Sorry for the two week delay – I did a ride the week before but decided not to write about it for a couple of reasons namely I’m planning to ride to the Quantocks, perhaps in the coming weeks, over a similar route. Completely unrelated, its probably also worth noting that due to a relax in laws, It will now be legal to walk on Exmoor so there may also be some walks uploaded soon.
VE day bank holiday and lovely weather – would’ve been perfect day for the beach but alas, lockdown isn’t going to end any time soon. Instead I spent the day with my family before nipping off for a ride. I hadn’t cycled this route for ages till a couple of months ago with my brother. When we hit the moorland however, the wind meant that it was hard to ride up hill without being blown off, never mind the down hill. We had to be picked up, however due to the cloudless blue skies, this shouldn’t be the case this time.
This ride starts by leaving Bampton towards Morebath before turning off at Lodfin farm to cross a hill affectionately named “Pylon hill” by the locals. This first part already has seen many lambs frolicking, so when puling into Exbridge 15 minutes in, I already have tuned out their antics. From the hexagonal yellow toll house at Exbridge, we follow the Exe valley (A396). To start with, the road is at the base of the hillside just below the treeline with green fields on the floodplain. We cross under the old railway and pass a farm machinery suppliers and have a short incline up through some trees, temporarily leaving the bottom of the valley. Through the trees to the left, the confluence of the Exe and Barle is visable and we descend back down to meet the flood plane. The hedge rows have suddenly exploded, some from skeletal structures of last week to laden bushes that soon will struggle to support their own weight. These hedges create a corridor until they lower and the valley ahead narrows.
The road enters some pretty woods and the light becomes dappled. It is just beautiful. A bank of bluebells rises up to the right to meet an old quarry face. There are lots of these escarpments along this road; I’m not sure if their origins were primarily for clearing spurs out the way to make the road or for road biulding materials. Either way they add a nice verity to the valley. The walls of the valley steepen and the woods tower above us. We dip in and out of the dappled forest, winding up the valley past picturesque stone farm houses. There is a mossy stone wall to the left that disappears every now and then to give views of the near crystal clear river, flowing down through rapids or meandering around bends, and the almost meadow like land surrounding it. The dandelions are out in force, half of them yellow, half seed head. I’m not sure how I feel about dandelions; the flowers them selves are a bit funny colour but the seed heads are quite pretty. The stems and leaves I don’t like: I much prefer thistles. Overall, I enjoy them in these meadows but not in the garden.
The woods keep receding from and then enveloping the road giving both the beauty of the dappled light and wild flower under the trees and the lime green beach hedges with gaps to see meadow and fields. We finally exit the woods and wind through a corridor created by the hedge. The steepness of the valley is revealed as the trees to the right give way to lusheous green fields and more lambs. Most of the year, this road is full of pheasants (both dead and alive) which can slow you down as they are possibly the thickest animal out there. They sit at the side of the road until the last minute before running across the road to the other side in front of you. Luckily we seem to be between shooting season and rearing so they aren’t too much trouble.
We soon reach Bridgetown. It is a quirky village with a sloped cricket pitch (and bridge to it) on entry shortly followed by the pub with a pixel badger face painted on the side and then a (currently empty) caravan park. The pub seem to be hosting VE day celebrations that aren’t necessarily allowed by the lockdown (however, it could just be the family who are living there with renters). The village is full of Union and Engilsh flags and bunting of red white and blue. People are out in their gardens and as we reach a junction, the streets begin to be lined with union flags of different fabrics: tea-party green and pink, spot and flowers. The decorations seem to stretch out the village and we finally exit Bridgetown with a house that seems to have acknowledged that the UK couldn’t have done it alone. The USA’s and USSR’s flags hung with the union flag on the left and across the road on a tree house, further European flags including Ireland and Poland to name a few.
After Bridgetown, we leave the valley road by turning left off the main road to a nicely surfaced road, still following the Exe. The valley has woods to the left but open fields to the right. The fields are windswept and dulled down, typical of fields upon Exmoor. The valley seems to be in shade most of the day due to the steep sided nature of the valley so there can be puddles galore – freezing in winter to complement the naked trees coated in frost. Not to day thought, The cloudless skies present the sun which has dried up most of the puddles. This valley takes us up to Winford; a small pretty village with a couple of pubs and part of the Stanley Johnson estate. I thought Bridgetown had been flag waving but if that was the case, Winsford is a patriot’s fantasy. On the approach, the line of council houses already are strung with bunting of English flags as well as the red, white & blue. In Winford its self, the green in the center is filled with plastic, see-through, square Union and English flag bunting; the kind that get rolled out at every jubilee, royal wedding or school fate. I take a picture at the picturesque ford with a wood and stone bridge, clashing with the cheap plastic flags but the angle of the sun ruins it photo.
Crossing the bridge over the ford, the climb onto the moorland starts. Already we have left the tacky bright plastic and the bunting becomes more tasteful; more tea party coloured union flags with bunting made of dulled down navy blues and brick reds (all fabric). A narrow street rising up to the right looks like all the houses have had fresh licks of paint and have some of the home-made looking navy, white and brick bunting. The whole street looked very smart, however I couldn’t marvel at It long as I rode past. The road ahead steepens and I have to weave around a black cat basking in the sun, not bating an eyelid at my passing. The road carries on up and we exit Winsford past some pretty houses and push on past the steepest part of the climb.
The full hedges take us to some horses out in front of a farm house and I realise that I have been pushing on without admiring the scenery so I decided look around. The hedge to the left lowers to give views over valley with other side wooded. The gradient has mainly slacked off by now and we follow the telegraph poles up until, in the distance, the valley has lost its wood and instead has wilder fields. A little further, you can start to see that there is a steep sided valley between the woods and fields. As we progress, moorland starts to come into view and the mouth of the valley gets larger and larger until you can see all the way up the valley to the head. This is The Punchbowl.
The Punchbowl takes up less than a km square on the OS map and with the first glances at the map, it doesn’t look that interesting. That is until you see the almost perfect semi-circular contours at the head compared to the relatively flat ground around. I have walked here previous to setting up this blog and it amazed me. The ground all of a sudden plummets down, almost vertically, to the valley floor in a U shape. However this valley was not glacial as far I know: the nearest glaciated area is Cardiff, across the Bristol channel. Indeed I cannot find out much information about The Punchbowl, however the mystery is part of the beauty of the formation. That and the amazingly steepness and deepness of the valley.
We carry on up the road past a few more moorland combes – Devonian (I think) for small valleys – across the larger Win valley to the left. These combes have proper names, however, due to their steep sided nature, I like to think of them as the Bowlets to The Punchbowl. I start pushing it again as the road passes some more houses before flattening out. This is one of many false tops as the road steepens slightly. The hedges became lined with sporadic patches of small trees but now the hedges disappear all together and are replaced with big trees sitting at top grass banks, giving gorgeous views across to the moorland we are climbing up to. Shortly after, the third or forth false finish is reached and we descend 20m round a corner down to the B3223.
We turn left onto the B3223 and cross a cattle grid onto the moor. After the steepest part of the upper climb, I notice that the usually skeletal hawthorn, shaped by the wind, have a hair of small lime green leaves. I once again realised I have missed out on the scenery so sit up and am immediately rewarded with petite, woody, mauve wild flowers in the otherwise wild grass bank. The moor around Winsford hill is very different to Molland/Anstey common. Where Molland common has more browny yellow, long leaved grass, Winsford hill has greener, smaller grass which main feature is the seed head. Winford hill has a lot more trees and patches of ferns and heather, whereas Molland has more separate clumps of heather and gorse. As you could see Winsford hill form Molland ridge, you can also see Molland ridge from Winford hill with Dartmoor behind and Dunkery beacon the other side. As I reached the top of the hill, I decided to stop for a picture and I was glad I did.
When I was slowing down, I thought something was weird. I couldn’t work out what though. As I came to a halt, I heard it. Silence. Well almost. You could here two birds chatting away, but then they stopped. A bee lazily buzzed by. Then Nothing. No cars, no wind, no rivers. Just me and the blue sky. All I could hear was my heart in my ears and, despite my best efforts, my breath through my body. I was astounded. I racked my brain trying to think of a time before I’d been anywhere so silent. At night? But there were the sounds of the heating and electricity. Maybe on Ten Tors or Coast to coast. But Ten Tors was with people and coast to coast you could usually hear the the brief bird, sheep or person on light breezes. I didn’t usually have this nicer weather on rides. Perhaps, being on the moor, away from birds, insects and rivers on a road without any traffic on a windless day was the closest to silence I have come. Or perhaps having the ability to concentrate on the silence helped amplify it’s effect. Maybe having been inside one place all day because of lockdown had desensitised me or given me the head space to be able to have quiet in my mind as well as outside. Whatever happened, the lack of wind was certainly different to last time when my brother and I had to be picked up because it was so windy, we could barley stay on. We had had to shout to each other then.
I rolled off down hill deciding to take in everything around me. The whole moor was practically mine. I spotted Exmoor ponies ahead and slowed down to let them cross. As I passed a hawthorn, a buzzard took off a couple of meters away. You could hear the large wings moving the air as It took off. The ponies crossed and trotted along side, trying to find a hole in the gorse that populates the lower slopes. The road rises and falls a couple of times and I descend down off the moorland still marveling at my two experiences. I noted the carpet of ransoms at either side and hit by their garlic smell. They have had a long and welcome season this year. After a descent around a large corner, the road enters some woods and the road narrows and becomes quite badly surfaced. Still absorbed by my experiences, I descend down into the Barle valley and along into Dulverton.
Dulverton is no where near as decorated as Bridgetown or Winsford and even meager compared to Bampton. Passing through Brushford (which as a side note, has a record breaking churchyard tree but not sure which record) chaffinches seem to line the hedges to meet me as I pass through. The lockdown has made the wildlife more friendly I think to myself. By the time we have reached Exebridge again, I have set myself up to try and race up Grants hill but when we reach the lower slopes, I have realised that this isn’t going to happen. We climb up and then descend down into Bampton and I feel the sun has sapped my energy. That is until a BBQ supper.
After supper, I went out on a short walk with the family. We stopped at a gate looking out over the Bampton and were quiet. Unfortunately, the sheep, birds and a party stopped the silence. Whilst I do enjoy the first two, I do look forward to the next time I can experience the sound of silence.
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South West Xplorer 