Wistmans Wood

This is a recent watercolour of mine of Wistmans Wood a remote and magic place in the valley of the West Dart river near Two Bridges on Dartmoor. It is a rare relic of ancient woodland, stunted and distorted oak trees growing out from moss covered boulders with many ferns and lichens making it an underworld of greens. The name is probably derived from Wisht-man's wood pixie-led or haunted, and it was thought to be a place used by Druids and has many tales of ghosts and the devil attached to it. It feels far too peaceful for these tales to me and seems more a place of quiet meditation.

Dormouse

I had a couple in my gallery recently who mentioned that they had found a dormouse nest on a flower pot in their garden and as they were planting out the flower it contained they removed the nest not knowing what it was only to discover a tiny sleeping Dormouse inside, I do hope it survived this disturbance. This reminded me of an old nest I once found in the woods at Corhill, Sidmouth which amazingly I still have amongst my collection of discarded snake skins, old birds nests, snail shells etc picked up on my walks. So I used this to do this little watercolour of a hibernating Dormouse in its nest which for real would be totally enclosed for warmth. It is amazing how something so small can survive through all the cold and damp winter weather.

Spring in Chagford

We had a few days of lovely warm spring weather last week and all the crocus in front of St Michaels church in Chagford opened out and looked glorious. But today it has returned to winter, freezing cold and snow!