A Journey across Exmoor

Last week, B and I took a journey into the wild, with some family and friends. 

Starting from The Exmoor Centre, a camping barn to the South East of Lynton, we walked along the river, deeper into the moor.

Along the way we adults got our feet well and truly wet, tentatively tip-toeing across stepping stones, while the kids (and dog) bounded and splashed ahead.

This was our goal...

...a tumble-down cottage lying nestled into the hillside, accessible only by striding across the remote moorland. No roads lead to this memory of a dwelling; it can only be reached on foot. 

Yet this cottage is one of the few reminders that people once carved out a life for themselves on the moor. B's ancestors resided in this very shelter: a shepherd, his wife and children, totally isolated and several miles walk across moorland from the nearest small settlement.

B and his family are working hard to try and preserve this piece of fascinating social history, before it is lost forever. Their endeavours can be followed at the charity's website, Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage. 

While wandering, I could not help but wonder what daily life would have been like out there, in the 1800s. Cold, hard, ruthless - that is undoubted. We take so much for granted today.

Less than 200 years ago, children would have piled onto the lone family horse and trotted 5 miles or more to  reach school every day; men would have worked tirelessly in harsh physical conditions to keep a roof over their families' heads; women would have scoured and searched the moorland for wild food to supplement what they grew and raised.

 I worry that for so many young people today, who find their food in neat, clean packages in a supermarket - or worse still, delivered to them in a polystyrene box - all sense of how their ancestors lived and worked is being lost.

If you would like to learn more about this beautiful, unspoilt landscape and how you can enjoy it, visit The Exmoor Centre website. Feel free to wander over and take a gander at the Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage blog on Tumblr. There you will find lots more photographs and information about their fascinating project.

'Skilful works of giants; splendid walls of stone'

I often find myself drawn to places through a sense of what has happened there in times long since forgotten.  When walking across fields, through woods and alongside rivers, I become aware that my thoughts are wandering and visions of what these sites would have looked, sounded and smelled like centuries ago come to the forefront of my mind.

Visiting the nearby stone circle at Avebury this weekend, this sense of remnants from a prior time, floating in the air and imprinted on the ground beneath my feet, was present with each step I took. 

National Trust car park aside, the village still looks much as it would have done five hundred years ago:  a wood fire burning at the local inn; the smell of smoke wafting across the landscape; the thatched roofs of a cluster of barns and cottages. As I walked I could hear the clattering of horses’ hooves on the cobbles, the clanging of a blacksmith beating their shoes into shape. In the wood fire smoke I could see the locals gathering at the inn after a long day tending the fields, raucously sharing tales over a tankard of ale or mead.

It is the combination of romantic medievalist and earth-loving witchy woman in me which makes this type of site so special in my eyes. The history seeping from the ground is palpable, as is its magick. Stepping within the circle of megalithic stones I instantly feel protected, as if these monuments are a collective people watching over anyone within their boundary.

Having places like this on my doorstep is a real treat and being able to feel the energy of long gone communities within the landscape makes me feel both fortunate to live in the British Isles and a little bit cross with myself for not having explored more of it.

With that in mind, here is a list of places I wish to visit this year along with some favourites I’d like to reacquaint myself with (in italics):

1.       Lindisfarne, Northumberland

2.       Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire

3.       Castlerigg Stone Circle, Cumbria

4.       Alderley Edge, Cheshire

5.       Isle of Man

6.       Iona, Argyll

7.       The Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire

8.       Long Meg and her Daughters, Cumbria

9.       Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire

Thank goodness I invested in a National Trust membership!