The Vikings Seat

Half-way down the cobbled street of Clovelly’s woodland blanketed village, where steep steps of lime washed cottages cling to the ivy-clad cliff, can be found one of very few flattened spaces that serve to ease the sharp descent.

What better place could have been designed for a seat, which brings rest for the traveller and commands the most handsome views of the bay, the Bristol channel and the great Atlantic beyond.

Here the fishermen would watch the trawlers setting sail from the centuries old pier, spreading their heavy tanned sails, mainsails, and mizzen’s, prepared for the bracing breeze and the salty billows.

This is the place captains of old, sea salts, mariners and matelots would gather. Where the news was shared, gossip told, stories embellished. Where women may knit, and children mind their own business. As the village continued its daily trade, the fishermen tended to their pots and nets, or spliced hawsers on the jutting quay wall, chimneys coughing and smoking, spreading throughout the town the flavours of freshly baked bread and herring pies.

This is the place where gathered groups of sturdy seamen planned their next great adventure, or told of voyages won and lost, of storms never seen the like before and lost becalmed days off sultry foreign coasts. This is the place where children learnt to dream, and old, grey-bearded men spun their worsted yarns.

This is the place where the names of boats, of ships, luggers, picarooners, smacks, and skiffs were recalled, not in any passing way, but of reverence, of tribute, for it was always the boats and the journeys, the disasters, the rescues, the great hauls of fish, the swiftest passage, the storms survived and the races won, that these men were justifiably most proud of.

 

This is the place where boys were taught the crown and the sennet, the bowline and reef. Where Polaris lies to the north, and how to worm and parcel with the lay, turn and serve the other way. This was where education came before school. Where some of Devon’s finest sailors were made.

Here they recalled names of fishermen lost to the sea, of sons and fathers, where widows cried into the hollow howl of the unforgiving gale, hands clasped to the rails and battered against the low cold stone walls. Where the next pitiful day they watched as their dead were brought ashore.

Here today sits the tourist, resting their shaking legs from the brief weary trek up from the beach, or taking a minute more before completing the descent down and seeking an easier way of returning. Unaware of the voices that once coloured this place, unaware of the sights this place has seen. Unaware of the time this place has spent with the lives of the people of Clovelly.