Sniffle. We probably shouldn’t have read Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter at an inappropriately formative age, for now we get choked up in memory anytime anyone mentions the Tarka Trail (more often than you’d think in this office). Which means we may, just possibly, have occasionally wandered lonely and lump-throated from a Barnstaple campsite too, as Devon’s oldest market town is where the cycle and walking route the Tarka Trail starts on its 180-mile figure of eight loop through the Devon countryside.
Another otter-ly (apols) inspiring option while camping in Barnstaple is to take the Tarka Line from Barnstaple, meandering through the Taw and Yeo river valleys on its 39-mile run to Exeter and including the 18 pubs of the Tarka Line Rail Ale Trail, where choo-chooers are encouraged to hop off at rural stations and partake of a pint at the local pub. Barnstaple’s also on the South-West Coast Path to Ashford, Saunton, Woolacombe and the seaside towns of the north Devon coast – all sounds otter-ly fab to us.
