The long, steep road that descends from Morthoe to the flat shore of Woolacombe Bay, is becoming plagued with a growth of tasteless lodging-houses, whose neutral-tinted stucco is put to shame by the splendour of sea, sky, and sands. When last I came this way, two Italian piano organists, with a cage of canaries, were grinding out their mechanical music-mongery in an exceptionally lone spot, away from those new houses; wasting, like the flowers in the wilderness, their sweetness on the desert air. None but the rocks heard them, for not another living soul was near. They were not drunk, neither did they appear to be mad. I have not yet discovered the true inwardness of it; is it possible that here at last were two artists, for Art’s sake, piano-organing for the very love of it? Dark doubts cloud the idyllic picture! Below the road, before you come to Woolacombe Bay, is the little inlet of Barricane Beach, shut in between two projecting reefs. Charles Kingsley, many years ago, writing of Woolacombe Sands, referred to them as really composed of shells, but it would seem that Barricane Beach alone can claim his remarks: “Every gully and creek there among the rocks is yellow, but not with sand. Those are shells; the sweepings of the ocean bed for miles around, piled there, millions upon millions, yards deep, in every stage of destruction. There they lie, grinding to dust, and every gale brings in fresh myriads from the inexhaustible sea-world. The brain grows dizzy and tired, as one’s feet crunch over the endless variety of their forms--and then one recollects that every one of them has been a living thing--a whole history of birth, and growth, and propagation, and death.”