County Gate et on a windy ridge between the East Lyn valley and the Bristol Channel on the A39 between Devon and Somerset.
Looking out from County Gate
The old gatehouse is now a National Park Centre with car park and toilets. There are views to Doone Country and this is a good starting point for exploring that area or the Glenthorne Estate, with steep trails to a pinetum and stony beach with fascinating geology.
There is an Iron Age fort spectacularly situated on top of a natural hillock in the Barle valley. It is beside a popular walk running along the bottom and side of the valley between Simonsbath and Braddymoor.
This year, the 18th century cottage at County Gate was establsihed as aNational Park Centre in 1980. The building and Cosgate Hill which rises up behind it were purchased by the National Park Authority in 1977. Prior to that, an information caravan was based on the car park site for a couple of seasons and it was infamously blown over in a gale scattering literature over the countryside.
County Gate
image supplied by kind permission of Somerset Tourism, Somerset County Council
The building which is now Grade II listed, was originally built as a Road House at the boundary between Somerset and Devon midway between Porlock and Lynmouth and Lynton and served as a staging post for horse-drawn coaches which ran on the turnpike road until the 1920s. Since then, it has been associated with smuggling, seen life as a dwelling, served as a tea room and as an animal shelter before a short period of disuse and conversion to its present use.
The "Gate" which straddled the road giving the place its name, has long gone, but the stone posts still stand as silent sentinels on the present-day A39 scenic coastal route westwards from Minehead.
Set among breathtaking coastal heathland at over 330m (1000ft), the award-winning Centre and free car park offer amazing panoramic views over open moorland, the famous Doone Valley and East Lyn river. Northwards, the views stretch up the Bristol Channel to the Severn Estuary, and across to the Welsh Coast and the Brecon Beacons. Close by the Old Burrow Roman Fortlet is of archaeological interest.
OS Grid Reference: SS7948 |
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