Day 1 of walking
Minehead to Porlock Weir
Distance: 18km
Total distance: 18km
Climbing: 300m
Total climbing: 300m

A perfect first day. Sunny, cool at first, 8° rising to about a high of 14°, a gentle wind at our back, very comfortable for walking. Breakfast wasn’t until 8.30 so we didn’t get away until just after 9. Straight down to the coast and along The Strand promenade to the South West Coast Path metal sculpture which marks the official start of the walk. Fortunately there was a kind gentleman who obliged by taking our photo. From there past The Old Ship Aground Pub, the road ends and you are on the path. The first sign helpfully informs you that you have walked ¼ of a mile and there are 629¾ miles to Poole. From there it is straight into the biggest climb of the day, about 150 vertical metres of North Hill. Quite steep, many switch backs and a bit tough when you haven’t really warmed up yet. All of this was in beautiful woodland with views down through the trees to the Bristol Channel.

At the top of the climb and for the next four days we will be walking along the northern edge of Exmoor where it meets the sea. A park of 267 square miles, it contains everything from moorland to valleys, cliffs and farmland, and is known for the Exmoor Ponies and red deer. We did see the ponies and wild horses but no red deer. At the top of North hill in 2019 there had been a choice of routes. An undulating inland ”main” route across the moor or the “rugged” track going back closer to the coast and climbing and descending many coombes (steep sided valleys). This route is a bit longer and much slower because of all the climbing and descending. Since 2024 the former “main” path is now a bridle way for the many people who ride horses on the moor. The “rugged” path is now the official route. We had been hoping to do the easier route but stuck religiously to the official path.

From the last headland the path descended through woodland full of spring flowers to the picture post card perfect hamlet of Bossington with its scattered thatched roof cottages. This hamlet is at the edge of Porlock Vale, an unusually wide flat valley in comparison to the narrow coombes. The vale is protected from the sea by a natural shingle ridge – a ridge that was breached in 1996 causing the farmland to turn into a salt marsh that receives a fresh inundation of salt every high tide. The salt has killed all the trees which now are just bare skeletons. The area is now a SSSI, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and nature reserve. From the vale the last half kilometre is along the beach to Porlock Weir. And what a beach! The stoniest beach I have ever seen. No sand, just millions of melon sized smooth stones. Very difficult to walk on as they move and slide under your weight. We moved very carefully not wanting to slip and sprain an ankle on the first day.

In 2019 we had stayed at Porlock, a 35 minute walk inland, but this year we are staying at Porlock Weir on the coast. Both Porlock and Porlock Weir have a Ship Inn, the one in Porlock known as Top Ship and the one in Porlock Weir known as Bottom Ship. Bottom Ship where we are staying serves breakfast and lunch seven days a week and dinner Tuesday to Sunday. Of course we are staying on a Monday. Our trip notes said lunch was served from noon till 2.20pm. We decided early in the day we could make it to Porlock Weir in time to get a lunch as our main mea of the day. We arrived at 2.15 but were informed by an abrupt and a bit rude young lady behind the bar that they had just finished meals for the day and the kitchen was closed. We said we were staying there that night and could they do anything for us. No way Jose.

We were wondering what we could rustle up for the main meal of the day from the meagre supplies we had with us when we came across The Harbour Café. They were also near to closing but the very cheerful young lady said they would make us anything on the comprehensive menu. Barbara had eggs and avo on toast and I had a jacket potato with cheese and beans. She was very interested in where we were from, what we were doing and was amazed that we were walking the entire path to Poole. She was not a walker but she loved to ride horses on the moor and go swimming in the weir. As we were about to leave she gave us a paper bag with a carrot cake and a walnut cake, compliments of the café. She has restored our faith in young ladies serving behind the counter.

Today was a day of many firsts. Our first kissing gate, grass snake, huge caterpillar, narrow coombe, horse and pony, use of our Macs app to track our route, use of Map My Walk app to measure our exact distance, and best of all  Barbara’s energy grenades to have with our Kleen Kanteen coffee.

We are very happy. We were so keen to get moving. It was a varied day: the beach promenade in Minehead, the woodland of North Hill, the wild horses, the yellow gorse covered coombes, the spring flowers, cute little Bossington, the stark trees on the salt marsh and the ankle snapping stones of Porlock Beach. A lot of climbing for the first day and we were pretty tired by the end of it. Because we were trying to make lunch time at the inn we only had one stop, We will try and not make that mistake again.

The seventeenth century Ship Inn is everything you imagine an old English inn to be. White painted plastered stone walls, a thatched roof, tiny windows, warm and dark and cosy inside with a large fireplace for the winter and hundreds of years of history. The inn has three bedrooms up in the attic and we are in one of them. Only up one flight of stairs and even better our bags had been put in our room. They also begin serving breakfast from 8am which suits us to get an early start in the lovely cool of the morning. A slight down side to staying in an inn or pub is the noise coming up from the bar until about midnight. It wasn’t music night, or quizz night and the Football World Cup hasn’t started yet, just the muffled sound of laughter and chatter. It didn’t bother us it just adds to the ambience. Barbara was sound asleep by 7pm and I wasn’t far behind her.