing out of the village, I’m in a world of giant oaks, shining holly and slanting, sheep-chewed grasslands. A kestrel hangs on the breeze.The Bristol Channel appears to the north, big and glassy. Present, too, on the shoreline is Hinkley Point Power Station, one of the most glaring differences between the view today and that of more than 200 years ago, when Coleridge described this panorama as ‘The many-steepled tract magnificent/Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea/ With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up/ The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles.’You can still glimpse the same twin islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm – the former in England, the latter in Wales – offshore.
My first day takes me to the hamlet of Roadwater, a long but entrancing 18-mile journey across the Quantocks to the bulkier contours of Exmoor National Park. I trace airy hillsides, cross clear-running streams and meander through sunken holloways.Beside the path, early blackberries cluster in frothing green hedgerows. The route is studded with sleepy villages, where Test Match Special drifts from open windows and snoozing Labradors raise their heads at my arrival. I pass remote Alfoxton Park, thehouse where the Wordsworths spent a year as tenants after being wooed by the surrounding hillscapes.
When I finally reach my stop for the night, at the horse-brass-covered Valiant Soldier, the landlord gestures me straight to a table.“I expect you’ll be wanting sustenance first,” he ascertains, correctly. I’ve split the walk into three days of more or less equal lengths, although of course it’s perfectly possible – and probably advisable for the sake of your legs – to stretch it out for longer.
ON INTO EXMOOR
Early the next morning, breakfasted, I continue west into Exmoor proper along rollercoaster country lanes. The verges fizz with late-summer greenery, and I follow them into the towering conifers of Langridge Wood, soundtracked by brookburble and robin-song. An hour later, the views are deeper: all buzzard-flown valleys and patchworked fields. A twittering, 20-strong charm of goldfinches materialises from nowhere. The inclines become more punishing, but the scenic rewards more than offset the hardship.
About 30 miles into the trail, having faithfully followed its quill-adorned waymarkers into Devon, it dawns on me that I’ve passed only two other walkers, and they were together. This thought makes it almost impossible not to feel transported by the route’s dappled slopes, mossy oak woods and lovely hillside-teetering paths. As Coleridge wrote in his poem To Nature: ‘So will I build my altar in the fields/ And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be/ And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields/Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee/Thee only God!’ Samuel, I know the feeling.
In the afternoon I pass Webber’s Post, arguably the most famous lookout along the trail, as evidenced by its National Trust car park. It grants wonderful panoramas across rumpled hills towards Dunkery Beacon, although – and keep this under your hat – the views are merely on a par with other, quieter spots along the Exmoor sections of the route. Porlock Bay is soon visible, too, and by the time I walk into Porlock village, where I’m overnighting at The Ship Inn, I’ve reached that delicious frame of mind familiar to regular hikers, perhaps best described as equal parts fatigue and bliss.
The mention of Porlock, for all its traditional, thatched-roof charms, can induce groans from fans of Coleridge. While writing Kubla Khan, the poet was famously interrupted by a “person on business from Porlock”, bringing his trance-like state of mind, and the poem itself, to an abrupt end. It has never been ascertained who this might have been, or indeed whether Coleridge simply fabricated the tale, but the next morning I follow what may have been the same route of this mysterious visitor, winding up through Worthy Wood to reach the open fields around Ash Farm. This is the farmhouse where the poem was created – although, some suggest it might have been written at neighbouring Parsonage Farm – and tees up a glorious final day of walking.
REJOICING BY THE SEASHORE
It’s a joy to ramble downhill into Oare, still home to the little church where the heroine is shot in RD Blackmore’s iconic novel Lorna Doone. Centre stage are the Exmoor clefts, combes and wind-bent trees that so attracted Coleridge, giving mile after mile of magnificent moorland roaming.
The final stretch is along the wooded, sonorous East Lyn River, which marks the boundary between Somerset and Devon. I follow the river as it flows through boulders and deep pools into Lynmouth. The coastal town, surrounded by soaring cliffs, would be a fine terminus for any trail, and it’s fun to be finishing among a bustle of ice-cream shops and day-trippers. But beyond them lies the sea, the real endpoint. ‘Ships and waves, and ceaseless motion’, as Coleridge had it, in his poem On Revisiting the Sea-Shore. ‘And men rejoicing on thy shore.’ And if you can’t rejoice after a 51-mile walk through the West Country, then when can you?
Ben Lerwill is an award-winning freelance travel and wildlife writer and photographer who lives in Oxfordshire.
His books for children include Around the World in 80 Trees and Let’s Go Outside! (Welbeck Children’s).
NOW WALK THE COLERIDGE WAY
Where to sleep, eat and drink along the route, by Ben Lerwill
FINDING YOUR WAY
The Coleridge Way is marked by waymarkers with a quill logo, but this signage is occasionally hard to spot, and/or missing at crucial points, so it makes a lot of sense to travel with the relevant OS maps – OS Explorer 140 (Quantocks) and OS Explorer OL9 (Exmoor) – and familiarise yourself with how to read them before your walk. Visit Exmoor’s website also has a full, printable route guide with mapping, and directions for walking the trail eastwards as well as westwards. See visit-exmoor.co.uk.
The Coleridge Way Companion Guide by Ian Pearson, (£10 plus postage) is a trail guidebook of some 155 pages, written by one of the owners of the Old Cider House B&B in Nether Stowey. It includes basic route directions, although the bulk of the book recounts the author’s own travels along the trail. It’s unconventional, but valuable to have, and if you are feeling energetic, it also includes details of a return walking route along the England Coast Path. coleridgewaywalk.co.uk
NOTABLE PUBS ALONG THE ROUTE
The Ancient Mariner, Nether Stowey
This 16th-century pub, named for Coleridge’s famous poem, offers cream teas and local real ales. marinernetherstowey.co.uk
Notley Arms Inn, Monksilver
A stylish, recently refurbished country pub with open fires and a beer garden, around 14 miles along the trail. notleyarmsinn.co.uk
The Rockford Inn, Brendon Valley
A remote riverside pub close to the end of the route serving home-cooked meals using seasonal produce. therockfordinn.co.uk
VISIT
Coleridge Cottage
Home to Coleridge and his family from 1797, the cottage (above left) is open between late March and October, Wednesday to Saturday, 11am–5pm. Entry is £6.50 per adult, with free entry for National Trust members. nationaltrust.org.uk/coleridge-cottage
Alfoxton House
The route passes Alfoxton House (above right), where William and Dorothy Wordsworth lived for a short while, and where Coleridge reputedly gave his first reading of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Today the house is a Buddhist centre, with various courses on offer, from meditation retreats to permaculture courses. alfoxtonpark.org.uk
RECOMMENDED READING
As well as the works of Coleridge himself, there are various biographies of the poet, several of which focus on his years in the West Country. For a starting point, try Coleridge: Early Visions by Richard Holmes (Harper Perennial, £12.99), a Whitbread Prize-winning book which focuses on the first few decades of Coleridge’s life, including the fruitful period of Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
TRAVEL TIPS
Castle Street Car Park in Nether Stowey (post code TA5 1LW) has free parking. It’s not a large car park, but it works well as somewhere to leave your vehicle. To return from Lynmouth to Nether Stowey, a good option is to catch the glorious Exmoor Coaster bus back along the coast to Watchet. Tracing the area’s high sea cliffs, it’s surely one of the country’s most scenic bus rides.
From Watchet, a 20-minute taxi ride will take you back to Nether Stowey. firstbus.co.uk/adventures-bus/services/exmoor-coaster
STAY
The Old Cider House B&B, Nether Stowey
A friendly guesthouse at the trailhead. Double rooms from £85 (singles from £65), with breakfast. theoldciderhouse.co.uk
The Valiant Solider, Roadwater
A straightforward but well located country pub. Double rooms from £80 (singles from £40), with breakfast. thevaliantsoldier.co.uk
The Ship Inn, Porlock
A 13th-century traditional pub and hotel with a lively feel and good food. Double rooms from £80 (singles from £50), with breakfast. shipinnporlock.co.uk
The Lyn Valley Guest House, Lynmouth
This charming five-room guest house is in the heart of the village. Double rooms from £90, with breakfast. lynvalleyguesthouse.com