An enchanted wood
Day 64
IF ever there was an enchanted wood, it is at Offwell.
In the resplendent former grounds of Offwell House, near Honiton, is a treasure that, I feel, I can hardly convey in words. Likewise, pictures could only ever tell part of the story.
It was in these woods, spanning 48 acres, that I took shade from unrelenting rays of sun last Saturday.
Beneath a thick canopy of leathery leaves, my brain gorged on a fountain of information - about history, landscape management and wildlife.
Creating habitats for endangered species was high on the agenda, with the official opening of The Dormouse Trail. In a valley that time forgot lives not only the dormouse but also creatures that roamed the Earth long before dinosaurs.
I was visiting Offwell Woodland Education Centre on 'press day' and I was the only member of the Press to turn up.
If East Devon MP Hugo Swire could make the effort, bringing his family and the relative of a senior politician to such a remote place, why not representatives from other newspapers?
Those not present were the losers. I arrived at 11am and stayed until 3pm. I enjoyed a truly wonderful day, learning about the Victorians' fascination with rhododendron - and how their deviances are now wrecking the countryside. Extreme measures, such as burning, are the only ways to rekindle dying forests.
I also witnessed the tremendous work being carried out by volunteers as well as less than a handful of people who are employed, thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant.
In two clearings, beautiful log cabins have been built. They are classrooms for a multitude of school children whose visits to the woodland are providing a real education in nature.
The man who built the cabins first visited Oregon, in America, to discover how logs can be perfectly slotted together, to avoid drafts.
In the blazing heat of an early summer's day, I was kept cool by a multitude of trees - some more than 100 feet tall. Beneath was mainly a grey kind of darkness - a mystical area.
Although we saw the leftovers of a dormouse's meal, a nut, we also saw areas where roe deer had lay. Judging from freshly laid footprints in a stiffening mud, the deer hadn't long departed our company.
Out of the corner of my eyes, in my Nicotine Dreams, I could almost see mystical creatures, such as the unicorn. It was THAT kind of place. Enchanting, to the extreme. And that's excluding the thousands of bluebells and other wild plants that left me spellbound.
Even more enchanting, to me, was the remains of a Victorian lake. Purposely created in the 1800s, it was huge and teeming with fish. Lily pads dotted the horizon as I made my way around its carefully kept boundaries. This, to me, was Heaven; the kind of place I want to idle away my final hours on Earth.
If smoking, or hereditary misfortune, should take me away from this life at an early age, this is the place that I want to remember - before the time that I enter St Paul's Church for my last visit.
The wood is not a place I would want to end up. It is too full of the past. Dragonflies, for example, have been there since before the Jurassic Age. Nineteen species have been identified, so far.
My place is in St Michael's Churchyard, Honiton, but I came close to a second Heaven in Offwell - just five fields away from my final resting place.
Keeping busy.