Tarka Trail

It was overcast this morning, and without internet we had no idea how to check the weather forecast. We tried listening to the radio while making breakfast, but it was all either religious programming or church music. It is a Sunday morning, after all. (Note: the caretaker for this cottage just dropped by and told me I could listen to "Heart" for a weather forecast, and it's somewhere on the dial below BBC 1, which is near 90MHz, FM.)

Will slept in, so we didn't really get going until after nine, but we decided at that point to go cycling on the Tarka Trail. The Tarka Trail is what we'd call a "rails-to-trails conversion" in North America: an old rail grade, its tracks taken up, renewed now as a trail. Such trails are usually a very gentle grade, and in fact here on the estuary the map indicated this one would be dead flat. The trail is named for Tarka the Otter, a character from a popular children's book set in this area (which none of us have read).

(Let me digress for a bit of geography here. Two estuaries meet off Appledore: the Taw and the Torridge. A few miles up the Torridge estuary is Bideford, our nearest town, and a few miles up the Taw estuary is Barnstaple, where we arrived by rail. The trail follows the estuary edges between the two towns.)

When we left the cottage an ominous fog was blowing in quite thickly from the west, but we forged ahead anyway, the principle being that you never decide to turn back before you're actually on the route.

We knew there was cycle hire in Barnstaple at the train station, but our OS "Explorer" map (that's 1:25,000 topographic, with public footpaths and other trails marked, plus various other information of interest to walkers) also indicated "Cycle Hire" on a lonely stretch of the trail, halfway between Barnstaple and Bideford. We decided to try to find this cycle hire place, because it looked like a fun, remote place to ride. We really didn't know how many miles the kids would be good for.

The map was unclear on how one actually gets to this place--there did not seem to be a road--so we drove to the nearby village of Fremington, and looked for signs. We found one to "Historic Fremington Quay" and that led us to a one-lane road (with many confidence-inspiring lay-bys), along a tiny sub-estuary called Fremington Pill. It brought us to a lonely yet lovely building out where the mud flats begin, complete with tea house, rental cottage, parking lot, and cycle hire. It was very magical.

The estuaries have vast mud areas that disappear at high tide. Tide was approaching high now, so we were looking out across long grass to water, and across the estuary we could see an airport, possibly at Royal Marines Base at Chivern. A white plane with long wings, like a glider, repeatedly took off and landed. The wind sock there was standing out. No fog any more.

The guy at the cycle hire shop expertly and rapidly fitted us all for cycles. Galen declared this was a Crazy Mission and that he would Not Go because there were no helmets. However, free helmets materialized, along with panniers, a lock, and a repair kit. We were extremely well-outfitted. We ate our picnic lunch and set out on bikes westward, for the village of Instow, about a mile and a half away. The wind was in our teeth, but it was dead flat, riding along above salt marshes and between rows of trees scultpted by the sea breeze. We stopped to adjust this and that, and teach Will how to use gears, and we passed many a family, and older couples botanizing and birding along the way. Wild roses were blooming, the hawthorn was blooming, and lots of other little flowers. In many places the trial was lined with trees: oaks, ash, hawthorn, willow or pine. When we arrived in Instow, the boys were doing quite well.

Instow is a small viallge like Appledore, which it faces across the Torridge Estuary. All its buildings are white or pastel, and there is a quay whcih runs the length of the waterfront. We saw sailors in wetsuits wading out to their light sailbaots and preparing to race, There was an excellent, steady wind. We continued on towards Bideford. The water (to our right) was bright blue, like a Carribean blue, and Appledore was a compact village on the far shore. Near it was the huge shed of Babcock's Appledore Shipyard, a major employer here. We cycled under the bridge of the A39, and came into what is techncially not the part of Bideford on the east side of teh river, but a separate town named East-The-Water. Will was pretty interested in turning around at this point, but we tempted him with a visit to Happy Pasty, a pasty factory in Bideford we'd seen an ad for. We stashed our bikes at the old station in East-The-Water, and walked across the 600 year-old brdge of 24 arches, of which Bideford is right proud. We found the Happy Pasty, closed, alas, for Sunday, and vowed to return.

Now with the wind at our backs we cycled the three miles back quite quickly, Stopped in Instow for ice cream. The sailing races had ended, and we could see sailors pulling their craft ashore into the "North Devon Yacht Club." Timing, to take out the boat at just the moment the tide was still high enough, looked crucial. These sailors were wearing very heroic-looking, quasi-military gear: full-body, black wetsuits and trim grey lifevests. Racing is a serious business here.

The weather cleared fully now, blue sky everywhere. At about 3:30 we turned the bikes back in at Fremington Quay, and headed home. In the Whale's parking niche, Kate moved the little concrete blocks so I could wedge our marine mammal another inch further in. She and Will stopped down at John's of Appledore for milk and eggs. We did a load of laundry and cooked chicken tikka for dinner. Will experienced a burst of energy and led Galen and me on a round-the-block race (up through our garden and out our back door; along the alley, then drop steeply to New Street; along descending New Street, dropping past our front door and out on the main road at sea level; around the fire house and back up up up the alley to our car. Whew!) Kate and the boys went for an after dinner walk to the playground.