The Coleridge Way | 2 | The Man from Porlock

Walk: The Coleridge Way |

Distance: 51 miles, from Nether Stowey, Somerset, to Lynmouth, Devon, UK |

Time: Four days |

Day Three: Twelve miles, Bridgetown to Porlock, 545m ascent, 705m descent |

Day Four: Sixteen miles, Porlock to Lynmouth, 790m ascent, 810m descent |

Are you a man from Porlock? Am I? Has anyone even heard this phrase before – is this one of those embarrassing gaps in my general knowledge? Twin heroes Inspector Morse and Aaron Sorkin have both apparently mentioned it, so it must be a thing. And it all started on this second blog of our adventures exploring the Coleridge Way!

Porlock, incidentally, is a beautiful town living just off marshland right on the sea. It’s famous firstly for a huge hill that caravans are issued dire warnings against scaling, and secondly for a native fisherman who became the craggy face of a cigarette brand for half a century. And of course the above phrase, which we’ll come to…

Oh yeah, it was also the aim of our third day hiking the Coleridge Way (read what we got up to on our first and second day here).

Free coffees began the day – hurrah! (Our exhausted appearance clearly disturbing the camp hosts). It was also a day of blazing sunshine and the first spring buds on the weatherworn Exmoor trees.

Setting off from Bridgetown, we doubled back up to Wheddon Cross to continue back on the Coleridge Way. It meant we walked straight out onto the moors, and up into the blue, blue skies.

It was a glorious day, and the path passed a little English landmark, Dunkery Beacon, the summit of its own hill and covered in Bronze Age burial mounds. After skirting this, we were led off suddenly into bright and breezy pine forests, four miles off the end. Wide sandy clearings replaced narrow muddy tracks. Soft, springy needles carpeted the forest footpaths. The sun slanted through the branches as we ambled through, dappling the swaying trees so prettily. It was comforting to be there after the bareness of Exmoor, and we chatted away to each other nostalgically of the balmy coastal forests of California, somewhere we’ve visited and love.

We arrived in town through an alleyway peculiarly called The Drang, out to a beautiful and deserted Porlock. Its Little Lorna Doone tea rooms, old coaching inn, antique shops, and visitor centre all sat quiet and closed.

We set up camp along the coast and set off as early as possible the next day (at the not particularly early time of 9am).  The final day covered sixteen miles, and the route notes fretted something terrible over the importance of rest days and difficult, difficult climbs. But we picked up lunch in the shop and hiked up the aforementioned hill, only getting seriously lost once. We soon began spotting a little carved acorn on the signposts – new friend for our quill, symbol of the Coleridge Way – and knew we had joined the South West Coast Path. This is another national trail, one that hugs the coastlines of Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Cornwall. Joining it made Luke a happy camper, having walked it a few years before.

Walking along the cliffs, we came upon Ash Farm, the setting where our ‘man from Porlock’ makes his appearance. And here’s the story: Coleridge was staying here in 1797 when he was struck, in a dream, by a complete poetic vision which he rushed to get down. But unfortunately ‘that man from Porlock’ (as he later wrote), mysterious and anonymous, interrupted him. After being ‘detained an hour’ by the man, he’d lost it all, and barely fifty lines were written. The fragments Coleridge wrote became Kubla Khan, probably one of his most famous poems. And so a ‘man from Porlock’ is someone who interrupts the creative flow. I found this absurdly interesting.

After the villages of Oare and Brendon, the Way turns into a river walk, climbing high up above the bed to where wild ponies gallop and graze. Our feet ached going over the rocky paths but we were hard pressed to miss the countdown to the end of the walk on the fingerposts, which seemed to grow in number excitedly the closer we got to the end. And at last we burst onto a clear street, lined with cars and streetlights and people. Lynmouth, terminus stop.

And in a single moment, we could just stop walking and stand, four days later, the job done. There.

‘Arrived from Porlock then, have you?’ Said the lady in the tea room we trundled into, nodding at our bags and glancing at her watch, smiling. ‘Always around the same time every day.’

Have our two blogs on the Coleridge Way inspired you to do it, or something similar? HAVE you heard of the phrase ‘Man from Porlock’!? Comment below, or find us on social media (or both!)