A DREAM COME TRUE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 204, 28 August 1926, Page 21

A DREAM COME TRUE.

THE KINGSLEY COUNTRY. CLOVEIXY'S LOVELINESS. (By PILGRIM.) Xo. 2. From Salisbury we ran down on a hot day to Exeter, through beautiful undulating country, well grassed and well wooded. As 1 had noted in other parts, little of the land was under the- plough, and I was struck afresh by the non-industrial nature of most of Southern England. Manufacture has laid its iron hand on much of the South and the Midlands, but this Wiltshire and Somersetshire landscape was a huge park. Even the railway cuttings were beautiful. After Exeter we entered characteristic Devonshire country. The train followed a little valley, heavily wooded, with a etream at the bottom. The soil showed red, and here and there a bare field of it would stand out in the landscape like a banner. Once a particularly bright patch of colour caught my eye, and a moment later I realised that it was a great spread of poppies in a field of clover. Here, as elsewhere, the farm bouses and cottages were delightfully set in the scene. Hill and wood, meadow and rock, red soil and brawling streams, what these must mean to the Devon man!

At length" we came by way of Barnstaple to Bideford. It is a "port of etranded pride." Kingsley tells us that in the days of Elizabeth it was one of the main ports of the kingdom and sent eeven ships to fight the Armada, but by his day it had declined to a harbour for a few coasting vessels. Such it is today- The tide was low when we crossed the famous bridge and got out on the quay that Amyas Leigh trod. A couple of small ships were lying on the "mud" by the quay side, and the town wore an air of sleepy peace. A statute of Kingsley stands overlooking the river of which he wrote with such feeling. How good is that opening description!

" . . . . the little white town of Bideford which, sloping upwards from its broad tide river, paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge, where salmon wait for autumn floods, toward the pleasant upland of the west. Above the town the hills close in, cushioned with deep oak woods, through which juts here and there a crag of fernfringed slate; below they lower and open more and more in softly rounded knolls, and fertile squares of red and green, till they sink into the wide expanse of hazy flats, rich salt marshes, and rolling sandhills, where Torridge joins her sister Taw, and both together flow quietly towards the broad surges of the bar, and the everlasting thunder of the long Atlantic swell." The Devon Coast. 'It was not. however, until we had climbed the steep hill out of Bideford. and were driving along the uplands to Clbvelly, that we felt we were in the sanctuary of Devonshire scenery and sentiment. The road wound between hedges in which honeysuckle twined, it dipped down into beckoning hollows, and passed white cottages; to the right were the wooded heights above the sea, beyond was the bulwark of the water j and in the distance the coast curved round in blue and green and red towards Ilfracombe. We were at once reminded of New Zealand. The steep and bounteously wooded sea front, with the deep blue eea below, recalled the ocean coast west of Auckland, and the sweep eastwards resembled parts of both islands.

After ten miles we turned sharply seawards, and soon were in the splendid woods above Clovelly, and in the shade of these friendly sunlit trees were passing historic Clovelly Court and the old parish church in the Court grounds. Above the village, however, we had to get down, for no vehicle can enter that amazing place.

Wonderful Clovelly. Clovelly at first sight appears too good to be true. One has a horrid thought that it has been deliberately manufactured to catch the tourist. One knows, however, from Kingsley that it is not so. It certainly encourages the tourist, and the local resident may. be right who said he thought that for its size it was visited by more people than any place in England. Its essential features, however, are old and quite genuine. It is a village built on one street in a steep cleft in a wooded hillside. This street, only eight feet wide in places, is so steep that it is laid out in a series of steps, and no wheel moves along it. The visitors' baggage is brought down on a man-drawn sledge or on a donkey. The houses are built on top of one another, so to speak. They are all white, with slate roofs, and against the white, red fuchsias and geraniums show up vividly. It is a village of flowers, which thrive strongly in this warm, moist air. The street goes down through an old stone arch—said to have been Salvation Yeo's house —to a stone quay which shelters boats, and a boulderstrewn beach. Glorious Woods. Then the trees! They seem almost to submerge the ribbon of white houses that falls irregularly to the sea. For miles the high face of the land is covered with woods, and paths run east and west through the trees along the heights. Clovelly, 1 believe, still belongs to Clovelly Court, and the people in the '"big house" have done much to make the beauties of the place accessible to the villagers and visitors. On Sunday morning we went to the ancient village church beside the Court.

The worshipper walks up to the mam door through a tunnel of yews, and en ters bj a porch that is partly Norman Inside are many memorials to the lordV of the manor, the Carys, and their successors, and there is a tablet to Kind'sley, who spent some of his early years at Clovelly Those extraordinarily vivid descriptions of Devonshire coastal scenery were written from experience that affected his whole being. In the afternoon we walked westward through the woods to where a stream comes down a lovely little valley past a ruined mill, and "loses itself "in the shingle. Below was the sea, shimmering in the sun of a gracious summer afternoon, but the chief glory of the sun was in the woods. It came through the leaves of oak and beech and suffused grass and bracken with a warm gold. It is this easy and glorious infiltration of sunlight that gives the English wood in summer its crowning magic The wood is much more open than the New Zealand bush, and the light comes through more generously. -Moreover, the green of the trees is lighter md freshei and more in keeping with the spirit of summer. If there L- one thing more beautiful than a sunlit oeech tree in summer, it is the same tree clothed with the tenderness of spring. Our Mew Zealand trees seem to be cold towards the sun. In England leaf and light are lovers.

A Quiet Village. We sat on the shingle in the little bay and lazily watched the bountiful procession of the afternoon. The clear warm sea broke at our feet. The red cliffs to the eastward stood out like a gesture of joy The spreading woodland breathed a spirit of ancient peace. Out to sea Lundy stood up clear against the horizon, and at one end there was a rock that we took to be the Shutter, on which the galleon pursued by Ainyae was driven to its doom. Then home through the mellowing sunlight and shade of the woodland way to the quiet village. It is quiet in a sense now rare. There can be few other places where the serenity and mystery of night can never be broken by the noise of a motor car. By the way, one of the men who returned to Bideford with Amyas from Drake's voyage round the world was a Braund of Clovelly. There is at least one Braund in Cloveily to-day. He drives a motor bus. Possibly the spirit of adventure k not yet dead in the family. "Glorious Devon," we reflect, as we leave Clovelly reluctantly. "Glorious," yes, but more —tender, lovely, lovable. Its characteristic is everything.