Last visit: April 2025

This warm and welcoming village pub was once owned by a member of MI6, Maxwell Knight, who was the inspiration of Ian Fleming's character 'M' in the James Bond books.

And it has certainly served a few famous people over the past 300 years too.

R D Blackmore, the English novelist, is said to have written part of Lorna Doone at The Royal Oak. Having spent much of his childhood in the lush and pastoral "Doone Country" of Exmoor, Blackmore came to love the very countryside he immortalised in his book.

However, his preferred passion was horticulture apparently, so we'll gloss over the fact that he likely took more pride in growing swedes at home in Teddington than he did in writing Lorna Doone at The Royal Oak.

More recently the pub hosted Dwight D Eisenhower who was then in the midst of preparations for the D-Day landings, with extensive training taking place at Saunton Sands, Woolacombe, and the sand dunes of Braunton Burrows, not too far away in neighbouring Devon.

A letter hangs in the bar from Dwight recording his thanks for the stay.

The pub itself has two bars and a restaurant, serves a range of local ales and has the best gin collection on Exmoor, maybe even in all of Somerset. There are bedrooms over two floors, dogs welcome throughout, and a pop up bar in the car park in summer, a success originating from the necessities of covid times.

Hopefully the photos here give you a sense of what it's like - a warm, cosy pub that gets busy with a combination of sheep farming locals and tourists, so book if you're intending to eat, which I'd recommend you do!

And of course it's another Royal Oak - read my blog post to discover why there are so many!

1. Looking at the front of the pub, follow downhill to the right on the lane through the village, heading East in the direction of Winsford. You’ll soon leave the village and the road quickly rises steeply. It’ll be over soon!
2. After a third of a mile you’ll see the finger markers guiding you over a stile to “Footpath Tarr Steps 4”, as shown in one of the walk images. “MW” is a reference to the Moors Way.
3. From here the journey is straightforward, following established paths through woodland, then fields and river bank paths, with some crossing point options to the other bank along the way. As long as you follow the River Barle you’ll reach Tarr Steps!
4. While you’re here, pay a visit to the Tarr Farm Inn, just 50 metres away from the bridge.
5. It can get busy here, not surprising given that Tarr Steps is one of the key locations to visit in Exmoor. So while you’ve likely seen few people on your walk to this point, things change (there is a lane down to Tarr Steps from the B3223 at Winsford Hill, via Liscombe, and a public car park c.350m above the Tarr Farm Inn).
6. Now head over the clapper bridge onto the lane and almost immediately look out for a public footpath on your right which rises quite steeply up the hillside on a narrow track – the Exe Valley Way.
7. This narrow track does a zig zag as it enters fields. You’ll follow waymarked paths through fields from here, initially steeply uphill before finding more level ground in a few fields time.
8. As you approach Parsonage Farm at ///maximum.fires.warms footpath options are either straight on through the farm, or right to follow a farm track uphill. Turn right here, continuing on the Exe Valley Way.
9. You’ll likely be sharing fields with sheep as the path levels out again, before starting to descend to the side of Westwater Farm to your right hand side. There’s a gate that brings you to the road, before the farm.
10. Turn right as you join the road, and follow it round some bends, uphill on your way back towards Withypool. You have about 1 ½ miles to go from here, with the first ½ mile up this hill which is called Worth Lane.
11. The road levels out with safe walking on the verge now. If you’re inclined, Withypool Hill is on your left, a 160 feet / 50 metre climb. Otherwise, follow the road to eventually start a descent into the village.
12. Admire Landacre Bridge as you cross the River Barle again. This medieval bridge is a listed monument.
13. Don’t overindulge at the tea rooms, now on your right. It’s a short walk through the village to the finish at The Royal Oak, where your righteous pint awaits.

Notes - Only Forty Clapper Bridges left

Most people who visit Tarr Steps don't know what a clapper bridge actually is. The term gets used in walking guides as though it's common parlance, but it isn't — so here's what you're looking at.

A clapper bridge is the most elemental form of river crossing imaginable: large flat stones laid across stone piers, no mortar, no arch, no engineering beyond the weight of the slabs holding themselves in place.

The word clapper traces back through Medieval Latin — claperius, a pile of stones — to an Anglo-Saxon root, cleaca, meaning broadly "bridging the stepping stones." The design is ancient, found on moorland across Britain wherever the geology produces suitable flat rock and the rivers are narrow enough to span.

There are around forty clapper bridges left in the country. Tarr Steps is the longest of them, at 55 metres across 17 spans, and it has a strong claim to being the most impressive.

What makes it remarkable is the engineering instinct behind it.

The River Barle floods violently and regularly — the stones, each weighing one to two tonnes, have been washed as much as 50 yards downstream here in serious floods. The bridge's builders understood this and designed accordingly: the slabs sit low, almost at water level, so that floodwater washes over them rather than battering them broadside. And against each pier, stones are angled outwards to deflect floating debris and break the river's force.

Simple solutions, worked out without anything we'd recognise as engineering, and effective enough that the basic design has survived — with repairs — for somewhere between 600 and 3,000 years, depending on which academic you believe.

After each major flood, the bridge is rebuilt slab by slab. Every stone has been numbered to make this possible, which means that the ancient structure you're crossing is also, in some quiet way, a numbered flat-pack waiting for the next inundation.

The age is genuinely unknown. The first written record dates from Tudor times, which suggests medieval origin, but there are Bronze Age barrow mounds on the hillsides above the crossing, and the location — a natural ford at the confluence of ancient upland tracks — has almost certainly been a crossing point for far longer than any document can confirm.

Lorna Doone doesn't settle the question, but it adds a layer: R.D. Blackmore's novel describes a wise woman whose summer home was near Tarr Steps, adding that the bridge was "made, as everybody knows, by Satan for a wager."

Which is one theory.