A half-century of Dartmoor

A piece in the FT about 'The summer that changed my life' reminded me that it's 50 years since my parents bought a three-bedroomed house with neither mains electricity or water, at the end of a half-mile long track, on the edge of Dartmoor.  My Dad had taken my brother and I, along with his parents, to stay for a few days at the Forest Inn at Hexworthy in the Spring of 1971. I remember walking onto the weird landscape of the moor, and wandering down to the river Dart where I watched wagtails and chaffinches flit between granite rocks while brown trout swam in the peaty water. I never wondered why we were there,  but a few months later, we took the overnight ferry from Le Havre to Southampton and from there, we headed West along the A30, up and down, round bend after bend until we reached Devon. 

My strongest memory of that first holiday is that I arrived with bronchitis, which turned into pneumonia after I ignored instructions to stay in bed and swam in the stream in my pyjamas. One of my father's brothers had brought his family down so there were eleven of us, camping in and around the house.  Including four boys aged 9 and 10. My grandparents came to stay in a nearby hotel and given I was banned from outdoor frolicking, my grandfather taught the four boys how to play whist, then bridge, perhaps to reduce the amount of fighting that Monopoly seemed to cause.  I coughed up a lot of green slime but developed a lifelong love for cards. As I recovered, I went for walks by the stream with my gran, and we found otters, buzzards, and a kestrel nest.  The four boys made bows out of ash and arrows out of hazel. I  lost a lot of arrows and killed nothing with a bow, then or since! We had sword fights with each other and with bracken, and  we were learnt how to fly-fish. 

Over the next decade, we came back again and again. My father took us on long walks across the moor and I morphed from skinny 9-year old to fat 11-year-old, resentful of the way Dad waited for me as I struggled up the hill, sitting on a rock until I caught up and heading off before I could catch my breath. Then I grew taller and ran on ahead. I played chess with my grandfather and racing demon with my gran, cast flies into the Dart and never minded not catching much. We went to Torquay to fish for mackerel, and occasionally to Start Point to swim in the sea, though my father never saw the point of leaving the moor. 

I cycled here after I finished my A-levels, and came down with friends from University, either on the train or by car if anyone had one. When I brought my future wife down, we were dropped at the end of the lane in the pouring rain and I think she feared she was going to be murdered. Here we are again, but 15 years ago we bought a small cottage at the end of the lane, with electricity and wifi, so that I can come here without being divorced. My grandparents and parents have gone and the homes they lived in have been sold, leaving this as the one constant thread from my childhood. 

Born in Kenya, brought up in France, I live in London but my roots are here.  And one legacy of the pandemic is that I spend more time here, working with the sound of the stream in the background. Clients can tell where I am from the daily video I post but otherwise, the most practical difference between Canary Wharf, Highgate and Dartmoor is that the smallest building has the shortest distance between bed, kettle, and computer. Being dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn to 'help' milk the cows convinced me I didn't want to be a farmer, but if being up early is now the norm, at least I don't have to leave the house to get to the morning meeting.