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Porlock Marsh

The document describes a walk around Porlock Marsh in England. It details parking at Bossington and following paths around the marsh, spotting a memorial for the crew of a downed American bomber. It also discusses the changing landscape from tidal barriers being breached and paths needing to be realigned. Wildlife and history of the area are noted throughout the walk.

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Paul Ruck
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125 views3 pages

Porlock Marsh

The document describes a walk around Porlock Marsh in England. It details parking at Bossington and following paths around the marsh, spotting a memorial for the crew of a downed American bomber. It also discusses the changing landscape from tidal barriers being breached and paths needing to be realigned. Wildlife and history of the area are noted throughout the walk.

Uploaded by

Paul Ruck
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Exmoor Natiobnal Park

Porlock Marshes
After writing a couple of Poppy Appeal related articles
for the WMN in the past week the whole subject of the great
conficts of the last century seemed to loom large and loud for
me, so I thought it might be a good idea to adapt a walk into a
kind of personal act of remembrance.
There are opportunities to do this all around our peninsula.
Just the briefest of trawls through my website www.wes-
tocuntrywalks.com - reveals half a dozen war related hikes.
Theres the remarkable Mullion to Kynance Cove walk that
passes the helicopter graveyard at the old WW2 Predannack
airfeld, and the even more remarkable Hope Cove to Salcom-
be route which takes in another airfeld at Bolt Head, to name
but two.
But I thought Id revisit Porlock Marshes to see how, and if,
a small WW2 memorial stone has been coping with life in the
newly fooded zone which has been described as Englands
fastest changing environment.
We parked in the National Trust car park at the centre of
Bossington and walked down the main village street which,
after a quarter of a mile, turns into a dirt track and leads to the
sea. The area that stretches to the west is Britain's newest large
expanse of wetland since the shingle barrier, which has protec-
Martin Hesp www.westcountrywalks.com
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Basic Hike: circular route from car
park in Bossington around Porlock
Marsh following new permissive path
to West Porlock - and back along the
woodland paths to the village of Por-
lock and beyond via Sparkhayes Lane.
Recommended Map: Ordnance
Survey OL 9.
Distance and going: fve miles easy
going.
Food and drink: plenty of choice in
Porlock - excellent pint in Ship Inn.
ted the lower part of Porlock Vale for centuries, was breached
some years ago.
In a storm it is a wild and somewhat hazardous place - and
I advise anyone who wants to explore the shingle ridge to be
careful, especially at spring tide.
If you want a circular walk then the old line of the coast path
is no good. The breach is dangerous. You can cross at low tide,
but its not really advisable. The coast path, however, has been
realigned to avoid the marsh on an inland route and this is
the one we ended up following.
But not before wed walked out to the breach anyway be-
cause right out there in the middle of all the primeval wilder-
ness there used to be a small memorial commemorating the
courage of man. Eight men to be exact - the crew of an Ame-
rican bomber that crashed in thick fog somewhere hereabouts
in 1942. It used to be the most forlorn memorial imaginable,
stuck out there on the muddy edge of the brackish lake but
on our visit last weekend we were bemused to fnd it had
vanished.
Im happy to report though that we later found it relocated
further inland someone has sensibly moved the stone and
saved it from being swept out to sea.
The bomber wasn't the only WW2 aircraft to have come to
grief in Porlock Bay. A German Junkers 88 was intercepted by
three Spitfres out over the Bristol Channel and shot down.
The Junker's pilot, Helmut "Acky" Ackenhausen, managed to
crash-land his machine on the beach and, 30 years after the
war, he returned to Porlock to visit the grave of his gunner
Wilhelm Reuhl who died in the crash.
A local couple had tended the grave in the intervening
years and Mr Ackenhausen thanked them and described to a
journalist how he'd ditched the plane and climbed out to be
confronted by the Home Guard. Some of the men were armed
but he was more worried about the man with the pitchfork.
He also said he'd like to meet the Spitfre pilot who'd shot him
down, and was genuinely saddened to learn that Pilot Offcer
Eric Marrs had lost his life over Brest in 1941.
This lonely, desolate, location - where the waves never cease
to rattle a million stones, where the curlew cries its melancho-
lic call - may seem like an odd place to remember the calamity
of human confict. And yet it as good as any - at least you are
left alone to ponder the violence that man bestows upon his
brother.
The tide was out when we were hunting the stone down at
the breach, which meant that the huge tidal lake which now
stretches across the meadows was temporarily out at sea.
This allowed us to splash our way south between the grazing
lapwing and curlew to the line of dead, saline-poisoned, trees
which mark part of the route of the newly aligned path.
From here we proceeded west along the new footpath to-
wards Porlock Weir, passing the newly located memorial stone
on the way. This is a permissive path allowed under a new
management agreement that Exmoor National Park has with
the owner, and it takes walkers around the southerly limits of
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the salt marsh to meet an existing right-of-way just north of a
place called Allerpark Combe.
This was our next destination. Up the old drover's road we
went - across the Porlock Weir road - and on up track until we
reached Allerpark. Here we turned left along a footpath that
follows the bottom edge of the woods all the way to Porlock.
Time for a much deserved pint in the wonderful old pub
known locally as the Top Ship. The poet Robert Southey sat
here by the freside 204 years ago and wrote: "This place is cal-
led in the neighbourhood The End of the World. All beyond
is inaccessible to carriage or even cart. A sort of sledge is used
by the country people, resting upon two poles like cart-shafts."
He went on to describe the delights of the old inn - where
he was so favourably impressed by the local seaweed delicacy
laverbread that he became almost addicted to the stuff. He
was forever writing to his friend, the poet Coleridge, to see if
he could glean supplies.
We marched east down Porlocks main street to the place
where Sparkhayes Lane departs to the left. Now the boom of
surf grew louder and we could sniff the scent of its salt as it
pounded through the breach.
From the end of Sparkhayes Lane we turned east again and
made our way along the public footpath to Bossington in the
gloaming light of a November afternoon. The place was so
fantastically beautiful I thought for a moment of those whod
paid the ultimate price fghting for a cause out there on the
lonesome skerries. Cut off in their prime, there were to be no
more beautiful afternoon walks for them.
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