Note that all maps on this site are only indicative. You should never set out without the correct OS map.
The beach that burns – that was the headline we dreamed up the other day
when we travelled out across the lonely clay-lands that lie under Quantock’s
northern hills.
The journalists didn’t believe the story about the rocks catching fire on
Kilve Beach, so we stacked up some driftwood and set light to it, with the
usual result – i.e. the blue lias stone begins to spit as the oil inside it
heats up.
Basic Hike: from Kilve Beach, on the West Somerset coast, east along the
clifftop path to Lilstock – and then back, either vie same route, or over
hill past Kilton.
Recommended map: Ordnance Survey Explorer 140 – Quantock Hills.
Distance and going: three-and-a-half – or five miles depending on return
route. Very easy going.
Seeing we were there, and our little fire did nothing to warm us up in the
bitter east wind – we decided to take a quick hike. On this occasion we are
going to use Kilve Pill as the beginning of our walk. To find it we turn off
the A39 Bridgwater-Minehead road in the centre of Kilve and head north along
the beach road – past the ruins of the ancient Chantry and eventually down
the bumpy lane to the small car park that we find just inland from the
cliffs.
We’ll be heading off in an easterly direction along the cliffs, but not
before we’ve been down onto what is surely one of the most fascinating
sea-shores in the country – and one of the only ones that catches fire. 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 are a feature of the place.
I won’t go on about the history of oil shale here, because if you click here you can read a special report – 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 1900’s 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.
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. It was a very 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, 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 pool where the Kilve Stream makes
its entrance to the shore) and head off eastwards. I suppose ‘mount the
cliffs’ is a little bit grandiose, as the cliff in question is only about
three feet high – but the drop does become ever dizzier as we strike off
toward a distant building known as the Range Quadrant Hut.
This is a white painted structure that has been erected on the very 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.
Anyway, what has always amazed me about this bombing range is that it is
only a mile-and-a-half from one of the biggest nuclear complexes in Europe.
There are no fewer than three giant nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point – and
I shouldn’t think any one of them would appreciate having a bomb through the
window. I haven’t seen the jets at it for some time, and I don’t really know
whether or not they bomb here now.
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 reached 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, and a hotel, though there is barely a trace of either
structure left now - 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 out on the quay, and there she sat watching
the boats come and go, 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 turned on my heels and walked
back the way I had come.
Not only are you treated to vast vista of northern Quantock and Blue Anchor
Bay, but you can see distant Minehead and it burgeoning hill dominating the
west. And, even better than this, you can see the fantastic pavements and
strata of the Kilve beach SSSI.
Go to the top of this page