A private road, however, engineered some forty years ago by Colonel Blathwayt through his domain of Whitestone Park, ascends the hillsides by a long series of zigzags, and thus admits of easy gradients. The distance is twice as long, but the ruling gradient is only one in ten, and the surface is good. The scenery also—the “New Road,” as it is called, running through woodlands for the most part—is much preferable to that of the old road. In order to provide funds for keeping this “New Road” in repair, certain tolls are payable: a penny for a cycle or a saddle-horse; fourpence for carriages, etc., with one horse, and threepence for every additional horse; and a shilling for motor-cars. But, before leaving Porlock behind, it will be well to visit Porlock Weir. Porlock Weir, or Quay, as some style it, is the port of Porlock. It is not, commercially speaking, much of a port, for the basin is neither large nor deep, and only the smallest of sailing-vessels may enter it. As you come along the mile and a half of pretty country road that leads from Porlock to Porlock Weir, passing many remarkably picturesque cob-walled and thatch-roofed cottages on the way, you catch glimpses of the kind of place this port is. Porlock Bay lies open to the view, and is revealed as a two-and-a-quarter mile semicircular sweep of naked pebble-ridge between Hurlstone Point and Gore Point. Under the last-named wooded bluff, which forms the buttress, so to speak, on which rests the romantic domain of Ashley Combe, the village and harbour of Porlock Weir are snugly placed. “Weir” stands, in the minds of most people, for a foaming waterfall on a river; but there is no stream whatever at this place, and the harbour that has been given the name is just a natural basin formed by a long-continued action of the tides in heaping up a great impervious outer bank of pebbles under this protecting bluff, where the bay finds its western termination. Left to itself, the trench-like inlet thus formed would fill automatically with every flood-tide, and empty again with the ebb; but the mouth of it was closed, perhaps three centuries ago, by a wall and sluice-gates, by which the water could, at ebb, be kept in the harbour so easily constructed. That is Porlock Weir, upon whose primitive quays look a few picturesquely dilapidated waterside buildings. The spot is quiet and delightfully unconventional, and is frequented in summer by visitors who appreciate those qualities and the sea-fishing that is to be had off the beach. The old “Ship” inn is a counterpart of that hostelry of the same name at Porlock, and is generally old-fashioned and delightful. You catch a glimpse of copper warming-pans as you pass, and are in receipt of an impression of that kind of comfort which was the last thing in innkeeping life of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.