A Writer's Paradise

Culbone Church

Tarr Steps

We have had a magical couple of days down on Exmoor. The glorious coastline, the windswept moorland - no wonder the area has generated so much wonderful writing! Coleridge is reputed to have thought out "The Ancient Mariner" here, Blackmore set his Lorna Doone amid the desolation of the Valley of Rocks and its wild surroundings - and present day writers are no less inspired by the locality.

On Sunday we climbed up through the wood from Porlock Weir to Culbone Church - the smallest (and probably the most secluded) parish church in the country. Once home to charcoal burners and vagrants, the woods were alive with rhododenrons; the church, dedicated to the Welsh abbot St. Beuno, was mentioned in the Domesday Book and the very stones seem imbued with the centuries of worship they have witnessed.

Yesterday, in warm sunshine, we visited the Tarr Steps, the clapper bridge that spans the River Barle, and walked the shady valley in the company of numerous irridiscent dragonflies, sapphire, gold and jade. A few hardy souls were swimming amongst the shoals of fish in some of the deeper pools though we decided to give that a miss! But at five locations we were delighted to find ....

"Poetry Boxes"! And, yes, they were that way up as they were attached to tree trunks. Opening the boxes, walkers find a notebook and pencil with the invitation to write a poem and to read the ones penned by earlier visitors. At the end of the summer season all the poems will be collected and exhibited in a local arts centre. What a great idea.