This is Devon -- Martin Hesp has a hot tip for anyone who is looking for unusual beach walks There are all manner of reasons to go for a walk. That was my overriding thought as I wandered across one of the most extraordinary beaches in England recently. I was at Kilve because it is the "beach that burns". That was a headline we used in the Western Morning News a few years ago after photographer Richard Austin and I had travelled out across the lonely clay-lands that lie under Quantock's northern hills. Richard hadn't believed me when I said the rocks would leap into flame on Kilve Beach if we lit a fire – so we stacked up some driftwood and set light to it with the usual result – ie the blue lias stone began to spit as the oil inside it heated up, and eventually we saw that a small area of rock was burning. Now, not even an eccentric like me would go for a walk especially to set a beach on fire – but I was thinking about all the other reasons we go on hikes when I was looking through my extensive folder of Quantock photographs after visiting Kilve the other day… There were the images I once took while enjoying one of the most weird walks I've ever undertaken – the one that used to go right around the coastal fringes of Hinkley Point nuclear power station. The right-of-way was funnelled along corridors of concrete set under tall security fences - and the experience was more akin to walking on to the set of a science fiction movie than it was anything to do with the rural Westcountry. Don't try doing that walk now. You wouldn't get more than an inch – the entire coastal zone around Hinkley has been cordoned-off in readiness for the building of the giant new reactor – and if you attempt to walk down what were footpaths you will be chased and arrested by police carrying sub-machine-guns. Think I'm joking? Try it. Another Quantock walk took me high on to the central ridge of the hills with a snake expert who was counting adders. We found quite a few, which has put me off taking my dog up there in summer. Seafood circular Then there's was the walk designed purely with seafood in mind. I refer to the Stolford circular route that not only takes you to some of the loneliest places in the Westcountry peninsula (like the village of Steart), but also introduces you to Brendan Sellick and his son Adrian who sell fish and shrimps gleaned with the help of a mudhorse from their tiny shed located in the hamlet beneath the seawall just east of Hinkley Point. One of these days I'm going to write a big round-up of all the weird and wonderful things walking has introduced me to in 14 years of doing these newspaper hikes. I promise, it will make an interesting read… But they don't get stranger than the beach that catches fire. I was down on Kilve Pill to research an article on the hot topic of fracking the other day – and decided to kill two birds with one stone and go for a walk. To find this amazing place, turn off the A39 Bridgwater-Minehead road in the centre of Kilve and head north along the beach road – go past the ruins of the ancient Chantry and eventually the bumpy lane will deliver you to the small car park just inland from the seashore. We'll be heading off in an easterly direction along the cliffs, but not before we've been down onto the explosive beach. No wonder the place has been designated a Site of Geological Special Interest – I have never been there and failed to find a fossil of some sort. But, equally fascinating are the many other weird and wonderful stones that punctuate the great blue lias pavements which look for all the world as if they've been man-made, but are natural features. I won't go on about the history of oil shale here, because the WMN carried a large double-page spread on it a few weeks ago – but do take a look at the strange red brick structure that dominates the car park. Known as a "retort", it was built in the early 1900s when there were great plans to develop open-cast mining and boil the oil out of the rock. Fortunately for beautiful, unspoiled, West Somerset, these plans never came to anything. A spot of glatting? Nor did the local sport of "glatting". No one seems to hunt the elusive conger eel with dogs any more – which, I suppose, is just as well from a conservation point of view. But I do wonder if this will always be the case – when this country gets poorer and our food-security disappears in the direction of China and India and other emerging financial giants, maybe we will once again be desperate enough to seek out these huge edible creatures. Glatting was a popular sport for working folk a century or more ago. Terriers and spaniels were specially trained to hunt among the rock-pools along this coast at low tide, and their enthusiastic owners would follow them, warily, armed with sticks. I have seen a man bitten by a conger, and it was not a pretty sight. Turning our backs on such perilous delights we mount the cliffs to the east of the little pill (the name given to the area around the pool where the Kilve Stream makes its entrance to the shore – a small harbour once stood here) and head off eastwards. I suppose "mount the cliffs" is a bit grandiose, as the cliff in question is only about three feet high – but the drop becomes ever dizzier as we head toward a distant building known as the Range Quadrant Hut. This is a white painted structure that has been erected on the lip of the cliffs so that Royal Navy observers can watch the antics of jet bombers which screech about these parts dropping bombs and missiles on a number of target buoys a mile or so offshore. I suppose they've got to do it somewhere – indeed, as a kid I loved to come out here with my dad to watch the low-level dives. They had Sea Vixens in those days. I don't know what aircraft they use now. What has always amazed me about this bombing range is that it is only a mile-and-a-half from one of Europe's biggest nuclear complexes. The audible memory I have of the walk I took the other day is of the deep boom of wave upon pavement, mixed with the rustling clatter of the dead and dried-up burrs that populate the cliff-top. Eventually we reach lovely, lonely, old Lilstock. It is, somehow, one of the most haunted of locations along our entire coast. There used to be a working harbour here as well as one at Kilve – but this one, somewhat unbelievably, was crowned by a large hotel. There is barely a trace of either structure left – only the memory of a wealthy landowner whose daughter was expiring from something or other. Doctors advised plenty of fresh air, so he built her a sort of pagoda on the quay, and there she sat watching the boats and the wind and waves. What happened to the girl? Where did I get the story? Those were the questions I pondered on my way back. I had planned to return via an inland route past the hamlet of Lilstock and up the hill to Kilton where a footpath crosses to Lower Hill Farm and from there descends into the Kilve valley alongside a wood – but so extraordinary are the shoreline views from the coast path, I walked back the way I had come. Not only are you treated to a vast vista of northern Quantock and Blue Anchor Bay, but you can see distant Minehead and it burgeoning hill dominating the west. Even better, you can see the fantastic pavements and strata of the Kilve Beach SSSI.
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This is Devon -- Martin Hesp has a hot tip for anyone who is looking for unusual beach walks There are all manner of reasons to go for a walk. That was my overriding thought as I wandered across one of the most extraordinary beaches in England recently. I was at Kilve because it is the "beach that burns". That was a headline we used in the Western Morning News a few years ago after photographer Richard Austin and I had travelled out across the lonely clay-lands that lie under Quantock's northern hills. Richard hadn't believed me when I said the rocks would leap into flame on Kilve Beach if we lit a fire – so we stacked up some driftwood and set light to it with the usual result – ie the blue lias stone began to spit as the oil inside it heated up, and eventually we saw that a small area of rock was burning. Now, not even an eccentric like me would go for a walk especially to set a beach on fire – but I was thinking about all the other reasons we go on hikes when I was looking through my extensive folder of Quantock photographs after visiting Kilve the other day… There were the images I once took while enjoying one of the most weird walks I've ever undertaken – the one that used to go right around the coastal fringes of Hinkley Point nuclear power station. The right-of-way was funnelled along corridors of concrete set under tall security fences - and the experience was more akin to walking on to the set of a science fiction movie than it was anything to do with the rural Westcountry. Don't try doing that walk now. You wouldn't get more than an inch – the entire coastal zone around Hinkley has been cordoned-off in readiness for the building of the giant new reactor – and if you attempt to walk down what were footpaths you will be chased and arrested by police carrying sub-machine-guns. Think I'm joking? Try it. Another Quantock walk took me high on to the central ridge of the hills with a snake expert who was counting adders. We found quite a few, which has put me off taking my dog up there in summer. Seafood circular Then there's was the walk designed purely with seafood in mind. I refer to the Stolford circular route that not only takes you to some of the loneliest places in the Westcountry peninsula (like the village of Steart), but also introduces you to Brendan Sellick and his son Adrian who sell fish and shrimps gleaned with the help of a mudhorse from their tiny shed located in the hamlet beneath the seawall just east of Hinkley Point. One of these days I'm going to write a big round-up of all the weird and wonderful things walking has introduced me to in 14 years of doing these newspaper hikes. I promise, it will make an interesting read… But they don't get stranger than the beach that catches fire. I was down on Kilve Pill to research an article on the hot topic of fracking the other day – and decided to kill two birds with one stone and go for a walk. To find this amazing place, turn off the A39 Bridgwater-Minehead road in the centre of Kilve and head north along the beach road – go past the ruins of the ancient Chantry and eventually the bumpy lane will deliver you to the small car park just inland from the seashore. We'll be heading off in an easterly direction along the cliffs, but not before we've been down onto the explosive beach. No wonder the place has been designated a Site of Geological Special Interest – I have never been there and failed to find a fossil of some sort. But, equally fascinating are the many other weird and wonderful stones that punctuate the great blue lias pavements which look for all the world as if they've been man-made, but are natural features. I won't go on about the history of oil shale here, because the WMN carried a large double-page spread on it a few weeks ago – but do take a look at the strange red brick structure that dominates the car park. Known as a "retort", it was built in the early 1900s when there were great plans to develop open-cast mining and boil the oil out of the rock. Fortunately for beautiful, unspoiled, West Somerset, these plans never came to anything. A spot of glatting? Nor did the local sport of "glatting". No one seems to hunt the elusive conger eel with dogs any more – which, I suppose, is just as well from a conservation point of view. But I do wonder if this will always be the case – when this country gets poorer and our food-security disappears in the direction of China and India and other emerging financial giants, maybe we will once again be desperate enough to seek out these huge edible creatures. Glatting was a popular sport for working folk a century or more ago. Terriers and spaniels were specially trained to hunt among the rock-pools along this coast at low tide, and their enthusiastic owners would follow them, warily, armed with sticks. I have seen a man bitten by a conger, and it was not a pretty sight. Turning our backs on such perilous delights we mount the cliffs to the east of the little pill (the name given to the area around the pool where the Kilve Stream makes its entrance to the shore – a small harbour once stood here) and head off eastwards. I suppose "mount the cliffs" is a bit grandiose, as the cliff in question is only about three feet high – but the drop becomes ever dizzier as we head toward a distant building known as the Range Quadrant Hut. This is a white painted structure that has been erected on the lip of the cliffs so that Royal Navy observers can watch the antics of jet bombers which screech about these parts dropping bombs and missiles on a number of target buoys a mile or so offshore. I suppose they've got to do it somewhere – indeed, as a kid I loved to come out here with my dad to watch the low-level dives. They had Sea Vixens in those days. I don't know what aircraft they use now. What has always amazed me about this bombing range is that it is only a mile-and-a-half from one of Europe's biggest nuclear complexes. The audible memory I have of the walk I took the other day is of the deep boom of wave upon pavement, mixed with the rustling clatter of the dead and dried-up burrs that populate the cliff-top. Eventually we reach lovely, lonely, old Lilstock. It is, somehow, one of the most haunted of locations along our entire coast. There used to be a working harbour here as well as one at Kilve – but this one, somewhat unbelievably, was crowned by a large hotel. There is barely a trace of either structure left – only the memory of a wealthy landowner whose daughter was expiring from something or other. Doctors advised plenty of fresh air, so he built her a sort of pagoda on the quay, and there she sat watching the boats and the wind and waves. What happened to the girl? Where did I get the story? Those were the questions I pondered on my way back. I had planned to return via an inland route past the hamlet of Lilstock and up the hill to Kilton where a footpath crosses to Lower Hill Farm and from there descends into the Kilve valley alongside a wood – but so extraordinary are the shoreline views from the coast path, I walked back the way I had come. Not only are you treated to a vast vista of northern Quantock and Blue Anchor Bay, but you can see distant Minehead and it burgeoning hill dominating the west. Even better, you can see the fantastic pavements and strata of the Kilve Beach SSSI.
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