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!

Sampford Courtenay & the Three Hares

Here is my latest painting and the last one in 2012! It is one in a new series I am doing depicting the Three Hares symbol which is particularly prevelent in this areal, in fact there are seventeen Parish Churches containing one or more carved roof bosses of the three hares. This one is of the fine church of St Andrew's at Sampford Courtenay where I live which has two bosses as seen in my painting.
I wish you all a Very Happy New Year..........may it be a drier one!

Christmas Day 2013

A few photo's from my Christmas day walk from Sampford Courtenay to Honeychurch a tiny village with a charming 12th century church with a simple interior. I did manage to get a glimpse of sunshine giving some fleeting and dramatic rainbows but it was mostly rain, rain and more rain!

RAMRAID in CHAGFORD!

Everyone was shocked when they discovered our local Spar shop had been broken into during the night, Chagford is such a normally safe place you can leave your house open all day and your car keys sticking out of the car door (I have several times) and nothing happens, so this is a major incident! The theives stole a car from Mortenhampstead and about 3am in the night drove it right through the shop window where they then took the till, surprisingly they left the booze!

Dartmoor Pony

I took this picture of one of the four Dartmoor ponies kept on the moorland below Castle Drogo to help keep the bracken under control, it was enjoying the first rays of the early morning sun on a frosty morning. Kestor can be seen in the distance.