A DREAM COME TRUE.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18788, 4 September 1926, Page 13

A DREAM COME TRUE.

THE KINGSLEY COUNTRY. CLOVELLY'S LOVELINESS. (No. 2.) (By Pilgrim.) From Salisbury we ran down on a hot day 'to Eseter, through heauhtul undulating country, well B ra ". ' ' well wooded. As I had noted m other parte, little of the land was undci be plough, and I was .truck a rcsh b *b non-industrial nature ot m*t ° southern England. Manufactu e halaid its iron hand on much pt " north and the Midland,, but tins* Bhire and Somersetshire landscape a huge park. Even the ra.lv.ay cut tings were beautiful. r!iqra cter* After Exeter wc entered istte. Devonshire county . J M followed a little val The ed, with a stream at the bouo_ u soil showed *f>.™ d TlmtoTin a bare field of it would uid ou the landscape like a bamiei. Um partioularly bnght later taught my eye, and * momc ',... ld 0 f I realised that it was a great amead oi poppies in a field o clover. cs eWhere, the farmhouse* and oottu were delightfully set in the bcene and wood, meadow and, iotk £ and brawling stream-" bit tnoe mean to the Devon man! At length we came, by u ay o« tof staple, to Bidcford. It is , \ , t stranded pride," Kingsl"? tells in the days of Elizaboth, .t «£> °n the main ports ot the sent seven .hips to fight the Mm , , i.^ t^th; h uS«bHd S Slying on the "mud" of the quayside, and the town wore an nu ot sleepy peace. A statue of £»W stands overlooking the river of *hid ho wrote with such feeling. How good is that opening description: - ■ • "the little white town ot T.iclefoul which, eloping upwards lroni its broad tide river, paved with yellow -sands, and manv-arched old bridge, where salmon wait for autumn floods, toward the pleasant upland of the west. Above the town the. woods close in, cushioned with deep oak woods, through which juts here and there a crag of fern-fringed slate; below they lower, and open more and more in softly-rounded knolls, and fertile squares of rod and green, till they sink into the wide expanse of hazy flats, rich salt marshes, and rolling sandhills, where Torridge joins her s'ster Taw. and both together How 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 wo had climbed the steep hill out of Bidcford, and wcro driving along the uplands to Clorelly, that wo felt we wero m the sanctuary of Devonshire scenery and sentiment. Tho road wound between hedges in which honeysuckle twined; it dropped down into beckoning hollows and passed white cottages; to the right wero the wooded heights above the sea; beyond was the brilliant blue water, and in tho distance the coast curved round in blue nnd green and red towards Ilfracombe. We were at once reminded of New Zealand. The steep and bounteously-wooded sea i ront ; with the deep blue sea below recalled the ccean, coast west of Auckland, ana 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 wero passing historic CloveUy Court, and tho old parish church in the Court grounds. Above the village, however, wo had to get down, for no vehicle can enter that amazing place.

Wonderful CloveUy. Clovellv at first sight appears too good to *bc true. Ono has a horrid thought that it has been deliberately manufactured to catch the tourist One knows, however, from Kiugsley, that it is not so. It certainly encourages the tourist, and the local resident may be right who said he thought that for its si?e it was visited by more people than any place in England. Its essential features, however, are old and quite genuine. It is a villago 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 aloug it. Tho 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 roots ■ 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 archsaid to have been Salvation \eo s house, —to a stono quay, which shelters boats, and a boulder-strewn 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 hills along the heights. CloveUy, I believe still belongs to CloveUy Court, and the people in the "big house" have done much £ 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 Be worshipper walks up to the mam door through a .tunnel of yews, partly Np/man. Inside are many memorials to the lords of the manor, tho Carys and their successors, and there is a tablet to Kfogsley, who spent, some ot his early years at C ovel y. Those extraordinarily vivid descriptions of Devonshire coastal scenery were written from experience that affected his whole be S e the afternoon we walked westward tluoug the woods to where a stream eSdown a lovely little, a ruined mill, and loses itself in the shingle. Below was the sea, shimmering in tho sun of a gracious summer afternoon, but the chief glory of the sun was in the woods, "came through the leaves of oak and beech and suffused Sass and bracken with a warm gold, ft's this easy and glorious W cold towards the sun. In England leaf and light are lovers.

A Quiet Village. VCa sar on the shingle in the little lazily watched the bount.fn Procession of the afternoon. the K warm sea broke at our feet TV red cliffs to the eastward stood St lite a Stun, of joy. The .preadSS woodland breathed a spirit of ancient peace. Out to sea Lundy stood