Woodbury Common offers some of the finest inland walking to be found anywhere in southeast Devon. This is an easy going stroll through the southerly limits of the area’s fascinating Triassic pebblebeds – to give them their official title. 

A few hundred yards east of the hamlet of Yettington, not far from East Budleigh and close to the Bicton College of Agriculture, there’s a small stony track that leads up into some mysterious, alluring hills. There is something wooded and ancient about them. 

“That,” thought I, “looks as if it may go somewhere.”  Not being armed with the map at the time I knew not whither – and nor did I care. Having tucked my car safely on the verge I thought I’d explore – it being a hot and jolly day when the sun beat down with unaccustomed vigour. And soon I was walking north from the road through cool woodlands – wondering where on earth I could be.

You’ll see this lane on the map, running just past the B that says BICTON CP. At first it runs alongside a wood and then begins to climb. We’re in a place called Crook Plantation and, all at once we leave agriculture behind. The woods close in and we find ourselves ascending up the side of a little coombe. I guess the climb is no more than 200 feet, but it felt more in the heat of that sultry day. It’s also made more tiring by the fact that the path here is made entirely of the sort of cobbles you normally find on a beach. The round sort that roll. Why they should be up here on the side of a hill I cannot say for sure, but can only imagine that the great heath we are about to reach must once have been part of the seabed.

Maybe I’ve given the game away by mentioning the heath. For that is where we find ourselves once the ascent is made. A huge and beautiful heath lies before us. A heath of such majesty that, in the beating sun, it looked for all the world like the Serengeti Plain. So lost was I that, if a herd of wildebeest had crossed the horizon, I’d have been not in the least surprised.

I have to admit that I had a feeling this was Woodbury Common - to be honest there aren’t many places that look like the famous heath. But I wasn’t sure and didn’t care because I was thoroughly enjoying the other-worldly feeling of being lost.  

The great empty expanse held me fascinated and I decided to carry on up the hill along the track to my left so that I could see all there was to see. That’s not difficult as we’re talking wide open spaces. Having subsequently looked the place up on the Internet I can tell you this:

“The commons (Woodbury and adjacent) encompass many areas of historical and general interest, including a hill fort, some seventeen burial mounds and Fire Beacon,” says a local website. “The Commons are laid down on Triassic pebblebeds (there, told you about the pebbles) that are thought to have come from an area of desert that extended over the English Channel to France. Vast rivers flowed across the basin depositing layers of pebblebeds which we now associate with the Commons.”

Apparently the area was situated on the edge of the great ice sheet of the last ice age, and so was once a place of Arctic tundra. After the ice went away the area became a huge forest and then Mankind arrived. He built a hill for here around 500-300 B.C. and Woodbury Castle, as it’s now know was the place I reached on my hike. 

The website goes on: “With the establishment of the local manors and the division of the land into parishes, the Lord of the Manor allowed commoners rights of grazing, turf cutting, the taking of bracken for bedding and the cutting of certain size trees for fuel. This went on for many years until the locals became richer and stopped using their common rights.

“The Commons were then allowed to fall into their own succession of growth from heather and gorse to the invasion of trees, bracken etc. If this had been allowed to go on unchecked, one of the most valuable lowland heaths in the country would have been lost.”

Well, that didn’t happen. The whole place is now a Site of Special Scientific Interest - the area of the East Devon Pebblebed Heaths covers all of Woodbury and the adjacent Commons. It’s owned by Clinton Devon Estates and is part of the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

There’s wide variety of different vegetation associated with dry heath, wet heath and mire, and woodland. There are 24 different species of dragonflies and damselflies and a host of butterflies, including the rare High Brown Fritillary and Silver Studded Blue. As for reptiles there are adders, grass snakes, common lizards and slow worms. 70 breeding bird species have been recorded, including the Hobby, Dartford Warbler and Nightjar.

So there we go. The various commons are such delightful and interesting places that I intend returning soon, but in the meantime I’ll round off this hike by telling you I walked east along the northern rim of Collaton Raleigh Common before joining the footpath that took me south-east down to Kettle Plantation where I turned right on the path that took me back to the sultry coombe I mentioned earlier. Then it was simply a case of retracing my tracks to the car – a lost soul returned from the wilderness.

Fact file

Basic hike: up track just west of Yetterton onto Woodbury Common, up to Woodbury Castle and returning via Collaton Raleigh Common.

Recommended Map: Ordnance Survey 115 Exmouth and Sidmouth.

Distance and going: four and a half miles, easy going.