Letters From The Moors - A Sister's Journey 05

On day 5, the two sisters are joined by a couple of walking companions, disrupting their usual quiet rhythm. As they adjust to their friends' company, their 110-mile journey around the edge of Dartmoor leads them to a familiar spot from their childhood. This place stirs up fond memories of summers past, bringing a wave of nostalgia for days long gone.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Dartmoor Way with me,

Liz Scott.

I hope you enjoy my 110 mile journey around the outskirts of Dartmoor National Park in Devon in the UK.

In August 2023,

I completed this walk with my sister and following it,

I wrote a series of letters to her sharing my memories and experiences.

This is day five,

Tuesday,

August the 8th,

Walking from Moreton Hamster to Chagford,

Which was eight miles.

For four days,

We'd been finding our pace and rhythm.

For four days,

We'd only had each other to consult about stopping or sitting or eating or drinking.

For four days,

We had slowly settled into our individual worlds.

Fewer words,

Fewer conversations,

More unspoken connection.

Today,

Our friend Mary and your 13-year-old son Pete joined us and we had to get back to chatting and talking and adjusting to others.

Rather than me walk ahead on my own,

I had two further travelling companions,

Other paces to accommodate.

Don't get me wrong,

I enjoyed the company and I enjoyed this different dynamic,

But I also missed the quiet of my own mind.

I had been loving the way my imagination and thoughts had been able to curl like wisps of smoke in the air,

Creating ideas whilst I listened to the voice that lived more deeply within.

Today,

There were other,

Louder voices to listen to,

And today my quiet inner voice retreated into its burrow.

We started in Morton Hampstead,

And we,

Three older ladies,

Were grateful for the toilet stop before we'd even set out.

Then we were off.

It was a new walk for me.

We were heading north out of Morton Hampstead,

And although I'd been there before,

I'd not travelled north before.

And soon we were walking on paths I'd never been on.

Do you remember we came across those bags of raw sheep's wool,

Fleece straight from the sheep?

There was something so earthy about this unprocessed material.

I touched the soft,

Knotted fibres,

And wistfully wondered how much work it would take to make something from wool.

I wondered how hard it would be to wash it,

And spin the wool,

And then to crochet something.

No doubt my honey-filtered imagination of the beautiful garment that would be created would look nothing like the reality.

I knew it would be a massive undertaking,

But how interesting to try and do this from scratch.

I loved the idea of starting something from the raw material and seeing it all the way through to the finished product.

On this occasion,

Though,

I left the wool behind and carried on walking,

But I had a nagging sense that one day I would come back to buy a bag of wool.

There is one thing I know when walking with Mary,

And that is the importance of lunch.

Today was no exception.

We had started the walk later than usual,

There'd been rain about in the morning,

So we thought it a good idea to start at midday to avoid getting wet.

When you and I walk,

We tend to save up the treat of lunch for halfway around.

It was something we looked forward to.

However,

Mary always eats at one o'clock.

This meant that our first sit-down stop was only after an hour of walking.

As soon as one o'clock came,

Mary's internal lunch alarm went off and the sandwiches came out.

Today was no exception.

We stopped beside what looked like an old standing stone.

Mary munched on sandwiches,

And we sipped on water,

And Pete tried to climb the stone.

We then continued on to Fingal Bridge.

We both know Fingal Bridge well from childhood walks.

It's the bridge that crosses the River Teane.

As children,

We had stayed,

During our summer holidays,

In a cottage called Gip House just a couple of miles away from Fingal Bridge.

Gip House was owned by friends of our parents,

And they had a small holding of animals and ducks and cows and goats.

And each summer,

These friends would go off on holiday for two weeks,

And we would turn up as a family to look after the animals and to have complete freedom as children to run all over the countryside.

With four children,

My parents could never afford to take us away on holiday,

So this was the ideal solution.

And every year,

As children,

We would come here for two weeks,

And it was a place where I have such happy memories.

Fingal Bridge was one of the places we often visited,

And the pub,

The Angler's Rest,

Was at the halfway point on a circular walk back to Gip House,

Which was the place that we stayed as children.

I was curious about approaching Fingal Bridge from a different direction.

From the side of the river we were on,

Well,

That was the side of the river I didn't know.

The steep,

Stony path made its way down through Charles Wood.

Peter and I walked ahead,

His young legs easily keeping up with my pace,

While you and Mary picked your way carefully down the track.

Mary had borrowed your walking stick because of her temperamental knees.

She'd been keen to nurse them along this walk without damaging or aggravating them further.

As I walked the path,

I became curious about its history.

The teen gorge is steep-sided,

Which makes crossing the river here a challenge.

Fingal Bridge is a sturdy old stone bridge that spans the river.

It would have taken a lot of effort and money to originally create this bridge,

And I always have wondered why Fingal Bridge had been built there.

At one point it must have been an important route for transport,

Horses and goods,

But now the bridge is only used by walkers and tourists.

The tarmac road stops at the pub,

And the track that we were slipping and sliding down is no longer useful for anyone but ramblers.

Its once-useful past,

As a crossing point for traders and travellers,

Was buried in time.

Of course,

Fingal Bridge has many memories.

This area is so familiar.

It feels like a second home.

There was no question about having another stop at the pub.

Mary had cake.

I asked for anything vegan and was looked at blankly,

So I sipped tea and waited politely for everyone to finish eating before we moved on again.

From the angler's rest we climbed up the steep track to the hunter's path.

This path runs high along the gorge,

And walking it again I found memory after memory popping into my head.

I recalled the race between you and Dad to see who could do the loop from Gib House to Fingal Bridge and back the fastest.

This must have been nearly fifty years ago now.

I remember Dad won.

He came back to Gib House panting red and sweaty.

I'm not sure you were far behind,

But Dad had always been determined to win.

He had the competitive Scott gene,

Even with his own children.

Another memory popped when I looked down the steep-sided edge beside the hunter's path,

And I remembered how,

On one day whilst exploring,

I had scrambled down the gorge to the waterfall.

It had been a wonderful sense of achievement as a child,

To slip and slide down the slope,

Clinging on to gorse trees and ferns,

Finding a way over rocks and stones to the bottom.

To think I did this on my own,

Unsupervised,

And with no mobile phone,

They hadn't been invented.

What a different life we led to the one children lead today.

The final childhood memory that arose was of the gorge,

Devastated and reduced to blackened charcoal.

All those years ago a fire had devastated the ferns and gorse,

And I remember the starkness of the burnt plants,

And the stench of burnt wood.

We hadn't been there when the fire had raged,

But Pauline,

The owner of Gib House,

Had regaled us with the story of how she had followed the fire hoses to deliver cups of tea to the firemen.

I remember listening to this story and imagining the smoke and the flames,

And being captivated by her telling it.

Now my heart feels sad when I remember that Pauline is dead.

There is nothing left of her other than these flickering memories for me.

This once formidable,

Stubborn,

Feisty woman,

Who worked so hard to create a smallholding,

Who seemed to be happiest when fighting the world and espousing her Tory politics.

This woman was no more.

I was so looking forward to walking past Gib House and looking towards the cottage from the footpath,

And remembering the swing that was shaped as an aeroplane,

And the old porch where we took off our Wellington boots.

I wondered whether the rhododendron bush was still there,

Or whether those granite stones were still outside,

The ones where Mum used to love sitting on and having a cup of tea.

As a child,

I used to relish watching people pass on the very footpath we were about to walk on.

At the time,

I had loved to think that these strangers thought I lived in this house.

It had filled my childish heart with pride.

I loved playing in the garden and seeing walkers out of the corner of my eye,

And wondering if they believed Gib House was my home.

But when we passed it today,

The hedge was high and thick,

And a tall fence had been put up.

How sad that this once open place was now a mini-fortress.

Prying eyes were not welcome.

I walked by without glimpsing anything of Gib House itself.

We walked through the field which became our favourite spot to play cricket.

Oh,

How those midges had bitten my head on those summer evenings!

I can still feel my hair itch as I remember the laughter of those summery days.

We walked past the place where Richard had caught a fish,

Dispatched it with a crack over the head,

And I had picked flowers to put over it and provide a mini-funeral.

Then there was the Pooh Stick Bridge.

In days gone by,

We had stood by this wooden bridge and played Pooh Sticks,

But now it had disintegrated.

Big gaps of rotting wood were all that was left.

These fields on the way to Chagford felt so familiar,

And yet also seemed so different.

When we neared the Peter Randall Page Sculpture,

We came across what I can only describe as a shrine.

I loved it.

This was a shrine to nature.

It was a place to add gifts and give thanks.

It was a tree stump,

Covered in leaves and stones and feathers and twigs.

I allowed my eyes to scan the ground,

And then I picked up a leaf.

I gave it a silent blessing of thanks and added my offering.

In the river by the stump,

There's a tiny island,

And this is where the Peter Randall Page Sculpture is.

It is so beautiful,

And it would be so easy to miss if you didn't know it was there.

It looks like an ancient dinosaur egg that has been split open.

When I saw it,

I felt wisdom,

History,

And a link to our ancestors.

It felt very moving.

Even now,

When I look at the photo,

My heart skips with a sense of recognition of something ancient,

Something beyond this busy,

Frantic world.

This was a great day of walking.

The ripples of childhood memories were stirred in such a gentle way.

Sadness,

Happiness,

A sense of some has gone by,

And the gratitude of having such a solid thread of grounded memories to anchor me in the present.