Exmoor in fiction
Lorna Doone country: the Exmoor that Blackmore invented and the one you can walk
Blackmore published his romance of Exmoor in 1869 and the moor has answered to it ever since. Almost none of the geography is official, and all of it is walkable.
Lorna Doone is the reason most visitors have heard of this part of Exmoor. Richard Doddridge Blackmore was the son of an Anglican curate, educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton and at Exeter College, Oxford. He was called to the Bar in 1852, gave it up through ill health, taught classics briefly at Twickenham, and then settled into market gardening. Two volumes of verse published in the mid-1850s went nowhere. His first novel, Clara Vaughan, appeared in 1864. Lorna Doone followed in 1869, sold modestly, and then would not stop selling.
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How much of the Lorna Doone story is real
Every reader has to decide this for themselves, and the honest answer is: the outlaws probably, the valley almost certainly not.
Stories about a family called Doone living outside the law on Exmoor were told and written down long before Blackmore used them. That is not surprising. In a period when justice was severe and the penalties heavy, remote uplands like Exmoor and Dartmoor were exactly where people on the run went, and staying alive up there without money meant taking what you needed. A family that lived that way for a generation or two would raise children who were half-wild and hostile to strangers, and there are documented cases of exactly that on the fringes of the moor well into the nineteenth century.
Blackmore had grown up hearing these stories. His grandfather was Rector of Combe Martin and Oare; an uncle was Rector of Charles, a small village on the edge of the moor; he stayed with both of them often. In 1865, before he began writing, he came to Lynmouth and took a room at the Rising Sun, using it as a base to collect material and look at the country he intended to use.
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The Doone Valley, named after Blackmore died
What he could not have done in 1865 was visit the Doone Valley, because there was no such place. The name appears on no map published before or during his lifetime. After his death, the area around Lank Combe on the west bank of Badgworthy Water was settled on by general agreement as the closest match to the valley he described, and it is now marked that way on some maps. There is no official authority for it, and Blackmore himself refused to discuss the identification, growing visibly impatient with people who tried to pin him down once the book was famous.
The valley is genuine Exmoor and a genuine literary invention at the same time, which is a more interesting thing to walk into than a film location.
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Walking into Exmoor from Malmsmead and Oare church
Malmsmead and Badgworthy Water
The usual start is Malmsmead, about six miles east of Lynmouth by road, where a packhorse bridge and a ford cross Badgworthy Water. From there a track follows the water south into the combes. It is roughly two miles in to the generally accepted valley and the same back, on a good path with one gentle climb, and it can be done comfortably in a morning.
Oare church
Oare church is a mile from Malmsmead, and the setting for the novel's most quoted scene. It is a small, plain, genuinely old church, and it is worth the detour whether or not you have read the book.
From the coast on foot
Walkers who want the whole thing can leave Lynmouth on the coast path over Countisbury, drop inland at Brendon and come into Malmsmead along the valley, picking up Oare church on the way, which turns it into a full day rather than a morning. The route crosses from sea cliff to open moor in about three miles and is the best short demonstration of what Exmoor actually is.
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Reading it before or after
The novel is long, and the dialect takes a chapter or two to settle into. It is also a genuinely good adventure story with a landscape underneath it that you can go and stand in, which is not true of most Victorian fiction. Either order works. Reading it first makes the combes feel inhabited; walking first makes the book's geography stop being decorative.
Reading it first gives you a landscape with a story laid over it; reading it afterwards gives you a story you can place. Either works. What does not work is treating the novel as a guidebook - Blackmore moved geography around freely, and half the pleasure of the walk is spotting where the book is faithful and where it simply invented what it needed.
The 1869 text is in the public domain and easy to find, and the early chapters are the ones that repay a walk at Malmsmead most directly.
Common questions
Where is the Doone Valley on Exmoor?
The valley generally identified as the Doone Valley is Lank Combe, on the west bank of Badgworthy Water, reached on foot from Malmsmead. The name was applied after Blackmore’s death and appears on no map made during his lifetime.
Were the Doones real?
Stories of outlaws called Doone circulated on Exmoor long before the novel, so something lies behind them. What Blackmore wrote is a romance built on that material, not a record of it, and he never claimed otherwise.
How long is the Doone Valley walk?
From Malmsmead it is roughly two miles in and two back on a good riverside track with one modest climb - a comfortable half day. Starting from Lynmouth on the coast path and coming inland makes it a full day of about twelve miles.
Where did R. D. Blackmore stay when he researched Lorna Doone?
At the Rising Sun in Lynmouth, in 1865, four years before the novel was published. He used it as a base for collecting local stories and looking at the country he meant to write about.
Can you visit Oare church from Lynmouth?
Yes. Oare is about seven miles east of Lynmouth by road and a mile from Malmsmead on foot, and it is usually combined with the Badgworthy Water walk.
