The Porlock Pilgrim’s Trail

28-31 May 2024

My friend Pip suggested we walk the Porlock Pilgrim’s Trail after seeing it advertised in a “Ramblers” magazine. I modified the route so we could walk it over three days and pitch our tents at convenient campsites. It is also possible to complete the route as a series of day walks using Porlock as a base.

For me it was only a week since I had completed an arduous three-week backpacking trip over the Welsh mountains and a few weeks until I would be departing to Sweden for another long backpacking expedition. For Pip, an experienced walker and camper who had never put the two activities together previously, it was a training exercise in preparation for a planned incredibly ambitious 520 mile walk in the Spanish Pyrenees starting in June.

Over the course of our expedition our “pilgrimage” took us to nine very different churches. The guidebook for the walk also doubles as a completion record with places to stamp the inked rubber found in each church appropriately attached to an old boot weighted with concrete. The book explains that the definition of a pilgrim is any wanderer who is able to gain strength, hope and a sense of well-being from their walking; hence pilgrims of all faiths or none are welcomed.

We began at St Dubricus Church in the centre of picturesque and bustling Porlock. The 13th century church has a truncated spire, probably due to wind damage in the great storm of 1703, although there is a legend that the top of the spire was blown along the coast or perhaps carried by a giant and ended up on Culbone Church.

We couldn’t leave Porlock without enjoying coffee in one of the many cafes, before walking two miles through the woods to St. Nicholas Church near Porlock Weir. This is a “tin tabernacle” tucked away at the side of a narrow lane. It would have arrived as a flat-pack to Minehead Station then been transported by horse and cart to be erected on the site by local workmen.

After we left Porlock Weir, we had a long climb past an interesting toll house to the tiny and remote St. Beuno’s Church at Culbone, a place of pilgrimage for over a thousand years. The settlement has been a penal colony, a leper colony and a prisoner of war camp in the past. However nowadays there’s just the church and a couple of houses all nestling almost out of sight in the valley. This church was my favourite on the whole route with its peaceful atmosphere.

We had further steep climbing out of Culbone before reaching the edge of open moorland and descending to Oare. The church has links with Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore whose father had been vicar here. There’s a memorial to R.D. Blackmore near the entrance door.

It wasn’t far to walk to Cloud Farm where we were booked at the National Trust campsite. We managed to pitch our tents as it started to rain but were fortunate to spend most of the time while it was raining chatting to the very friendly and knowledgeable campsite warden in the site shop.

The next day we only visited one church which was about ten miles from the campsite, on a route following the banks of picturesque Badgworthy Water then mainly across open moor. We spotted kestrels and saw some deer in the distance. Stoke Pero church at 309m above sea level, is the highest church on Exmoor. Only Brentor church on Dartmoor is higher in the whole of England. We sat in the churchyard to eat lunch. The church tower dates from the 13th century but the rest of the church was rebuilt in 1897 by the owner of the manor, Sir Thomas Dyke Acland (he owned Killerton our local National Trust stately home near Exeter as well as the estates in north Somerset).

Next we walked through Horner Wood, briefly glimpsing a deer with a fawn. We climbed an enormous steep valley side that seemed never ending on to Horner Hill. After the exertion, we were tempted by cream teas in a garden at Horner before walking the short distance to our next campsite at Burrowhayes Farm.

The following morning we left the campsite through a back entrance which saved some distance and decreased our road walking. We soon reached St Mary’s Church, Luccombe, a large building of roughcast local red sandstone. Neither the church nor the tower have any foundations so it’s reassuring to know that the chancel has been standing since around 1300 and the nave and tower since around 1450. This got the vote as Pip’s favourite church with an immaculate and cared for interior featuring beautiful themed kneelers. We also saw some impressive stained glass windows, a seventeenth century brass memorial and some other poignant memorials including one to a man “who loved, watched and wrote about birds and saw all natural beauty as a manifestation of God”. The setting for this church is a well-kept churchyard which includes the stump of an ancient cross, the top missing as it was decapitated by Cromwell’s supporters.

Unfortunately the route to Tivington Chapel was affected by some footpath closures which weren’t signed in advance from the direction we were walking. Suffice to say we made a couple of wrong turnings, needing to retrace our steps and had to walk along some very overgrown and tussocky rights of way before walking up an aptly named stony track named Long Lane. The only consolation was passing picturesque Blackford Dovecote, which probably dates from the eleventh century.

The fourteenth century Tivington Chapel is thatched. It was secularised after the dissolution of the monasteries and most of it became a cottage. The chapel section was reconsecrated in 1940 facilitated by the Aclands, who supplied the bell above the entrance from their yacht and funded most of the restoration work.

I was very disappointed that we had to return down Long Lane, but at least it was downhill. Soon we were on new ground and crossing pasture land to reach Selworthy Church, a Grade 1 listed whitewashed 15th-century Church, with a 14th-century tower. We also visited the nearby National Trust café for lunch.

We walked through woodland to reach Lynch Chapel of Ease, built around 1530 as a chapel for the Manor of Bossington. It was used as a barn after the dissolution of the monasteries but restored in the 1880s by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland.

All that remained was a walk along lanes and footpaths to Porlock, where we pitched our tents for our final night at Sparkhayes campsite before revisiting St Dubricus Church to sign the completers’ book. We enjoyed a celebratory meal too at The Ship Inn in the village.