11 minute read
An Epic English Pub Crawl
from Range - Volume 7
by Ensemble
Medieval history. Pastoral landscapes. High step counts. Hearty fare and refreshing pints. This once-in-a-lifetime walking journey was worth every mile for writer Bonnie Munday.
By Bonnie Munday — Photos by Felicity Millward
“You’re really doing this!” our friend Liz exclaimed, hugging us goodbye. My husband, Jules, and I were standing in the historic market square of Devizes, Wiltshire, with everything we’d need for the next three weeks strapped to our backs. It was a brisk March morning and Liz, who grew up here and is one of our closest friends, was there to see us off as we headed out into the countryside of southwest England. Our plan was to walk across four counties, all the way to Cornwall.
We were really doing this. And we were feeling pretty apprehensive about it. After months of studying maps and planning our route, now it was real. Not only was it a long, long walk from Jules’s hometown, it was also a walk into the next phase of our lives. We’d just sold our house in Canada and pulled back on our workloads, semi-retiring. We wanted to do something big to put an exclamation mark on the transition. Something that allowed us to really immerse ourselves in the beauty of England after years of being able to visit for only a week or two at a time.
From our starting point in Wiltshire — home to Iron Age forts and ancient stone circles, including Stonehenge — we’d head southwest into the counties of Somerset and Devon, finishing up in Looe on the Cornwall coast. It would be roughly 155 miles of walking in total. What makes this kind of countryside pilgrimage even possible is that, across the U.K., there is a network of public footpaths on private land that has existed for hundreds of years. The routes were once essential for getting to work, school, markets and church, and to this day, anyone can access them. There are several famous designated long routes, including the Thames Path and Pennine Way, but to get from Devizes to Looe, we’d create our own using the Ordnance Survey’s Maps (OS Maps) app, cobbling together stretches of lanes and footpaths. We’d walk eight to 12 miles a day over three weeks across hilly, mushy terrain (it had been raining for months), but we were banking on the warmth of a village pub to greet us at the end of each daily finish line.
SOUTHEAST SOMERSET
“Can we have the Barolo with our dinner, please?” I ask Sam Sharratt-Malone, our server in the pub of the George Inn, where we’re staying for the night. It’s our wedding anniversary, but, more importantly, it’s the end of day two of our journey. We arrived in the village of Nunney soaked, windburned, muddy-booted and blistered and are in need of a celebratory bottle.
“We’re out of that Barolo right now,” he says, “but I’m sure the pub owners have something similar in their wine cellar.” And with that, he’s off, dashing across the road to pull a bottle from their collection. The special service fits this special place.
Although Sam has been the front-of-house manager here for a year, he and his husband only recently moved into the village — and he says it already feels like home. (The locals immediately invited them for coffee dates, and Sam was asked to host and MC July’s Nunney Fayre Day, an annual event with craft and local-produce stalls on the main street and live music on a stage in the center of the village.) “When I was a kid, we moved around a lot because of my dad’s job in the military,” he says. “Now, I feel like I fit in, like I’ve been here forever.”
The George is the only pub in this village of 856 people and was built in the 17th century. Its huge glowing fireplace couldn’t have been more welcome after squelching across miles of fields in the rain. I order the blue-cheese-topped beef burger with salad after Sam explains that the menu is made up of meats,
dairy and produce procured exclusively from local sources. On Sundays, it’s all about roasts served with potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and seasonal vegetables. Through the multi-paned window we can see the ruins of Nunney Castle just across the road and decide to explore the grounds the next morning before setting off on our day’s walk. The castle was built in the 1370s by a knight named Sir John de la Mare, but was heavily damaged by Oliver Cromwell’s cannons almost 300 years later during the Civil War. Walking across the drawbridge over the castle’s moat and staring up at its curved stone walls is like taking a trip back in time.
NORTH SOMERSET
Six days into our adventure, we reach north Somerset and the town of Watchet, where you can see across the Bristol Channel to Wales. More than a thousand years ago it was an important Saxon port, and the coins from its mint turned up as far away as Scandinavia — Viking plunder. We stay a little further inland, in Washford, the riverside setting of the 12th-century Cleeve Abbey and home to the White Horse Inn, which welcomed its first guests in 1709. It’s a Monday evening, but when we open the door of the inn’s low-ceilinged pub, it’s full of locals talking and laughing as though it were Friday.
“I have so many loyal regulars that when one doesn’t show up, I call and make sure they’re all right,” owner George Shan tells us. He bought the business only a year ago, despite having never worked in a pub, let alone owned one. “I had no idea what I was doing,” he says. “The first time I pulled a pint, I didn’t fill the glass to the top. The customer said, ‘That’s a very generous half pint.’ I had a lot to learn, including the British people’s dry sense of humor.”
George left China when he was 18 and lived in Singapore and Malta before moving to London in 2018. He and his wife, Helen, quickly fell in love with the English countryside — its history, landscapes, people and pub food. Though the specialty tonight is a selection of curries, I choose the sautéed free-range chicken breast with wild mushrooms, accompanied by a glass of local cider called Fuzzy Duck from the Torre Cider Farm just up the road.
The White Horse is the center of the community not only for its customers, but for George and Helen, too.
“Even though we’re not from this area, or even from this culture, people are very welcoming,” George says. “I didn’t feel at home in London. But I think I’ll live here for a long time — I want to be one of the locals.”
DEVON
From Washford, we put Somerset behind us as we make our way south through Devon toward the small city of Exeter. We’re now two-thirds of the way into our walk and my boots tell a story of climbing countless hills, hiking curved tracks between tall hedgerows and navigating muddy bridleways deeply divoted by horses’ hooves. It’s liberating to be carrying what we need, relying only on our legs for travel — it helps that our blisters have healed, our legs are stronger and we’ve adapted to the weight of our backpacks.
We have also mastered OS Maps. Now when we set off each morning, serenaded by birdsong, we can fully take in the charms of southern England instead of stopping every so often to make sure we don’t miss a turn. We pause on the hillsides, looking back for the view of what we’ve just put behind us. Lunch is usually Cornish pasties purchased that morning from a village bakery, and we enjoy them on a bench in an ancient churchyard, or leaning on a stile next to a field dotted with ewes, newborn lambs at their sides.
After so much blissful countryside, it feels a little strange to suddenly pass through a city. Exeter is sparkling in the sun, its pedestrian mall bustling with Saturday shoppers. Hidden underneath lies a medieval tunnel system, constructed in the 14th century to supply water to Exeter’s inhabitants. Yet far older is the city’s wall, about 70 percent of which still stands. It was built by the Romans, who arrived in 55 AD, to protect a 5,000-man legion.
A few miles south lies the village of Kenn and the Ley Arms pub, a thatch-roofed establishment dating back to the 1200s. We’re here for dinner — and for a glamping orientation from Matt and Amanda Bate, the owners of the Wood Life, our accommodation for the night about two miles from here. Jules orders the sole (caught that morning off nearby Brixham) with capers and lemon parsley butter, while I opt for a couple of vegetarian appetizers featuring pan-fried mushrooms from Dawlish with crumbled Devon blue cheese, and a shallot-stuffed ravioli topped with cherry tomatoes, pea shoots and baby arugula.
Over dinner, Amanda tells us that, a few years ago, she left a full-time job with a nonprofit to start the Wood Life — two utterly private rustic-chic glamping accommodations. She’d spent several years working for a conservation organization and says helping preserve their corner of ancient Devon countryside was important to both of them. Matt, an arborist and woodworker, now runs courses in a converted barn just outside their home, and the glamping sites sit on land that Matt’s ancestors farmed for hundreds of years (generations back, the pub was also owned by Matt’s family). “It’s glorious isolation,” Amanda says. “Your own utopia.”
Our bed for the night is in the cedar-scented Shepherd’s Hut, right next to a private bath wagon that Matt built (it houses a full-size tub and woodfired heater for hot baths overlooking the lush fields).
Climbing into bed, Jules and I know we’ll soon be lacing up again and heading west. We’ll skirt the northern edge of brooding, desolate Dartmoor, cross into Cornwall and then bog-hop for miles across Bodmin Moor to the seaside resort town of Looe and its wide beach. That stretch will mark our final week.
But for now, we luxuriate in the dark night that’s silent but for the sound of lambs bleating in a nearby field. It’s lovely to fall asleep surrounded by green, knowing that tomorrow we’ll be out there again, wind on our faces, feeling the pure exhilaration of being alive and traveling on foot. Sleeping on the land we’re passing through on this epic walk reminds us why we decided to take it on in the first place: to be a part of the beautiful English countryside — and to know there are many new paths (and pubs) yet to discover.
