December 27th in Uphill

It was a cold day to go for a walk; we get the wind straight off the sea and it was a biting cold breeze I can tell you! We began to walk along Uphill Pull, but it was too slippy and muddy so we took a few photos then turned to head down to the beach… just as the rain decided it was going to arrive in the same place!

Uphill has a long history as a port, going back to Roman times and probably beyond… although the word ‘port’ is probably an exaggeration of what it was two thousand years ago! Over the last five hundred years or so it has been used as an actual port, where coal from Wales was landed by sailing barges. They reloaded with limestone from the quarry as the return cargo, and sailed back across the channel. All that is left of the quarry are some ruined buildings, some lime kilns and the face, about thirty metres high, and below it what is left of the wharf and a boat yard. The Pill (from which Uphill gets its name)  is a stretch of water, leading from the wharf to the River Axe; it can only be navigated during the ninety minutes either side of high water… so it’s access is very limited.

The area is now for leisure craft, the last commercial ‘vessel’ was a ferry across the Axe, but the ferryman was too often found in the pub and was not very reliable… now it is just the home of yachts and dinghies.