Splashing through the shallows of the River Torridge, I was keeping half an eye out for otters. I knew my chances of seeing Tarka or one of his ilk mid-morning – even such a beautiful, hazy spring morning as this – were minimal.
Otters are essentially nocturnal creatures, and very shy of humans. But a mother and cubs had recently been spotted by day nearby, a mile or so downriver at Beam Weir. The sleekly furry little water-wanderers have been reported spreading once more along the rivers of North Devon after decades of near-extinction. Here in the country of the most famous – though fictional – otter of them all, I just couldn't prevent myself hoping against hope.
Henry Williamson wrote Tarka the Otter 80 years ago, covering hundreds of miles on foot with the local otter hunt and uncounted more on solo expeditions as he researched his story meticulously.
Wandering in his footsteps today around North Devon and the Country of the Two Rivers, Torridge and Taw, I found it quite astonishing to discover how little had changed at otter's-eye level – or, to put it another way, just how careful and accurate had been Williamson's descriptions of the river banks, the flood islands, the trees and meadows, the bridges, the flowers growing among the stones.
Roads have been built, railways closed, new housing thrown up around old town centres since Williamson lived and roamed here. But the rivers and woods, the high bogs and heather tracts of Exmoor have altered remarkably little.
Henry Williamson, born in 1895, served in the trenches during the First World War. This extremely sensitive, highly strung and romantic soul never recovered from the horror and the disillusionment he experienced in Flanders. From 1921 onwards he buried himself in the little North Devon village of Georgeham, seeking an escape from inner torment by exploring and writing about the wild and unfrequented landscapes of Exmoor.
When Tarka the Otter won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1928, fame came, too. But it didn't make Williamson happy. He was a prickly customer, an outsider, who could be witty and charming or crushingly rude and intolerant as the mood took him.
In the 1930s he embraced Fascism with a naïve conviction that turned many of his friends against him. He almost drove himself mad, and did drive his family to despair and eventual break-up, by taking on the reclamation of a derelict Norfolk farm during the Second World War.
After the war he returned to Georgeham and spent much of the rest of his life in a spartan writing hut he built on the hill above the village. He died in 1977, author of dozens of books, recipient of no honours or public recognition.
All this sadness was far from my mind as I commenced my wanderings in the pawprints of Tarka. Through my hands in childhood had passed most of Henry Williamson's nature writings – Salar the Salmon, The Old Stag, Tales of Moorland and Estuary and, of course, the incomparable Tarka the Otter.
I loved them all – their romance and high adventure, their tiny details and flashes of humour, their absolute truthfulness to nature. The countryside of North Devon was for evermore to be seen by me through Williamson-coloured spectacles. For me he remains the supreme writer of the English countryside.
I started in the middle of Exmoor, its loneliest stretch of ground up at Pinkworthy Pond and the bare sweep of moorland known as The Chains. Heather and coarse grass squelched under my boots, water squirted with every step and the sharp, spring wind carried a curlew's mournfully bubbling cry.
Tarka would recognise the steely waters of Pinkworthy Pond where he hunted for frogs, and the remote goyal or valley of the Hoaroak Water down which he journeyed to the sea at Lynmouth. It was a boggy footpath that carried me seawards on the otter's track, a section of the 180-mile Tarka Trail whose waymarks I came across time and again on these foot expeditions in Henry Williamson country.
Down on the East Lyn Water I came to Watersmeet, a renowned beauty spot where the Hoaroak Water tumbles to meet the East Lyn among trees. Here, Tarka grappled with his mortal enemy Deadlock the otterhound, escaping hound and hunters to make his way to the sea and the safety of the coast.
I followed the cliff roads round to the great westward-facing scoop of Morte Bay, two miles of shining sand enclosed between the sentinel headlands of Morte Point and Baggy Point. Surfers were making the most of the wind-whipped rollers in the bay as I sat looking out to the Morte Stone, a rock rising from the tiderips where Tarka hunted bass. Later I caught the last of a spectacular red sunset out at the tip of Baggy Point, a favourite haunt of Henry Williamson's when he was living at Georgeham a mile or so inland.
In the morning I followed the final act of the Tarka drama from Great Torrington down the River Torridge, biking and hiking along the Tarka Trail from the mill house where Tarka hid on the waterwheel (still there) at the start of the hunt to the mouth of the estuary where the otter closed with Deadlock the hound and dragged him down to drown in the ebbing tide.
As the hunters stood round the body of the hound, "a great bubble rose out of the depths and broke, and as they watched, another bubble shook the surface, and broke; and there was a third bubble in the sea-going waters, and nothing more." So passed Tarka.
My last day in Williamson's North Devon I spent mooching around the writer's adopted village of Georgeham. The thatched cottage that he rented for £5 a year, last in a short row under the church tower, still carries the name he gave it, Skirr Cottage.
Just up the lane, a blue plaque has been fixed to the house to which he moved as his family expanded. But there's not a great deal else in Georgeham to commemorate the man who lies between Skirr Cottage and church tower under a black slate stone inscribed with his barn owl colophon or trademark and the simple comment, "Here rests Henry Williamson".
Up on the hill above the village at Ox's Cross, Williamson's writing hut is preserved in the grove of pine trees he planted. The views over fields, estuary and moor are stunning.
Inside the elm-board hut he built, Williamson's boots stand against the wall and his tatty old plaid jacket hangs across the back of his chair. A pair of spectacles lie folded on the blotter, as if their owner had just laid them down to go outside for a moment. I could easily believe that the man himself might appear in the doorway, perhaps to blare out, "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing in my hut?" – or maybe to allow me to shake his hand and tell him how his masterpieces of country writing had shone like beacons of delight in a boy's imagination.
Essentials
Getting there
Rail to Barnstaple (08457 484950, www.thetrainline.co.uk). Car: M5 to Jct 27, A361 to Barnstaple.
Getting around
Maps OS Landrangers 180, 181; Explorers OL9, 139.
Tarka Trail 180-mile circular walking trail connecting many Tarka sites. Meeth-Braunton (32 miles) suitable for cycling. Free Tarka Country leaflet with map, places to visit, information on cycle hire, refreshment stops: call 01271 336070.
Bike hire Torrington Cycle Hire, Station Yard, Great Torrington (01805 622633 ); Tarka Trail Cycle Hire, Railway Station, Barnstaple (01271 324202 ); Biketrail, The Stone Barn, Fremington Quay (01271 372586/07788 133738, www.biketrail.co.uk); Bideford Bicycle Hire, Torrington Street, East-the-Water, Bideford (01237 424123).
Staying there
Yoldon House Hotel, Durrant Lane, Northam, Bideford, EX39 2RL (01237 474400, www.yeoldonhousehotel.co.uk): stylish and welcoming, on the Torridge Estuary; double b & b from £110; short-break deals available.
The Croft, Ox's Cross, near Georgeham (inquiries 01271 816345, www.coastal-cottages.com): cottage where Henry Williamson lodged; self-catering weekly rate from £225 (low and mid-season), £545 (high).
More information
- Henry Williamson Society (webmaster@henrywilliamson.co.uk, www.henrywilliamson.co.uk) offers talks, meetings, books, tapes and videos on the life of Henry Williamson. UK adult membership, £12; family, £15. Members can visit Williamson's Writing Hut at Ox's Cross, by arrangement.
- Barnstaple TIC, The Square, Barnstaple (01271 375000, www.discoverdevon.com). Among useful publications available here are Tarka Country Explored by Trevor Beer, Pub Walks Along The Tarka Trail by Michael Bennie, and Henry Williamson, A brief look at his Life and Writings in North Devon by Anne Williamson and Tony Evans.
- Background reading Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson (Puffin Modern Classics, £6.99). The Illustrated Tarka the Otter (Webb & Bower, 1985), with photographs by Simon McBride, is out of print but obtainable on-line.
- www.northdevon.com