Secret Places 2 - Somewhere on the Wreckers' Coast

A secret canyon here in the West Country - a dramatic mini-gorge which is one of the least visited places anywhere south of Birmingham? How could anyone possibly resist an invitation to explore such a place?  That’s what I said to myself a few years ago when I put the phone down after talking to the late David ‘Kester’ Webb. 

There were two things on my mind.  The first was a hit of genuine excitement. The idea that such a place should exist here in such a well-populated region seemed too wonderful to be true - but I knew my old friend Kester was the one person in the country who was well qualified to make such a claim.  The other was a feeling of slight trepidation…

Kester Webb at the mouth of the Secret Canyon

Because, when Kester Webb used to go out for a day at the seaside, he always did so more adventurously than most. With his wife Liz, he’d walked, climbed and clambered to some of the most inaccessible parts of this peninsula’s coasts over the past half-century, both for the sheer thrill of adventure, and to make drawings and paintings of the region’s most secret places.

Of course, when he phoned with an offer to take me to a place which he claimed to be one of the least visited places in all of southern England, I instantly agreed to go without asking how dangerous it would be. The previous time I’d joined Kester and his athletic wife Elizabeth on a vertiginous sojourn, I ended up staring into a rabbit hole tunnelled into vertical turf 200 feet above crashing waves. For some reason the combination of that cosy little burrow and my own perilous situation caused me to have a massive panic attack and I froze - if shaking like a jelly can be described as freezing.

I needn’t have worried on this occasion. During the conversation Kester - then aged 75 - assured me he’d reached the age when he was giving up on his more vertigo-inducing adventures by the seaside.  What he wouldn’t tell me on the telephone, though, was the exact location of the place which he called The Secret Canyon…

And so it was that I found myself walking somewhere along the “Wreckers’ Coast” between Bideford and Bude. Kester was intending to draw the Secret Canyon and - believe it or not - to measure its vital statistics.  And he was getting into his geological stride as we marched along the South West Coast Path, explaining how the particular geography of the area had occurred thanks to a long-lost river that tipped into the ocean many eons ago. All this was evident as we walked: there’s a valley which sweeps around the inland half of a steep knoll - a kind of natural pyramid - only to disappear over the sea-cliffs on either side. 

Kester explained that the long-lost river ran parallel with the coast north to south - so when the sea eroded its way inland to reach just a corner of it, the river instantly took the new, more direct route, to the sea (a similar thing happened at Lynton’s more famous Valley of Rocks).  

Could this ancient point of escape be the site of our secret canyon? I didn’t know as we first strolled down to the place. But I could see that a small stream running down the steep valley entered what remained of a much large ancient river system, crossing it to make a final leap for freedom and the sea in a death-defying waterfall.

It was only when we walked to the very edge of the cataract that I could see that the great force of the cascading water had, over many centuries, managed to create what really was a rocky canyon…

Don’t get too excited. It is not a Grand Canyon. There are places where you couldn’t swing a cat in it, let alone go bungee-jumping, fly a helicopter, or whatever else it is they do in vast gorges elsewhere in the world... 

It is a remarkable place nevertheless - a truly wild, almost inaccessible, rock-and-river zone that cannot be fully appreciated until you are right down there in the middle of it. 

That, as I was to find out, required the use of ropes. Or, at least, it does if you are being the slightest bit sensible. Which, I am glad to say, Kester and Liz always were when I joined them on seaborne adventures. 

Many years earlier the couple had succeeded in helping to formulate the incredibly perilous - but now much-celebrated - Exmoor Traverse, which only a handful of people have ever managed to complete. It is the long, long climb which traverses right along England’s most vertical littoral from Porlock Weir in the east to Combe Martin in the west. A climb which is fully described in their excellent book called The Hidden Edge of Exmoor.

So it was with some confidence I stood down there on a wild beach having a climbing harness fitted - confident in the belief that if you can do the Exmoor Traverse unscathed, you can do anything, including the much easier task of entering the Secret Canyon from the shoreline beneath. 

“On a dry day it’s quite possible for agile people, perhaps with a bit of climbing experience, to walk up through the canyon from the beach,” said Kester, looking up at the lower waterfall around which we were about to clamber. “That’s the safest way to tackle it. There are a couple of awkward bits where we’ll use a rope today, but an experienced climber wouldn’t bother with that. As long as you’ve got good footwear and you keep your wits about you, you can work your way up through the canyon and come out at the path at the top.”

Please don’t try it unless you are an experience climber. Entering the Secret Canyon, having a look around, and then exiting the way you came is perilous enough for most people. Only a person with a lot of rock climbing experience should contemplate going right up through to the top. 

As we set about our clamber, Kester explained: “In 1908 the original geological explorer of North Devon - a chap called Neil Arber - came here and surveyed this place and made notes and tried to make a summary of this canyon. 

“He said it was very complicated - and he tried to do diagrams to show how the rocks folded in different directions and show all the detail he could get. Of course, he couldn’t get the good camera shots we can today with all the wide-angle lenses and so on. But he did write that this canyon was so remarkable it was one of the treasures of England - and it should have special status in the future to protect it.”

By now we were past the first of a series of waterfalls. “I don’t know what could be done to protect it down here,” said Kester. “But the sentiment was that it was a very unusual and remarkable canyon - and therefore very interesting. 

“These great slabs were laid down horizontally in the bottom of a shallow sea, or even a big lake,” he went on, explaining how the amazing geological formations that were now surrounding us on every side were formed. “The sediment settled, and then more sediment settled on top of that and compressed the mud and sand into solid rock. Then, when we bumped into Africa, the whole lot got crumpled up. You can see it along this entire coast everywhere you go - if you look back at the cliffs you can see how the rock is all folded like so much cardboard.”

This is what makes the canyon so spectacular - it was a kind of Piccadilly Circus of ancient seabeds which collided in the one place to be twisted and shaped into the most contorted of cliff-scapes. 

“There is a meeting here where the anticlines and synclines collide,” said Kester, pointing up at the 100-foot canyon walls. “And the effect is that these near vertical slabs slope in different directions - from the inside here in the canyon you can see them going in five or six different ways - which is why I’m doing semi-diagrammatic drawings to decipher what was actually happening originally.

The late Kester Webb making notes and drawings in the Secret Canyon

“This work has been commissioned by Peter Keane who is publishing a book about this part of the coast. He’s a geologist and, although he’s got lots of lovely photographs, the drawings are needed to help understand what’s going on in this geological structure. 

“I’ve done the same on the Exmoor coast for when we published our book The Hidden Edge - this coast is going to be one of my next projects,” explained Kester who sadly passed away a few years ago, leaving his widow Liz who still lives in North Devon. “It’s a very interesting and inspiring complex landscape - which will probably inspire me to do my next collection of drawings.”

Later, back at their home near Barnstaple, I was to see some of the exquisite cliff-paintings which illustrated the Exmoor book - but back in the canyon we settled down to have a picnic lunch above one of its three cauldron-like pools.

When I say “we”, I mean Liz and I sat there dining al-fresco and admiring the savage scenery while Kester clambered this way and that taking measurements and drawing sketches. 

Eventually, as we began to climb to the tiny footpath opposite the main 60-foot waterfall which tumbles into the top of the canyon, Kester stopped for a second to catch his breath and he mused: “I started climbing the Exmoor coast 50 years ago, but now I’m past 75 it’s time to retire gracefully and hang up my climbing gear.”

Kester Webb and his coastal artworks

He added: “From now on I’ll just do what you might call adventure walks - like this one to the Secret Canyon - which don’t put too much strain on my old knees.”

The handful of connoisseurs who’ve spent their lives exploring the West Country’s wild and perilous north coast still remember the late Kester Webb with a combination of admiration and awe. During his lifetime, he and Liz explored, mapped, painted and wrote about some of the least-known but perilous corners of our well-populated and much-visited region. 

Kester Webb and artworks

If any reader ever does find themselves clambering up the Secret Canyon having discovered it somewhere tucked away in a quiet corner of the Devon-Cornwall coast, why not a spend a second or two remembering the man who mapped and painted the most obscure parts of the Southern English littoral. 

David Kester Webb