most
lovely of all on crisp September mornings, when the heather is abloom in
miles on miles of changing purples and the air has a keen, clean edge, as
if it were blown off the top of the world. The air of Exmoor has always
this sharp sweetness, however much the sun may blaze, as John Ridd knew;
and looking over the wide-stretching countryside, one sees many a farm
that might have been his, a sturdy, whitewashed affair, flanked
generously with out-buildings, and standing high, but sheltered, in a
hollow of the ground, cut off from its neighbours by the rising hills,
and even more isolated in winter by the deep ruts of the roads, muddy and
impassable, that wind from valley to valley.

A mile beyond County Gate is the village of Oare, where John Kidd and
Lorna were married; and as we follow the Porlock road across the moors we
see on our right the dip of the Doone Valley, where Lorna's bower was,
and a few scattered remains of stone huts show the habitations of the
outlaws. It is a scene of wildness and grandeur; on the left lies the
blue sea, on the right the dun-coloured moors. There are no trees, save
for a few writhen and stunted alders, covered with lichen till they are
the colour of stone, and look like petrified remains of an earlier age;
they are grown all to one side under the stress of the prevailing wind.
The only signs of life are the scattered sheep, their grey backs scarcely
visible among the heather and close furze, a great buzzard hawk poised
far up in the blue, and, when his shadow has passed, sailing slowly over
the shadeless ground, the sweet, monotonous song of mounting larks.

CHAPTER VI

PORLOCK AND EXMOOR

The road now lies in Somerset; we pass Glenthorne, lying five hundred
feet below, among its beautiful green woods and stretches of vivid
green turf, and separated by some five miles of barren brown moors from
the village of Porlock. The road that leads from Exmoor down to
Porlock is incredibly steep, the steepest coach-road in England. It
twists dangerously in sharp right-angle turns, the surface is loose and
stony, worn by the dragging of brakes and the scouring of winter rains,
and on a summer afternoon it is so hot, so dusty and glaring, and so
steep, that it seems impossible for man or beast to climb. As soon as
you are at the top, however, the fresh air of Exmoor fills your lungs
and freshens your face, so let nobody be dissuaded from it.

Porlock itself was a port in Saxon