Walk Across the West Country
Group walk to celebrate 40th anniversary and relaunch of the Two Moors Way
Sorry about this, but I like to go on, and on, and on about my books. For some reason today I’ve been thinking about the magnificent Two Moors Way - which is featured in one of the stories in Tales From The Lockdown - and I have come across a newspaper article I wrote a couple of years ago when Dr Nigel Stone was still chief executive of Exmoor National Park Authority.
Headwaters of the Exe
When is a place - a location - worth making a song-and-dance about?
That is what I was wondering the other day as the chief executive of Exmoor National Park Authority and I gazed down at some rather oily looking water oozing from a ditch in the side of a hill.
At first I thought the rainbow smear of oil had been left by some leaking quad bike that had driven off-road in this wild place, but Dr Nigel Stone explained that the stuff was made of natural oils seeping from the press of peat which blankets Exmoor’s Chains.
A notion which I found remarkable. But nowhere near as remarkable as the fact that his tiny oozing spring was actually the birthplace of the mightiest river in our region.
It was at this point that Dr Stone - who was taking me on a walk to show me recent work done on the Two Moors Way and to talk about national park issues in general - said he’d been pondering over whether the source of the River Exe ought to have some kind of marker commemorating the fact that it is not just a seeping bit of ditch, but a place worth visiting.
He must have thought carefully before telling me this, because Dr Stone has known me for years and has probably read various opinion pieces I’ve written criticising local authorities and other landscape shaping organisations which have a tendency to over-sign everything and anything.
The West Country needs more interpretation boards in open countryside like it needs more nuclear power stations - by which I mean it needs them like a hole in the head.
However, on this occasion I was in agreement with the idea. Not for an interpretation board - I hasten to add. Such a thing on the wide flat-ish plateau of The Chains would be an abomination. But a humble standing stone, maybe a couple of feet high, saying something simple like “Birthplace of the River Exe” would do just fine.
But why? The source of the Exe has been there for an awful long time without mankind making any kind of song and dance about it. And the fact that it’s humble is no big deal because the birthplace of all rivers, great or small, tend to be nothing more than trickles - because that’s how rivers get born.
Well, one reason I’d support a marker is because park executives like Dr Stone across the country are about to do a great deal more work in getting children out and about into their wild areas. It’s all part of an eight-point plan which sets out how they intend to “protect, promote and enhance” national parks in England from now until 2020.
Already, various schools have taken groups up to Exe Head on geography lessons and so on - and I can imagine a gang of weary youths desperate to get back to their gaming apps or whatever groaning: “Is that it? We’ve come all the way up here to see a stupid ditch!”
To me a river is a thing that deserves and requires something called respect. They are slim and flighty things - easily curbed or concreted or changed in many ways - and even more easily polluted or treated like an open sewer.
The French know this and are big on the topic of river sources. At the headwaters of the Seine you find all manner of celebrations going on. Source-Seine has been owned by the city of Paris since 1864 and the area, 19 miles northwest of Dijon, has been landscaped to make it appealing to the many visitors who go there. There’s even an artificial grotto with a statue of a nymph capping the main source in an area of springs and ditches. And the modern French weren’t the first to make a song and dance about the birthplace of the great river - remains of a Gallo-Roman temple complete with statues of the Seine goddess and other ex-voti have been found.
In England we do things in a more reserved fashioned - at Thames Head near Kemblethe source of our best known river is marked by a waist-high stone monolith.
So why not have one at the headwaters of the West Country’s greatest river?
To me, without actually using the words, it would say: “Here it is… Here begins 50 long miles of life-giving river. From this tiny ditch in a bog, a living, breathing, winding, wonder begins - an entity that ends in a mighty estuary. Respect this spring - respect its waters and its ways - respect the great flow south that has fed and watered a thousand farms in small valleys and great fertile plains.”
I realise that whether the birthplace of the Exe is marked or not is hardly the most pressing issue we have in the land today - but I’d suggest it does flag up the question of what we think of our natural attributes and treasures. Anything that promotes more respect rather than less has to be a good thing in my book.
