Jan 3

Jan 3 Secret Places

For nearly 25 years I have been writing walks articles which explain exactly how to find the place concerned and how to follow the route - but this time I’m keeping schtum about the geography of the location in the photographs.

A smallish handful of Exmoor-lovers will know it well - a great many will not.

Ring of trees in the middle of the moors

My father, Peter Hesp, brought me to this place when I was six or seven years old (some 60 years ago), because he used to like writing feature articles about “hidden Exmoor” for his newspaper.

Eventually those articles - with the help of the national park authority - were put together and turned into a book, called Secret Exmoor - which today has become a bit of a collector’s piece.

However, I this location did not make it into the final cut. Maybe my dear old dad felt the same way I do about the place. There is something secretive and arcane about it.

The little circle of trees in the moors deserves to be visited, but not shouted about.

Perhaps it’s the fact that the trees appear to have sunk down into the moorlands which helps to promote this air of hiddenness. It’s as if the place doesn’t want to be known to the world - as though it is in hiding, more than happy to be far from the eyes of humankind. Too catch a glimpse of this junction of moorland streams from afar, you would need to be in some kind of aircraft.

And who can blame this clandestine corner for wishing to retain its privacy in this day and age when we’ve done so much to wreck the planet that we now call this era the Anthropocene?

To some slight degree I felt like an interloper when I walked there yesterday in bright winter sunlight. And certainly we did not tarry for long. The January sun was sinking fast and this is no place to be caught out in the dark.

However, I do intend returning every now and again - and to carry on doing so for as long as my limbs will take me across those sodden moors. Next time, I’ll go earlier and maybe take a flask of soup - or maybe we’ll have a summer’s picnic there later in the year. But we will always, always, ensure that we leave nothing save for the odd boot-mark here or there.

This place, above all others I know here in crowded Southern England, deserves its sanctity and its unbelievably refreshing sense of peace and quietude.

And now, having visited the ring of trees in the middle of nowhere and having written this little piece, I am considering creating an entire series of articles and illustrations focussing on the hidden places of the West Country - - so I am wondering what others would think… Is it a good idea? Would you like to read and see such places and have some fun trying to puzzle out where they are? Let me know.