Golden Park and Hartland Quay, October 2003

Dwight Peck's personal website

Late summer 2003 -- A few weeks in Devon and Cornwall

Golden Park and Hartland Quay

We've had a great time so far ambling along the Devon Coast Path, visiting friends, and sampling fish and chips and bitter ale, and now we find we can't stop.

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

Here's Golden Park on the north Devon coast, between Hardisworth and Welcombe. That's a 17th century farmhouse cum reasonably priced bed-and-breakfast, and we're headed for the "seaview room".

Golden Park lays on the full force of renovated-17th-century charm, and it's a working pig farm into the bargain. You can't get in to see the pigs, unfortunately, because after the hoof-and-mouth countryside lockdown a few years ago, farmers here guard their virus-free environments jealously.

But the hostess and host of this fine accommodation can keep you spellbound with vivid descriptions of the local walks and pubs and poignant tales of the politics of pig-farming in Britain. In the hands of a skilled farmer raconteur, the politics of pig-farming in Britain can be fascinating.

Golden Park hosts Lynda and Stephen Yeomans can be recommended very highly to avid coastal walkers with their own or a hired car at their disposal. And a good roadmap. Click to visit them [sorry, that link has been discontinued.]

The "sea view" room at Golden Park, and the 'fancy old bathtub'

At the time of reporting this, the narrator was not aware that this 'fancy old bathtub' is a prized antique "slipper bath", apparently much sought after. If you look up 'slipper bath' on Google you get an avalanche of product advertisements, but if you look up 'slipper bath devon', guess who's on top? You're looking at it here -- the genuine article.

Friends in "slipper bath devon"
(with Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia)

Hike to Hartland Quay: Fellow hiker Kristin following a borrowed dog northward along the Coast Path towards Hartland Quay

Low tide along the Devon coast. All those striated rocky things down there are covered when the Bristol Channel reclaims its own twice a day.

More striated coastal rocks at low tide and 200m cliffs along the Coast Path

Testing the coast path for resistance to sudden erosion

More views northward, and Hartland Quay gleaming whitely in the distance

Kristin and her entourage hastening northward towards Hartland Quay

Hartland Quay still in the distance, good colors along the way

Kristin testing the path for erosion resistance

Traveling companion Kristin crossing an exceptionally fine meadow with oblivious sheep on it.

Looking back southward at low tide.

More of that weird striated rock formation passively awaiting the tide's coming in

Kristin looking forward to lunch at Hartland Quay

To Hartland Quay, the final lap

Hartland Quay

Hartland Quay. As the tourist brochures tell it, a patent was applied for to the Privy Council in 1566, on behalf of Grenville, Walter Raleigh, the Earl of Devon and other regional worthies, to build a quay on this site, and granted. The quay itself has washed away long ago, though signs of it remain, but the double-row of buildings provides a welcome tourist destination and the soup's pretty good, too.

The view southward from Hartland Quay, October 2003.

Tomorrow, let's go down to King Arthur of the Round Table's place and see if we can get our flat tire fixed.