Malmsmead, Exmoor

[puddleshark]

Malmsmead is tiny. An arched stone bridge with a ford beside it. A National Trust tea room. A gallery. But it's the starting point for a walk along the remote valley of Badgworthy Water, setting of the 19th century romance, Lorna Doone.





First things first. Having safely arrived, tea and scone, in the garden on the National Trust tea rooms, with tame tea room chaffinches hopping right up to me to demand crumbs.




Setting off along Badgworthy Water. Another beautiful path, but a little sadder than the other riverside paths I walked that week. There are lot of ash trees along the valley, and they were all showing signs of ash dieback.


Near Cloud Farm, where the National Trust has a campsite with glamping pods.


On the other side of the water there were camper vans parked up, strung about with laundry lines, and rows of socks and knickers like bunting, but once you leave the campsite behind, it is a very peaceful path.








I only walked as far as the memorial to R.D. Blackmore, writer of Lorna Doone, as the day was starting to grow warm. Sat for a while beside the river, in the shade, watching the jewelled blue and green Demoiselle damselflies flickering about the vegetation, then turned back.

Crossed over the river at Cloud Farm, and walked back along the farm track to Malmsmead.






I stayed on the Devon side of the border.


Over the bridge and back into Malmsmead, to the National Trust tea room, where I made sterling efforts towards achieving a very respectable final tea-and-scone score.

Comments

[puddleshark]

The combination of prettiness and tea room worked well for me. 😊

I think the Exmoor dialect has always deterred me from reading Lorna Doone. Parsing dialect can be hard work. But I've read that Thomas Hardy admired the book, so maybe I should give it a try.

Yes, I read in the paper that ash trees produce so many (and such genetically diverse) seeds that they are already starting to evolve some resistance. Fingers crossed.