Cloutsham and Horner Valley Walk: One of Exmoor's Finest Short Walks
- Martin Hesp
- 7 hours ago
- 4 min read
Showing Visitors the Best of Exmoor
If you love a place with a passion, then you can’t help but also be in love with the pleasant pastime of showing others around the particular area of which you are so fond. That is what a retired Swiss mountain guide once said to me as I showed him around the vast and beautiful corner of the West Country that is my own glorious backyard.
My old friend Hans Forrar died a while ago - but I was thinking about the innovative Swiss tourism boss who basically invented the concept of “eating the view” .
A few years ago I took him on a tour of Exmoor and Hans said: “I can see you are like me, Martin. You get great pleasure from showing other people the place you love so much. When you retire from journalism, you should become a local guide.”
Well, that ain’t gonna happen for a long long time yet, I hope. But if I was guiding people around Exmoor and they wanted a very pleasant short walk, then this is one of the many I’d prescribe.
Cloutsham and the East Water Valley
Cloutsham, in the Horner Valley river system, offers an ideal location for both woodland and ridge walking - plus, if you are planning to dine al-fresco in the glorious weather, there are numerous perfect picnic spots down along East Water under the mighty ramparts of Dunkery Beacon.
An excellent hour-long jaunt from East Water takes you up past the picturesque farm at Cloutsham and along the Stoke Pero lane a few hundred yards to the point where a footpath cuts off across the fields to pass the remains of the deserted medieval village at Bagley.
The Lost Medieval Village of Bagley
This long lost place is mentioned in the Domesday Book which records there was half a virgate (an area of land - a quarter of a hide) and a “demesne of one plough with two bordars who share half a plough”.
It is only when you read that there are 50 acres of pasture and 12 acres of woodland that you get a whiff of the real nature of Bagley's wild surroundings on the side of Exmoor's highest hill.
Nature eventually overcame the endeavours of man in the remote place - not single a abode remains today. The community was abandoned long, long ago so that you have difficulty finding as much as a low mound, let alone a wall, though I have heard that garden flowers still make an occasional showing in this lonesome spot.
Dicky's Path and Spectacular Exmoor Views
Our walks climbs south from this forlorn but beautiful place onto Goosemoor Common where it joins idyllic Dicky’s Path.
This sensationally scenic trail then takes you east along the cool and airy north-facing flanks of Dunkery and is a matter of views, views, views, all the way. You also have a better than 50 percent chance of spotting wild red deer.
Dicky’s Path continues on to Webber’s Post but, if you are getting too hot on the open hillside, you can leave it before it reaches that popular viewpoint and clamber down one of the steep wooded side-valleys like Hollow Combe to regain the East Water.
However, I’d recommend carrying on around Easter Hill and past the car parks at Webber’s Post to reach the ridge-top woods of Luccombe Plantation. By following the path which runs along the very edge of the deep wooded defile you will eventually come to a path at Horner Plantation which shoots off down the very steep slope into the big valley.
Into the Horner Woodlands
It descends through the trees to join the East Water Valley at a point under Cloutsham Ball, where it’s a matter of returning upstream.
This is the part of the great semi-natural forest knowns as Horner woodlands which inspired that most brilliant of nature writers, Richard Jefferies, to note in his book Red Deer some 120 years ago:
"I caught sight of a red mark in the midst of an acre of brake surrounded by oak. I was sure it was a stag instantly by the bright colour, by the position. He was standing in the fern beside a bush, with his head down as if feeding. A whistle - the sound was a moment or two reaching him - made him lift his head, and the upright carriage of the neck proved once again that it was a stag and not a hind."
I have actually seen a stag standing in the same brake, and I also whistled to get him to lift his head. The old boy did so without too much alarm - and just like Jefferies' stag - he did not move "for he knew he was safe." At least, safe from me: I couldn't have run up that steep 200 metre slope to save my life.
Returning Through Cool Woodland
But I did have to continue up East Water to the cool woodland place under Cloutsham Farm where I’d left my car. There’s a well-beaten track that winds it’s way up through the trees to the place where the Cloutsham lane passes through a ford.
After that the walker has to follow the lane, but there’s never much traffic here to worry about. And it’s cool. For some reason, Cloutsham always feels cool. Whether it’s the shade of the trees, or the cooling influence of the little burbling stream - or the fact that this glorious demesne is located directly north, so in the shadow of, one of Southern England’s highest hills - I know not.
What I do know is that I’d rather be showing someone around heavenly Cloutsham on a warm day than any other place in the world.
Fact File
Walk: Around the Cloutsham and Horner Valleys on Exmoor
Difficulty: Fairly easy 2-hour walk
Distance: 5 miles
