To find the source of the X, you must climb high into the Exmoor Hills, and this can be
a cold experience in midwinter.
So cold can conditions be up here, over a thousand feet above sea level, that the frost
clings to everything.
Even wire fences take on a 3D aspect as the wind sculpts the ice.
And it's through this frozen gateway that you must go to follow our river to its source.
This tiny rivulet in the snow doesn't look much, but it's just about as close as you
can get to a recognisable beginning to one of the West Country's greatest rivers.
The river X emerges from a huge morass, a sort of high bogland known as the Chains.
And Ex Plain is just part of this great sponge-like area of Exmoor, which lies north-west of Simmons
Bath and south of the seaside communities of Linton and Linmouth.
If the X had managed to rise just a few hundred metres to the north, it would, like the River
Lynn, have run just six miles down to the Bristol Channel, and saved itself the 64-mile
journey through Somerset and Devon to the south coast.
It's odd to think that as the rest of southern Britain seems to become ever more crowded,
this high corner of a much-loved national park has probably never been more unfrequented
and lonely.
It's even more ironic to think that once these snowy wastes were populated by mammoth, bison,
bear, woolly rhinoceros and wild ox, not to mention a number of Stone Age men who enjoyed
a much warmer climate than the one we know today.
These Stone Age people were nomadic and moved about the moor with their small herds of sheep
and goats, but some 4,000 years ago a new race of people came onto the scene.
And so started the Bronze Age proper, and this is when man started to leave his permanent
mark upon the landscape.
As the climate deteriorated, so did the population of the uplands, and the Iron Age Celts, Romans
and Saxons came and went without leaving too much of an impression on these lonely hilltops.
The Royal Forest of Exmoor, which has the headwaters of the Ex running through its very
heart, was established by the Normans who were passionately fond of hunting.
But it wasn't until the 17th century that the moors surrounding the river began to see
agriculture on anything like a modern scale.
A Dutchman called James Beevy began the serious business of farming here, but it was the Knight
family who really developed the area as far as agriculture and mining were concerned.
Having bought up most of the old forest, John Knight based his hilltop kingdom at Simmonsbath
and proceeded to embark upon a great programme of reclamation and mining.
He and later his son Frederick achieved remarkable results, but in the end the extreme elements
of the High Moor were against them.
Stan Curtis worked on what had once been the Knight's Exmoor estate, and in company with
the National Park Warden Mike Leach, he recalls the tough life of the Moor.
When did you see last few horses for ploughing on the estate here?
Oh, it would have been early in the 50s, yeah, because I am actually ploughed on this estate
since the 50s, but I used to plough for farmer thorn out the other end of the village, well,
in the 1946, 7 and 8 time.
Only going back to when the 1948 blizzard was, well, us couldn't get out, us was in
here for weeks and weeks and weeks.
Us used to walk to Exmoor, cross country and get the provisions in, and well, right on
this spot, yeah, us used to, well, in the end, us had a helicopter come in there.
But since that, you know, machinery have made everything that much easier.
Us don't care how much snow is getting out, because well, us just go up and get a loader
and keep driving, and you can get through it now with all the modern gear that's about.
Council comes out here sometimes.
That's what's up.
Well, clearing the snow on what is called Gallowneuse Plain between here and Exford,
and I was working nights, and I was cleaning the same piece of road, well, it must have
been for, I suppose, two months.
And the other chap that was driving the bulldozer, he would work it the day, and then I would
do the same piece again in the night, because keep blowing in, bluffing the roads again.
I think, smalls I can remember, it was 1948, that was for about 13 weeks then, before any
traffic come in, you know.
We haven't been really cut off, because we've managed, well, a gang of us would get out
and walk to Exford and that, and get our provisions.
Well, back in those days, you see, there wasn't no electric gear, you hadn't got no deep freezes,
so now you think you're so right, well, also get something in, get the deep freeze filled
in sort of in autumn, and then you're ready.
Down to salt in those days, I suppose.
Well, just old salt, yeah, put it in the salt, or kill the pig, and salt it in.
Well, there's a limitation to what you can do with that.
Tell you what I picked up up this morning, I don't know if you've ever seen one.
What am I doing now?
Yeah, look at that.
Pure white mole.
Have you ever seen one before?
No, I've never seen one before.
Yeah, pretty rare, that is.
Got little hands on, say.
Yeah.
But, there's different weather here today.
Now we must begin our journey down the river, leave these wintry scenes behind.
As the snow and ice melts, we pass the lonely Warren Farm, and follow the X along its course
towards X-Fall.
replace.
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The
occasional find of sheep bones supplies all the evidence one needs to recognise that life
is really tough up here on the moors.
And talking of being tough, the men who worked this mine a hundred foot or so above the river
must have been particularly hard.
The fine stone arch only runs back for a distance of thirty feet or so and from then on the
walls are a rough hewn to where the adit is now blocked off 115 feet into the hill.
The Plymouth Iron Company raised 500 tonnes of ore from this dark, damp hole in 1858.
The Honeymead mine is situated just above a particularly dramatic part of the river
known as Ex Clive.
The flooding problem shared by all Exmoor mines meant that the Honeymead had no real
industrial future and so this beautiful wilderness area was saved and the river has been left
in peace to make its way to the first village on our journey.
Exford is situated in the river valley at the very heart of the National Park.
It's an attractive place which plays host to a good deal of the area's equine activities
and is especially important to lovers of the rare and splendid Exmoor pony.
It's by the river that every year in early May the Exmoor pony society holds its all
important stallion parade.
Within any breed, stallions have a profound influence and it's here that the experts
are able to view the young colts at close quarters.
Rarer than the giant panda, the Exmoor pony is reckoned to be among the closest of any
equine breed to the ancient wild horse that spread across the earth's surface from their
original Siberian home and this parade plays an important part in keeping this rare semi-wild
breed pure.
Exford also hosts the annual Exmoor pony breed show where the many qualities of this remarkable
animal are displayed.
I've had a marvellous day judging today, I recovered from the wet and I think I got some
super ponies from the classes here.
What do you think of them?
I think this mare here has got almost everything one's looking for in an Exmoor.
In particular today I wanted to get a pony that's strong enough.
We've got plenty of room, a lot of room under the jaw here.
All the better to eat with as Red Riding Hood said.
I want a lot of space there and I want a kind head, I want a broad one, I think this is
a lovely head.
Beautiful head.
The eyes themselves here are so prominent.
Which is one of the, oops it's gone away, which is that really is the toed eye, this very heavy colouring over the top here.
And was one of the things we particularly liked, I particularly liked it judging.
Now we leave Exford to enjoy one of the most beautiful stretches of the Ex.
This is an ideal stretch to watch the early morning river mists.
From here to the next village at Winsford the hills close in and for the most part the
roar of the combustion engine is unheard in this remote corner.
Get in.
Spring is a wonderful time to explore the banks of any Exmoor River.
The area is well known for its profusion of snow drops, which always greet the slight
Exmoor is in fact a treasure house of flora and fauna, as the National Park Ecologist,
David Boyce, explains.
I think it's the mixture of habitats that we've got here.
We've got a fabulous coastline with wonderful coastal heath with gorse and heather.
And as you come inland up onto the moorland, you've got large areas of uplands with different
kinds of moorland communities, with heather areas again, but also with grass dominated,
much more boggy moorland.
And then as you come off the plateau tops down into the valleys, you've got these fabulous
woodlands such as the one we're in now, the Barle Valley, Horner, various other huge woodlands
dominated by oak, beech, ash.
I suppose one of the things that we're most important for is the lichens that you get
in the woodlands, which are very, very scarce now in Britain and indeed in the rest of Europe.
Old trees like this ash are tremendously important.
They have an incredible variety of lichens associated with them.
Now when you look at a tree like this for the first time, many of those forms may not
be immediately obvious.
They do very tremendously in their form.
Big conspicuous species like this tree lungwort here, big folios leafy varieties, but then
right down to these very small inconspicuous white crusts on the bark, which you might
not think much of at all, but they're all lichens.
And on a tree such as this, you might have as many as 20 or 30 different types.
Different lichens occur in different habitats, and in the Barle Valley, the species of particular
importance are those that occur on the bark of trees.
Having said that, there are other types of lichen that occur on rocks, on the soil, in
a variety of other habitats in fact.
Lichens have been shown to be tremendously accurate in measuring different levels of
atmospheric pollution in as much as they've actually managed to draw a map up of the British
Isles that has different zones from what are known as lichen deserts around the major industrial
centres in Britain like Birmingham, London and the North East.
And then at the other end of the scale, areas like Scotland, Wales and the south west of
England where we are now, where you have tremendous diversities of lichens.
And so to the next village on the X. Winsford, with its famous thatched pub and village green,
is a popular place with visitors who all enjoy the babbling wind brook as it passes through
the village to join the larger river.
One of the nation's great trade union leaders and politicians was born here to a poor widow
woman who already had eight other mouths to feed.
Born in March 1881, Ernest Bevan eventually left his humble origins and went on to become
one of the great foreign secretaries of the day.
The parish church of St Mary Magdalene stands guard over this seemingly timeless community
and the ex-meanders east away from the village before deciding upon its final direction and
turning south to start its journey to the distant English Channel.
Its first visit on the journey south is to the hamlet of Bridgetown, named after this
elegant single arched bridge.
Nearby Trout proves the slightly stiller water created by the Weirwich once provided water
for one of Exmoor's biggest water mills.
Now the Ex wriggles and rides its way to its next important appointment, its confluence
with the river Barle.
The Barle is a truly impressive contributory, so impressive that one could question why
it didn't win the name game and become ascendant over the Ex.
If that had been so, we'd have Barleter, Balmer on our Devonshire maps.
Anyway, the name Ex is perhaps more relevant, appertaining as it does to the ancient British
word Iska, which meant a river abounding with fish, and there are certainly infant fish
or fry in abundance where the two rivers converge just above Ex Bridge.
Near the fine old bridge spans the clean waters, these fry are enjoying the warm summer temperatures.
Things can change quickly on these rivers, which take their waters from the high hills.
And it's when the water is in spate that one of the most exciting events takes place on
the river.
The annual raft struggle used to take its competitors downstream from Tibbeton, but
the organisers decided there would be more thrills and spills on the faster moving higher
stretches.
All right.
Take this off.
Take this off.
Oh!
I'm up, I'm up.
Good boy, that bridge there.
I'm out, I'm out.
All right?
All right?
Ha! Good point that bridge there.
Ah!
Come on, come on, come on.
Ah!
Yeah!
Oh!
Right, three.
Come on, Kate.
Come on, let's go.
Once we got them out of the way, this is going to be...
Hang on, left.
Come on, come on, come on.
Come on, let's go.
Well done, Derek.
I don't think they expect the red one running again.
Woo!
Ah!
Oh!
Ha!
Ha!
They're not looking at the water here.
Go.
Oh!
Oh!
Woo!
Woo!
Five, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Woo!
Ah!
Hey, stop!
Oh!
At other times, the hamlet is a peaceful place
with its delightful old disused mill and leet.
The next stretch finds the river taking a series of major jinx and turns
as it works its way through an area of harder rock.
Towards the hamlet of Cove,
this has resulted in the X taking on a deep, almost gorge-like guise
as it's cut its way through the harder slate hills.
And it's not the only one to have had a go at the slate.
The whole area is scarred by old quarries, now disused.
At Cove, the river is crossed by one of its most elegant bridges
and surrounded by a quaint thatched lodge.
And so the X begins to leave the higher hills behind
as it makes its way towards its first town.
The river might know that something's up as it approaches Tiverton,
but here it must cross its first major weirs.
Tiverton was founded near the confluence of two rivers,
the X and the Lomond,
hence the original name for the place of two fords, Twyford.
If the name has changed over the years, then so has the town.
Passing over its early history, the place really came into its own
just after 1100 AD, when Henry I commanded one Richard de Redvers
to build a castle here.
Built on an escarpment some 80 feet above the X,
the castle was home for centuries to the two great families
of the de Redvers and later the Courtneys,
and the town and its people literally lived under their shadow.
The place saw action during the Civil War when the roundheads,
under General Fairfax, set upon the castle,
which was held by Sir Gilbert Talbot and his men.
A lucky shot brought down the drawbridge in the outer fort,
now long gone, and the castle was taken.
One of the few fatalities occurred in this tower,
where a nurse holding Sir Gilbert's baby was killed by a stray shot.
But when all the troubles were lost over, it was wool,
and its accompanying wealth which brought the largest changes to Tiverton,
this is reflected in the grandeur of St Peter's Church.
So wealthy was local cloth merchant John Greenway, for instance,
and so proud of his fleet of trading ships that he went as far as
to have them modelled on the chantry which he had built onto the church.
By the 16th century, Tiverton was known as the chief marketplace
for cloth in the entire West Country, and to this day,
something of the bustle of the old market town lives on,
regardless of the great changes which the place has undergone.
But it was a century that ended badly for the town.
A plague wiped out one-tenth of the population in 1591,
and a fire just about razed the place to the ground seven years later
and killed more than 50 people.
The townsfolk failed to learn any lessons in fire prevention, however,
because 14 years later Tiverton was once again almost entirely destroyed by fire.
And just over a century later the town was again burned to the ground,
leaving 2,000 souls homeless.
Tiverton
But Tiverton seems to be a place where good things always found a way
of being born out of bad.
For instance, the hardships caused by the Napoleonic Wars
saw the closure of the new wool factory, only to see it bought up
and reopened by a Leicestershire lace manufacturer, John Heathcote.
His existing factory had been wrecked by Luddites,
and in 1816 he transferred his business to Tiverton,
along with many of his loyal craftsmen, who walked the 200 miles to join their master.
The great factory still dominates the town today,
and is a lasting memorial to Heathcote, who was a brilliant inventor
when it came to designing machinery, which speeded up the manufacturing process,
and who was, for those days, an enlightened employer.
He reduced working hours, paid fair wages,
and even built the West Country's first factory school.
Such booming business helped to fuel grandiose schemes,
such as the idea for a canal linking the Bristol and English channels.
It never materialised, but the Tiverton spur became a reality,
and soon barge loads of limestone were being hauled from quarries at Cannonsley
to be burned and used to fertilise the red clay farmlands.
But let us return to our river and travel south to the next point of interest.
Bickley is a well-known beauty spot, with its famous Trout Inn and the Five-Arched Bridge.
Several books on the area claim that this was the place that inspired American songwriter Art Carfunkel
to compose Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Half a mile downstream and away from the main road, we're offered a deeper sense of history.
Bickley Castle seems almost suspended in time.
The place seems to come straight from the pages of some romantic fantasy,
and romantic its history most certainly is.
There's been an important dwelling here since Saxon times,
and stories about the place abound.
There was a runaway marriage, where the elopers eventually returned
to enjoy a happy ending here after the young man excelled in a battle up in the fields of Flodden.
Sir George Carrew, Vice Admiral of the famous Mary Rose, lived here for ten years.
The west and north fortified wings were destroyed by the parliamentarian Fairfax in the Civil War.
And another more romantic twist was when one young inhabitant, one Banfield Carrew,
ran off to become King of the Gypsies.
View lies the
By now the river has established a proper flood plain as it meanders its way towards
Exeter.
No one can gainsay the importance of rivers as great ecological arteries of our landscape
and it's the job of the government's environment agency to take care of our waterways.
To help them do this water bay lifts like Eddie Hayes are employed to be the agency's
eyes and ears on the river.
Yes, obviously on the enforcement side the salmon poaching during the peak times during
the summer months leading up until December when the salmon spawn.
There's periods of that time when we're more or less nocturnal.
We work a lot of nights.
You still get the person who goes out and takes the odd salmon, they take it home, they
feed the family with it.
But the biggest threat are these organised professional gangs who come down with nets
and we haven't known poisons and explosives being used to take salmon.
It's non-selective, it kills everything from baby fry that was born this year right through
to the adult fish which they're after.
It kills all the aquatic life in that stretch of river.
Each warden has got his own stretch of river which he looks after.
He's got all his informants or tries to build up an informant throughout that system.
They pass on the information to us, we assess it, then we pull in warden from other areas
and we set up observation points.
We've got the powers of arrest, search and seizure.
We can seize their vehicles, we can actually get search warrants and search their homes
for equipment should we detain anybody.
But the police are very, very helpful.
They don't mind coming out although they're very stretched.
Obviously the police dog in the sort of riverbank area is very, very useful for tracking and
finding equipment.
Everybody's more mobile now including the poacher.
The big advantage they've got, they know where they're going and when.
We've got to try and get it.
Most of the pollution in this sort of area would be agriculture from farms, slurry runoff,
silage effluent, very potent and of course sewerage treatment works, an ordinary domestic
septic tank that they're not maintained and looked after properly.
They leach into the river and pollution will kill far more fish than poachers ever will.
It's like poisons, it kills everything.
The bad pollution will kill everything and it takes a long, long time for everything,
the infrastructure stations or the river life or the aquatic life to come back as it was
to sustain fish.
We have conservation sites which we do corridor surveys on where we go and we list all the
species, the bird life, possibly signs of otters, actual visual signs of otters which
are coming back with the most clean water quality we've got here now and obviously
the heron, the wag tail, the dipper, the kingfisher, they're all good signs that we've got a healthy
river.
Rivers are important and they must be looked after but that's not to say people can't
have some fun on the water.
In November for instance, Thorveson Rear where we talked to Eddie is popular among spectators
who turn out to watch one of the biggest canoe races in Britain, more than 700 canoes,
shoot this and many other wheels between Tiverton and Exeter.
And it's in the city itself that the most exciting sport can be found.
Black aloe vera is one of the highest on the Ex and the rescue canoes regularly see action
as some competitors get it slightly wrong.
The race ends at Exeter's famous quay, once busy with ships from the four corners of the
world, now preserved and enjoyed by tourists from many countries.
Thanks to the many millions of pounds worth of flood defence work which has been carried
out on the Ex around the city, it's difficult to imagine the swampy muddy banks where once
ancient traders pocketed Greek coins as their primitive ships returned all the way from
the Mediterranean.
Whether or not the river flooded in those long gone days we have no record but it certainly
caused appalling damage over more recent centuries.
In October 1960 the Ex threw 9 million gallons a minute down its flood plain and caused damage
to over a thousand homes and businesses.
Something had to be done.
It's the sort of scheme the Romans would have undoubtedly approved of.
They made their own changes to Exeter, changes which are still to be seen to this day.
There's no evidence of any large-scale battles between the Italian invaders and the Celtic
Dumnoni people who lived on what was Exeter at the time.
But half a century or so later in about 120 AD the Romans decided to fortify the plateau
above the Ex which to this day marks the centre of the city.
By the year 200 they had built a wall which enclosed nearly 100 acres and which remarkably
for the most part can be viewed today.
So this port and river town became an important market centre for the Romans who enjoyed the
running of the place for some 300 years.
After they had left it took another three dark centuries before the town once again
entered the history books.
This time it was the turn of the Anglo-Saxons who introduced the first Christian churches
to the place.
After the Danes had robbed and pillaged a few times the history books eventually take
us into the Norman era and it took a siege led by William the Conqueror himself to subdue
this proud Saxon city some 18 months after the battles of 1066.
The good citizens were not keen on William raising their taxes and only after 18 days
of siege behind their strong walls did the Burgers reach an agreement with the King who
was in fact only too keen to compromise.
By 1112 the Normans were constructing a great cathedral and just 20 years later the building
was in official use though it took the best part of a century to fully complete.
This old Norman cathedral is almost obscured today by grander rebuilding which took place
in the 13th and 14th centuries.
The long and intriguing history of this remarkable city would require an entire video of its
own to tell and we must return to our river to explore its final stretch leading to the
sea.
We begin our journey along the estuary where the flood defence scheme ends at Countess
Weir.
It was here in the 14th century that the Countess of Devon ordered the building of this large
weir which effectively put an end to Exeter as an actual trading port.
The local merchants understandably upset about all this set about creating a ship canal.
Their early efforts were small and unsuccessful but works were extended to provide a longer
canal in 1676 and eventually the wider deeper waterway we see today was completed in 1825.
The demise of Exeter as an actual port was good news for the village of Totsch, which
happily provided a haven for the many traders wishing to do business with the great city
upriver.
Although there was a port here as far back as Roman times it was a number of Dutch traders
who lived here during the 18th century that provided Totschum with its heyday.
Further along the eastern shore of the estuary we come to the lovely old fishing village
of Limston with its Italianate tower.
This was built by an eccentric lady as a memorial to her husband and must have looked pretty
incongruous back in the last century when the place was a busy fishing port with boats
travelling as far afield as Greenland to bring back a catch.
Limston was also a famous shell fishery but now the only serious bivalve catchers belong
to the local wader population.
Across the now broad estuary is the historic parish of Powdram.
Down this avenue of evergreen oaks we find Powdram Church, once the scene of a bloody
siege during the English Civil War.
On a dark night in October 1645, 200 soldiers fighting for the parliamentarians crossed
the river to take Powdram Castle but having found it far better defended than anticipated,
they seized the church instead.
After three hours of fighting the royalists had to retire leaving a bloody trail in the
snow but so cold was life inside the church that the troops were pulled out after a day
or two.
Where once patrolled hundreds of dragoons, now only fallow deer can be counted in great
number.
These are the grounds of Powdram Castle, home of another branch of the Courtenay family
for 600 years.
We follow the railway downstream to Star Cross, famed not so much for being the main harbour
on the western shoreline but for its association with the trains.
The old tower which dominates the village is just about all that remains of Isambard
Kingdom Brunel's experimental atmospheric railway which ran along the shoreline but
which failed and was superseded by the main great western line from Paddington to Penzance.
Now the building houses the local boat owners association whose members were good enough
to allow us to take our cameras to the top of the famous tower.
From here wonderful views of the estuary can be enjoyed.
The trains still dash back and forth on the main line and a ferry still crosses the estuary
to Eixmouth.
Our next port of call is at the quaint little harbour at Cockwood.
Now with restricted access caused by the railway embankment, this once busy port still exudes
an air of unspoilt charm.
In fact the railways which run along both sides of the estuary have been the saving
of the exes tidal regions according to Jim Shapter, an Eixmouth based sailing instructor.
If you go to Star Cross all the way along there, right along the railway, thank god
for Isambard K Brunel because if he had not put these railway lines up each side then
this would have been like, well, towns all the way along wouldn't it?
The fact is that now there is a lot of misuse of the natural life of the estuary.
So much misuse.
They're gleaned, robbed and removed crabs, worms, fish, the variety of crustaceans that
are here, all the life, the natural life has not been allowed to go through its normal
cycle.
Now 20, 30 years ago, less than that, probably 10 years ago I could walk down to that water's
edge and turn over a stone and there would be a little crab scurry away.
Or anywhere along here, now I went there two days ago and I wanted to take my granddaughter
down and show her but it was impossible to find any crabs there.
So that's why I believe it's going.
People go and dig worms out there, right, well it's a market.
Do you know some places you can get about 50 pence for a bait crab.
So that's a very good opportunity to make money isn't it, on the side.
People go out on motorcycles, if you look in the background now there's a car up against
the yacht.
Well that beach is being compounded by the amount of traffic that travels across this
beach.
Jim was good enough to take our camera crew out for a tour of Exmouth's harbour and the
narrow estuary mouth in his boat.
Good time.
Along the inland beach of Dawlish Warren we meet two men working on the oyster and mussel
beds.
We're one of the biggest oyster farms in England, producing roughly about 10, 10 thousand a
week for a whole player.
New bags, depending on the size of the oyster, and they're put down on these trestles, nearest
to the low spring watermark as we possibly can, so that they'll grow on.
I'm not going to tell you too many of my secrets.
As we pass through the narrow estuary mouth, we can take a good look at Aksmouth itself.
It became Devon's first seaside resort more than two and a half centuries ago.
Numbers five and six of the Georgian houses up on the hill, known as the Beacon, are renowned
for the two ladies who once lived there.
Both had famous husbands, one was Lady Byron and the other Lady Nelson.
Do you know about it?
What the heck is going on there?
Lastly,
our journey takes us to the lonely peninsula that guards the estuary.
Dawlish Warren is so named because of the great rabbit warren which had its home in the dunes over many centuries.
This extraordinary geographical feature has been caused by fine sands being washed along the coast over many thousands of years
to be deposited where the quieter waters of the estuary meet the sea.
A trip to the warren must begin at the sea-side resort but one can quickly leave behind the world of tourism to enjoy the quietness of the dunes.
A walk to the inland shore can be rewarded by a visit to the hide from where excellent views of the rivers rich bird life can be enjoyed.
And so we reach the end of our rivers journey.
The English Channel coast curves away east and west and the fine silts and sands, some perhaps from as far away as Exmoor's high hills,
are deposited here at Pole Sands where lonely cormorants and other birds stretch their wings in a salty breeze.
Music
.