Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/654

 646 arches, watching the setting sun and the boats on the broad, winding Torridge. Bideford is not an interesting place. There are pleasant walks and drives in the neighbourhood to the Tapley Woods, and Northam Burrows, and the Pebble Ridge; but we did not care to linger there, and were soon on our way to Clovelly. As this part of our journey was in the dark we will not pretend to describe it; the road seemed chiefly between two high hedges, which would at any time prevent a view of the sea. We passed through several little villages; and once the driver pointed out a bright speck in the distance, the lighthouse on Lundy Isle. Within a mile of Clovelly we came to a group of cottages and a little chapel; then we turned down a shady road, and the driver pulled up, and told us we had arrived at our journey’s end. But where were the houses? We seemed to have alighted in the middle of a wood, and could scarcely see a glimmer of light between the trees. We began to wonder where we should find a night’s lodging. It was past ten o’clock, and very dark, and apparently all Clovelly had retired to rest. We took our traps and followed our guide, who, with a carriage-lamp in one hand, helped us to grope our way down a steep path; then we turned, and found ourselves in the village, the babbling little stream and our own footsteps the only sounds to be heard. But this did not last long. If the inhabitants had retired to rest, they were still awake enough to care to know who had come at that time of night; and a candle and then a head came forth from first one door, then another. There seems to be a very friendly feeling between the lodging-house keepers at Clovelly. It is the custom for visitors to try for accommodation at the top of the street first, and if that is full they will be recommended to the next, and so on. We made two unsuccessful attempts; but the third time we found a good lodging, and there we gladly settled down. It turned out well in all respects; and our worthy landlady made us as comfortable as we could wish to be during the three days we stayed there.

We slept soundly on a soft bed, and were up betimes in the morning. Then it was we had our first view of the quaint little town of Clovelly. Our house was not half-way down the steep street, and at our first essay it seemed probable that we should not very often descend to the pier. The street (if it may bear that name) is a kind of paved staircase, very rough and irregular. It requires some practice to learn how to trip down it without fear of a tumble. Perhaps our boots were at fault, or perhaps it was the rain (which had come down heavily in the night); but we were hardly able to keep on our feet, and envied the little children who ran down, skipping and laughing, before us. The first point of interest in the descent is the seat, commanding a fine view of the bay and pier, where may generally be found a little knot of sailors watching the fishing-boats; or it may be a coastguard’s man on the look-out as a strange vessel appears in sight There is a barometer hanging up behind, from which, with the aid of the little table beneath (which is filled up daily), you may see what the weather has been, and form some judgment as to what it is likely to be:—

Long foretold, long last,

Short notice, soon past.

With “many turns and twists, so that the cobbler’s house comes dead across your path, and to have held a reasonable course you must have gone through his house, and through him too, as he sat at work between his two little windows,” we made our way down to the pier. It was early, and the tide was high, and came washing against the row of old-terraced houses which are on the beach. The pier looks as if built to stand the rough seas of this coast, and seems already to have braved many a heavy storm. From the end there is a good view of the village; and here should, if possible, be read the graphic description of a well-known author:—

The village was built sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff. There was no road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yard in it. From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to one another, and twisting here and there, and there and here, rose like the sides of a long succession of stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbed down the village by the stairs between, some six feet wide or so, and made of sharp irregular stones. The old pack-saddle, long laid aside in most parts of England as one of the appendages of its infancy, flourished here intact. Strings of pack-horses and pack-donkeys toiled slowly up the stairs of the ladder, bearing fish and coal, and such other cargo as was unshipping at the pier, from the dancing fleet of village boats, and from two or three little coasting traders. As the beasts of burden ascended laden or descended light, they got so lost at intervals in the floating clouds of village smoke, that they seemed to dive down some of the village chimneys, and come to the surface again far off, high above others. No two houses in the village were alike, in chimneys, size, shape, door, window, gable, roof-tree, anything. The sides of the ladders were musical with water running clear and bright. The stones were musical with the clattering feet of the pack-horses and pack-donkeys, and the voices of the fishermen urging them up, mingled with the voices of the fishermen’s wives and their many children.

From the pier to the right there is a view all along Bideford Bay to Morte Point. If the day be clear, the next point, Baggy, is generally visible. Nearer, you distinguish the lighthouse at Braunton Burrows. Then the