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The best way, however, is to turn oneself loose in the district, and ramble over the moors at will. The sturdy tourist will find many an exhilarating excursion. Winsford, Exford, Withypool, and Simonsbath are all worth seeing. Exton, a village 8 m. N. of Dulverton Station, picturesquely perched on the hillside overlooking the valley of the Exe. The church is without interest.
For instance, suppose your camp was at Minehead, the Boers being in strength at Winsford, and a report comes in that they have pushed on a strong picket to Simonsbath. This rumour it is your business to test. With two friends on a dark, windy night you set out. You leave the road and take to the moor.
It is one of the lonely outposts of civilisation on Exmoor. Though picturesquely situated itself, it is best known as a sort of halting-place on the way to the still more romantic neighbourhood of Simonsbath. The church is E.E., but not interesting. The local farmers are said to enjoy four harvests in a year turf, whortleberries, hay and corn. WIVELISCOMBE, a market town 6 m.
So many are the villages, towns, and places of interest seen, so many the adventures met with in this walk, starting with the baby streamlet beyond Simonsbath, and following it down to Exeter and Exmouth, that it would take half a volume to describe them, however briefly. Yet at the end I found that Exford had left the most vivid and lasting impression, and was remembered with most pleasure.
The trooper did not like the look of it, and proposed to ride back again, and round by way of Simonsbath, where the stream is smaller. But Stickles would not have it so, and dashing into the river, swam his horse for the bridge, and gained it with some little trouble; and there he found the water not more than up to his horse's knees perhaps.
To adapt a Cornish description of something quite different, "when it's bad, it's execrable; and when it's good, it's only middlin'." It has a disagreeable partiality for haze and drizzle. In such an untamed region "routes" are only an embarrassment. The regulation drive is from Minehead to Dulverton, and from Dulverton through Simonsbath to Lynton, which virtually circumscribes the moor.
Mines have been sunk only to be abandoned, and the agriculturist has fared little better than the miner. Early in the last century, a Mr Knight made an heroic effort to enclose a large portion of the moor for the purposes of cultivation. The heather, however, is still triumphant. The only memorial of his ambition is a ruined mansion at Simonsbath.
You ride slowly, listening, watching intently, keeping off the high ground, and as much as possible avoiding sky-lines. At some cottage or moorland farm you leave the horses and creep forward on foot, working along the hollows and studying every outline. If they are at Simonsbath, they will have a lookout on the hill this side.
The trooper did not like the look of it, and proposed to ride back again, and round by way of Simonsbath, where the stream is smaller. But Stickles would not have it so, and dashing into the river, swam his horse for the bridge, and gained it with some little trouble; and there he found the water not more than up to his horse's knees perhaps.
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