"A North Devon Timewarp" a Lynmouth Travel Page by johngayton

Lynton and Lynmouth are a pair of villages on the North Devon coast, Lynton at the top of the hill, Lynmouth at the bottom, connected not just by road but also by the unique water-powered Victorian cliff railway.

Lynmouth itself is a picturesque little fishing village, though tourism is, and has been since Victorian times, its main industry. The harbour is still home to a dozen or so inshore fishing boats whose catches are mainly sold locally. Despite its reliance on tourism the village does manage to succeed without becoming overtly commercial in a tacky manner, there is still a sense of a working community to the village and it tends to attract a more discerning class of visitor rather than the "kiss me quick amusement arcade" types to be found in the larger North Devon towns.

Lynton and Lynmouth really came into prominence in the 1800's and famous visitors of the period included the English poets Shelley, Wordsworth and Coleridge who were attracted by the relative isolation and natural beauty of the area. Even today, despite the ubiquitous infernal combusting engine machines, the area maintains a degree of isolation and the villages make an ideal base for exploring the wilds of Exmoor and the grandeur of the scenery following the coastal path both to East and West.

The cliffs on the Eastern side of Lynmouth bay spend most of their life being a normal sort of grey rock colour but in certain lights and especially during sunsets in late June and early July the rocks positively glow with a warm red pigment, whilst the green above takes on an almost yellowed hue in contrast. Add to this the aquamarine blue of the bay and you can see why Lynton and Lynmouth are so beloved of photographers and painters.

Lynmouth Bay also provides for some spectacular sunsets with the hills on the left acting as a half-frame and the harbour with its tower providing a shadowed foreground - in fact this could almost be a nightly pursuit: leaving the pub with the camera just long enough to see what tonight's sunset will bring, then straight back to the pub of course! There will eventually be a set of travelogs here with more pics, even more spectacular than this and as a taster I'm going to start one now - The Bird at Sunset 9th July 2006 :)

The rivers East & West Lyn and Hoaroak flow into the Bristol Channel here at Lynmouth: “where Exmoor meets the sea” as the local blurb goes. Exmoor itself, given its elevation, much like its more southerly sibling Dartmoor, attracts a higher than average level of rainfall over the course of the year than the rest of the North Devon region.

On the 15th August 1952, following several days of exceptional rainfall, the night was to bring about one of North Devon's most serious natural disasters. On the day itself the total rainfall was estimated to be about 10 inches in a 24 hour period and eventually all this water had to go somewhere and Lynmouth it was to be. Dragging not just the usual uprooted trees and other debris with it, the torrent was sufficiently powerful to carry boulders of up to 40 tons down the river gorges, carving out widened watercourses as it went.

On arrival at the village this mass swept everything it encountered with it, including 93 buildings, several in their entirety, 132 various vehicles, all of the boats in the harbour and much of the harbour wall itself. In the village itself a total of 16 people lost their lives along with another 18 from the region.

Rebuilding the village was funded by a relief fund and took over 4 years. Today the Flood Memorial Hall has a permanent exhibition in commemoration of the tragedy and there is a plain wooden cross on the riverside at the point that the floodwaters broke through.