It might be hard to believe, but the two photos above were taken within 20 miles of one another. So were these two images… And two more contrasting scenes… The country is Oman. Southern Oman, just inland of the port city of Salalah way down near the Yemeni border - and the words below were part of an travel article I wrote after touring the area a couple of years ago. Real travel - the kind of travel that smacks of adventure - is about intrigue. If the promise of whatever it is that lies over the hill or around the corner doesn’t intrigue you, then you may as well stay at home. But it’s a big wide world, so the amount of intrigue you feel concerning a certain place will depend on some hook, promise or hint that’s come your way.  And so it was with me a long time ago when someone said: “There’s a place in Southern Oman that looks like Exmoor or Dartmoor. It is full of bracken covered slopes, big trees and fast flowing rivers - and yet it’s only a few miles from the desert.” Over the years more hints and clues about Salalah came my way culminating in a visit to Oman 18 months ago ashen local guides in the Akhdar Mountains told me that it was where they went on holiday whenever the chance came their way. “You must go to Salalah,” they said. “If you like Oman and think it’s beautiful, then the Dhofar region will please you very much.”  Back then I wrote in these pages that the wild and wonderful sultanate was all and more that a traveller could ever imagine the Arabic Middle East to be. Much if it is stunningly beautiful. The scenery can be awesome and dramatic. And the people are fantastically friendly. A recent visit to Salalah and a tour around the Dhofar region did not disappoint. And it really does have green, waterfall-filled valleys that will remind West Country folk of Exmoor or Dartmoor.  Which is strange, Really, really, strange. Because to reach them you must drive up into the mountains from a fairly arid coastal plain. After 20 minutes you begin to think the whole promise of verdant landscapes must be some kind of illusion like a desert oasis. And then you turn the corner into a valley called Wadi Darbat and you know it’s no illusion.  There was so much cool clear fast flowing water in one stream in that valley when I was there at the end of September, people were plying up and down under the tall green trees in small electric-powered boats. And yet I was to learn that just 20 miles away there was real empty sandy desert.  That’s kind of shocking. So shocking that visitors pour here from all over the Gulf region. People think nothing of driving 2000 miles, just to come and see the greenery.  I learned this when I asked our guide - the wonderful Mussalam whose services you must ask for if you ever go to this land of illusions - why the dead-end road leading into Wadi Darbat was so massive and wide.  “If you’d been here three weeks ago, you wouldn’t have been able to move,” he replied. “People drive here from as far away as Iraq and Kuwait, just to see the greenery. If you spend you life living in a desert country, it is something special.” Indeed it is. But then, the entire Salalah area is something special. And that is because it has a unique microclimate which has something to do with those coastal mountains and vast tall cliffs - sometimes called “ cloud cliffs ” which lock the ocean moisture in down on the coastal plain. I took a long long trip up to the top of these cloud cliffs as you can see below - there were moments when you felt you cold just step out onto the tops of the cloud, so thick were they - but you’d have fallen a straight and terribly vertical 2000 feet if you had… The strange seasonal weather system really has more to do with the moody monsoons of the Indian Ocean than cliffs. The locals even have a word - and a festival - to celebrate this season which hits the coastal zone between the end of June and the beginning of September: it is called the Khareef.  During that time the area is often blanketed in thick fogs - it even rains - which for anyone living in the Gulf area is an meteorological enigma of almost mythical proportions. And so they flock to Salalah from all over the place to soak up the fog and feel the sensation of rain - to the extent that the handful of top-quality hotels are booked years in advance.  I’m not for a minute suggesting that anyone from the foggy wet UK travels 1000s of miles east to witness and bit of precipitation - that would be the ultimate in the travel industry selling-coals-to-Newcastle. But go there in September or October when the Arab crowds have gone, and you will not only see extraordinary landscapes but you will also have the place more-or-less to yourselves.  Which is worth mentioning because I do not think Salalah will be like that for long. Apart from in the Khareef season, mass tours of the kind known and enjoyed by Europeans is just about unknown. I say “just about” because the Germans have just begun catching on to the fact that this is a special place - and at the moment there’s one direct charter flight a week flying in from Frankfurt. But there will soon be more, that is certain - because Salalah’s tiny regional airport is about to be superseded by a massive terminal larger than our Stansted. My bet is that within half a dozen years this little known area will become yet another winter sunshine destination printed in the fat brochures of the massive package holiday giants. Outside of the Khareef months you are guaranteed wall-to-wall sundays and heat - and there are already a handful of very good hotels dotted along the miles and miles of empty ocean front, and due to be more. I’ll add some more articles about Salalah and its environs over the next few days…

Some years ago a spent a few days alone in Bari on Italy’s east coast. I really liked the old harbour town, strolling around its myriad alleyways and eating at little local restaurants. This week on Netflix we watched a new movie starring Sophia Loren of all people. A very old Sophia Loren, but not less beautiful and wonderful for all that. And it seemed to me to have been filmed somewhere like Bari - or maybe Ancona up the coast. Needless to say, I consumed an awful lot of seafood during my stay in Bari - and must have polished off an entire reef’s worth of these delicious sea-urchins. In fact, I’d say anyone who went to Bari and didn’t eat the seafood would be, sort of, missing the main theme. I had s memorable meal at the Terranima Ristoro Pugliese, in Via Putignani (Bari city centre) - - where I met this delightful Brazilian film-maker and his wife - who told me terrible things about the environmental disasters going on in their country. But mainly I just walked and walked and ate and ate - and dived in and out of wonderful shops like this one… The bit everyone likes - me included - is the old town, knowns as the Barivecchia - it is situated on a headland between two harbour areas. Surrounded by narrow streets, the 11th-century Basilica di San Nicola, is the main pilgrimage site because it contains some remains said to be from the body of St. Nicholas.

There’s a better way of doing this walk than the route I took, but that will serve me right for not taking a map and for believing I knew best anyway, because I’d viewed the area many times years ago from the decks of a boat. I only say that because the way back across the base of the Flushing-Mylor peninsula took me along a busy road (which like all sensible walkers, I hate) when I could have amended the route slightly and taken a couple of quiet footpaths.  Indeed, looking at the map now I think I’d have extended the whole thing - because the peninsula in question is glorious and should be enjoyed by everyone who ever finds themselves in the Fal estuary area. My excuse for walking without a map is that we are talking about taking a stroll around the edge of a peninsula, so it is more or less impossible to get lost. I called in at Flushing one day last year at the invitation of Jonathan Fielding, of the Falmouth Boat Company - and what an impressive outfit that is with all its vast sheds and wharves playing host to all manner of yachts and other boats, most of which were in for repair. You’ve got to love a business that is expanding, employing lots of local people with excellent skills and taking on apprentices.  But it was a gorgeous autumn day and after I’d been given a tour of the works I decided I needed a good walk before driving the 150 miles home to Exmoor. And the obvious hike from the boatyard, which is situated just up the Penryn Creek from Flushing, is to walk south east through the historic village and out along the peninsula to Trefusis Point.  Having got this far the obvious thing to do is to continue along the public footpath which runs around what could be called the Trefusis peninsula (the land around here mostly belongs to the Trefusis Estate), north up to Penarrow Point on the banks of the Carrick Roads, then west to the Mylor marina and yacht club. It is a wonderful, scenic and interesting walk. I say that because first you walk through the length of Flushing which must be one of the most fascinating villages in Cornwall. The architecture alone provides a good enough reason for visiting - the place is a glorious hotchpotch of historic architectural styles, and many of the handsome old merchant houses were obviously influenced by the Flemish and other European vernaculars.  Indeed, the place was occupied by a Dutch community in the 17th century, who hailed from Vlissingen in Holland, which is of course pronounced Flushing in English.    When I first visited the village 40 years ago it was because one of my boatbuilding brothers was living here as a lodger with one of the local fishing families. It was all wonderfully rough and ready back then, but Flushing has obviously returned to its well-to-do ways judging by the number of new-new-fish Porsche cars I saw parked in driveways. As I passed a couple of snazzy refurbished pubs and an interesting looking seafood restaurant in the bright midday sunshine, I could see why the wealthy want to live here.  Anyway, onwards and south-eastwards - out along the waterside lane that threads through the village to eventually turn a corner and ascend slightly so that it can make it way along the rear of some even posher waterside homes on its way to Trefusis Point. Not that the lane gets that far - it terminates next to a stately looking place that looks like a manor house under Kilnquay Wood. But we walkers can proceed past all the “private” signs and continue along the public footpath which now follows the contours through various fields around the peninsula. And every step of the way - by-the-way - you are treated to fantastic views of nearby Falmouth, which lies just across the Penryn River. Indeed, the big town and all its urban and workaday noises, will have escorted your right-hand should every step of the way so far - but now the footpath begins to say goodbye to Falmouth as it marches along the banks of the Carrick Roads up top Penarrow Point.  This is Cornish coastal walking at its best - even if you’re not really anywhere near the coast. The Fal is so big and wide here where it’s otherwise known as the Carrick Roads, you feel that your are by the sea - and all very pleasant it is too with the hundreds of pleasure boats sailing to and fro just about every which way you look.  A great many of these boats will have come out of the Mylor yacht basin, which is our next port of call. And my, my… Hasn’t this place changed since another. Brother of mine kept his big gaff-rigger here some 20 years ago. Bigger, posher, more glitzy - Mylor Marina must contain enough floating real estate at any one time to eclipse the working value of a small independent state. I would have stopped for lunch in one of the pleasant looking restaurants but time was pushing so I made my way up through the graveyard of Mylor Church to join the road that would take me back over the hill to Flushing. And that was my mistake. That road is narrow and busy. I do not recommend walking alongside it - especially because yachting types seem to drive their cars with the same gung-ho as some of them may sail their boats. Instead, find the little lane opposite the top of the graveyard that will take you into Mylor Churchtown and continue along it as it runs beside the creek and arrives at a place called Trelew. There’s a footpath on your left here that will take you inland up a valley to the road at Tregew - where you can cross the main Penarrow Road and follow another footpath across the top of the hill to the place where it descends Orchard Vale back down into Flushing.   And there you have it - a wonderful seaside walk that isn’t really by the coast at all, but which will give you watery views for a good three quarters of its length. FACT FILE Basic walk: from Flushing on Penryn River through village, around Trefusis Point to Mylor yacht harbour and back over the hill. Distance and going 4.4 miles easy going - try to avoid busy road.

Meet my old pal Robin Turner - a well known and respected figure in West Cornwall. Through my work as a newspaper journalist I have known Robin for many years. I first used to visit him at his seafood wholesale business in Newlyn from where he’d give me all sorts of advice on seasonal fish and news of other marine delights. Now that I have returned to writing and editing the Western Morning News food pages each Saturday through the auspices of my work at RAW Food & Drink PR, I once again talk with Robin on a regular basis and he kindly fills me in on all the seafood news from the high seas. What follows is an example of the kind of story we get from Robin - who now works with his partner Rebecca in their excellent company Indulgence Catering… Check out their website for more details http://www.indulgence-catering.co.uk/ As we begin to think about the festive season Cornish seafood expert, Robin Turner of Indulgence Catering, has some timely advice for those who like the idea of serving fish at Christmas… “Ordering fish and shellfish now for Christmas will really help the region’s fishing industry during this lockdown because there is nothing worse than sending boats out if the catch cannot be sold," says Robin, who spent most of this professional career as an auctioneer and seafood wholesaler in Newlyn. “And the point is that a lot of fish and shellfish will keep very well for a month in a freezer as long as it is set at minus 20 degrees Celsius.” Ordering in advance not only helps the fishermen, it can also help bag you a bargain for Christmas. “The prices of most live shellfish, for example, increase substantially the nearer we get to the third week of December,” says Robin. “There are exceptions - such as live oysters, mussels, clams and black queens. These are harvested sustainably from licensed beds or shellfish farms and can normally be ordered in advance to collect fresh on the last day of fish shop trading.” Of course, the winter weather has the biggest say in the marketplace…  “Prices vary according to availability. But if you order crabs and lobsters towards the middle of November for delivery at the end of the month you can bag yourself prime shellfish at reasonable prices.  “Crab is in prime condition during October, November and December. Why no have them delivered and cook and freeze them for the festive season. This need not take anything away from the eating qualities, as long as you follow cooking instructions and your deep-freeze is up to the job. Shellfish will last a month at minus 20 degrees Celsius. But always contact your fishmonger for advice. “Crab and lobster prices can double within a week during December,” says Robin who also recommends ordering king scallops in advance for freezing as long as the meat is cleaned and removal from the shell… “The variety of fish species we have is phenomenal, but there may be things even the keenest foodie does not know about fish - spawning seasons etc - and what gives the best quality for the table. “For example, plaice start spawning in December. This means large plaice are developing eggs (roe) for reproduction in January and February. The majority of large plaice are female - male are mostly smaller. This means females will have a percentage of their normal meat content reduced by the space required to carry the eggs.  “Added to this, the smaller males are in top condition as they will have to fight to get to the eggs to fertilise them. The meat content of a male plaice in December can be 55% and bones etc 45%. Whereas the females can have 38-40% meat and 60-62% bones etc. “Fish spawning seasons vary species to species, so most other fish will be in good condition working from now through December to the middle of January. Then things change again, so I will be back in these pages to chat about the fluctuating fish seasons soon.”

Yesterday someone phoned to tell me about the death of a middle-aged man. The person who called had a lovely rich Exmoor accent and she said: “The last thing he told me was that he’d taken to walking to the church where he would sit and think for hours on end.” The last time I saw the man, he was a big raw friendly youth. But news of his passing reminded me of a great many things. The fact that he has gone, for me, marks the true end of an era - the likes of which this country shall never see again. I am talking about a time that you could describe as ‘ultra-rurality’. A four or five thousand year period of remote country-living in which people existed so far away in the backwoods and hills, that they forged their very own ideas of reality that turned out to be very much at odds with the modern world. His passing also reminded me of a chapter of my latest novel - The Lemon Tree Forest - written during the first coronavirus lockdown. It’s purely fictional. Or almost. But news of the man’s death took me directly back 30 years… Please have a quick read - AND IF YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW A LITERARY AGENT PLEASE TELL THEM ABOUT MY HUMBLE EFFORTS… I am walking down to the pub one summer’s evening when I meet two men coming the other way.  It was raining earlier and perhaps that could be why they are covered in black plastic dustin sacks.  Their heads and arms have been pushed through holes in the bags and baler-twine has been used to tie the plastic to their bodies.  The older one is small and wiry, the other is a large youth with a clumsy plodding gait.  Both wear cloth caps.  I have never seen people dressed in dustbin sacks before - which makes me think they’d been caught out in the rain and this was their way of keeping out the wet.  The oldest is the one who does all the speaking.  He does so in the strongest Brendon Hill accent I have heard, referring to me constantly as “My Boy”. He delivers his words in a rapid machine-gun patter, constantly swishing his stick to and fro and beating it on the ground as if to add emphasis to the strange things he is saying.   It only takes a moment for me to assume these are the people the village has been talking about.  The rumour is that they are coming here to live in one of the council houses, either just up the road or in the neighbouring village across the hill… Apparently, they’re being thrown out of the farmstead higher up on the escarpment where their family has lived for a thousand years. “Out over” as that area is known. Someone is having them evicted.  No one knows for sure, because no one really seems to know anything about the Bampfyldes.  Except that they are odd.  Eccentric. When I ask the old man if he is Mr Bentley Bampfylde, he seems taken aback.  “You don’t know nothin’ about me, My Boy. How can you? You lives ‘ere and we lives up yonder past Goose Common! Us haven’t been down yer for years.” But I carry on, being as courteous and pleasant as I can, and eventually the old man relents a bit and takes an interest in who I am.  He says he knew my great aunt a long time ago - and when I tell him I make a living by writing, he becomes excited. “You gotta come up our place, My Boy, and see how wonderful - how very wonderful - life is Out Over.  You gotta come up and see our well - which they say is polluted and that’s why we has to leave. You gotta come up and meet my dear lady wife. Her I eloped with fifty years back!  Can you imagine that, My Boy?  Eloped, us did!  In the night!  You can come up any time and maybe you can write about us up there and maybe that would stop they buggers who’s going to evict us.” There it was. Eloped. There was the bell that echoes. The Sasha bell. A word - an idea - that rings and resounds like the chime of some remote Buddhist temple in the mountains. A chime which echoes right into the depths of my soul.  Strange, that this weird, outlandish, old man - a wild-eyed ambassador from another century - had eloped with someone.  It seems incongruous somehow.  That he’d done such a thing, just like Sasha had run off with Cosmo from their hometown in the Italian mountains.  For that, and for many other reasons, I was drawn to the Bampfyldes. And so I went up there one day to see the place where the family had lived for centuries.  Rural idyll is an odd phrase, but it is a description that has overtaken Bentley Bampfylde’s home to such an extent that it has actually become the sylvan glade. Trees grow out of its roof and animals walk in and out of various apertures. The house has become countryside, or maybe the countryside has become the house. The long track which brought me to this pastoral scene seems to peter-out in a small paddock partially surrounded by thick, dark woods. A sandstone cliff climbs, in a verdant, leafy way, to a height of forty or fifty feet at one end of the paddock, and out of its soft, orange face grows the building which, I imagine, houses the men-in-plastic-bags. As I say, you can only really guess that it is, or was, a house. The place is almost entirely submerged in ivy and honeysuckle so that you can only just make out things like windows, eaves and doors. An owl appears in one of the upper apertures, despite it still being full daylight, and takes an unhurried meandering flightpath away to the dark stand of conifers that curves around from the old quarry face.  I spot a family of badgers rummaging and rolling around in a muddy area at the far end of the paddock - and close to them, on the rim of some sort of old tub, stands a slender heron.  Two hinds are grazing in the overgrown meadow to one side of a copse, but now they are alert and nervous.  I am guessing they don’t see many cars in this place.  Near the deer, half-a-dozen scruffy looking ponies are milling around, paying no heed to the car or anything else.  No sign of the modern world reveals itself in the clearing.  With the exception of my car, the place remains almost untouched by any form of technology.  No cables bring electricity or telephone wires to the house, no other vehicles give the century away. Not even a tyre mark has imprinted itself in the mud of the track.  A thin smear of wood-smoke rises from what I assume is a chimney, hidden by a bush somewhere up there on what might be the roof.  I don’t know why, but there is something unexpected about the scent of wood smoke in summer.  A hint of winter in the heat - a fragrant envoy from a world of white and frost.  To one side of the clearing there’s a pool, into which a clear fast-flowing rivulet runs down from the pine forest. Having filled the pool, the same stream continues its journey south, across the meadow to disappear again into another pine wood.  A few birds - ducks, but also a curlew and a gang of rooks - strut around the edge of the pond.  At first, I fail to notice the man standing knee-deep and motionless in the middle of the pool.  With his legs akimbo and his arms stretched very slightly away from his body, Marmaduke Bampfylde is gazing into the deep woods as if in a trance.  He is dressed in characteristic mode, but with just one black plastic bin liner through which he’s pushed his head and arms.  Below the plastic, a pair of grubby old trousers have been rolled up above the boy’s big red knees.  But not quite far enough to keep them dry.  Around these trousers some form of aquatic commotion stirs in a ripple and a splash.   He turns toward me and smiles a big sweet, red-faced, country smile. He raises one hand and waves. With that, there is a thwack of wood upon metal, which makes me jump.  Bentley Bampfylde stands, stick in hand, on the other side of the car, grinning.  “Tis the young writer,” he shouts to no-one. I am invited in and wish I had a film-camera.  This is going to be an experience - one which I’d assume few people will believe without photographic evidence.  It is, indeed, difficult to judge where the wilds of Exmoor end and where the house begins.  The hard, dry, outdoor mud continues from the floor of the yard into the first room.  So does the ivy, but the honeysuckle remains outside where its sweet perfume mingles with its gypsy-scented friend, the wood-smoke.  The room is dark after the bright late afternoon outside, with the exception of a single sunbeam which makes its way through the one window which faces west.  The green-tinged ray of light flickers as it passes through the filter of leaves.  And it ends its one hundred and fifty million kilometre journey by illuminating a small person.  I am startled when I see her and realise that she is real flesh and blood.  Because for a moment I think maybe she is some kind of doll, so like white-china is the skin of her face.  But the porcelain moves and creates upon its surface a thousand little cracks and wrinkles.  The porcelain moves because the woman - for that is what this thing is - issues what can only be described as an explosive titter.  A quick, nervous laugh which ends as abruptly as it starts. She can’t be much more than four feet in height, but there are no obvious physical signs that she is tiny.  Like Mrs Grimes, she doesn’t have any of the characteristics of dwarfism, but she is quite a bit smaller even than the ancient woman who “does” for Sir Fred.  It is only when you see her in relation to objects such as tables and chairs that you realise how tiny she is.  Apart from the smallness, she is a perfectly formed, miniature person.  For a moment I remember what old Doc Harding has told me about the people of the hills.  It was something about how unusually high levels of minerals in the geological make-up of the area had caused some physical abnormalities in the local population. Especially among those who drank water straight from their own wells.  Rickets was a common problem, and there was also something about a lot of the men having high shrill voices.  And the doctor said the mineral imbalance can cause a slow down of physical development, with the result that some hill-folk were unusually small.   Delphine Bampfylde is tiny, but there are two other things which make her appear extraordinary in that green sunbeam.  One is her seat, which I can see is an old wooden high-chair made for a baby, but with its food tray removed.  The other is her fantastic attire.  In contrast to the male Bampfyldes, she has spurned the utilitarian values of the bin-liner to dress herself in what I am guessing was once expensive haute couture.  The haute couture of 1910, perhaps.  She wears a red dress - silk by the look of it - classily finished with a neat white collar.  But over this she is wearing - eccentrically, given the warmth of the day - a long, black, Astrakhan coat. This is for the most part buttoned-up, as if the woman is about to leave the premises. A coquettish hat, white kids gloves and a handbag complete her unlikely outfit. “I’m sorry to arrive unannounced - were you on your way out?” I ask. A second laugh explodes, and ends, before the woman speaks: “Whatever could make you think that? I so rarely go out.” Her piping voice has something aristocratic about it… That is what I am thinking as the room darkens momentarily.  The large bulk of Marmaduke comes through the open door.  He enters and stands behind the woman I assume to be his mother, although I wonder how such a diminutive person could ever have managed to give birth to such a large son.  They look like representatives of two different species.  Confusing. Because old Bentley is on the smallish side as well.  So where had the lad come from?  Perhaps some sort of cuckoo spirit once haunted this house in the woods.  Slightly unnervingly, as if reading these thoughts, Mrs Bampfylde pipes up: “I used to be big,” she wheezes - and then she does one of her explosive laughs… “But I have been shrinking for years!  “One day there’ll be very little left and a bird - like that one - will pick me up and take me away,” she adds, pointing a tiny, white gloved hand at a house martin which has swooped into the room.  She gasps these last words as if in some kind of private rapture, but Bentley seems worried by the prophecy… “Don’t ee talk like that, dearest,” he shrills in his sing-song Brendon dialect. “I shall always be here to look after ee. All our lovely lives long...” She smiles a smile of love, affection and obvious devotion. It really was one of those smiles.  I could tell that even in the gloom.  And now she peers across at her protector and husband and says: “Ah, for all the trials and tribulations which life has brought me, I am the surely the luckiest woman alive.” It is a touching scene. Here indeed is love of the very first order. “Mummy,” says the son. “I love you too.” He puts a great red hand on her shoulder.  So big is the rough, chapped fist, that for a moment I think its weight alone might be enough to snap the tiny bones under the Astrakhan.  But she puts her own gloved hand on her son’s - a hand which, in its entirety, is no bigger than his thumb. There is a silence, filled only by the noise of the location’s enormous bird population. I always feel uncomfortable when silences go on too long, so I tell old man Bampfylde that I can now see and understand why he had eloped with a person who has such obvious qualities. “I saw ‘er down Brendon Horse Fair one day, and that was that,” he tells me. “I knew then I had to ‘ave her and make ‘er my wife. But ‘er folk didn’t want that and neither did mine.  My old father wanted me to marry the daughter of the Queen of the Gypsies.  They ‘ad some horse deal tied up wi’ it, is what I always said. Anyways, ee were adamant I shouldn’t marry Delphine, and ‘er folk over Lynmouth way were even more anti the whole thing.  Twas a great shame for two young people so much in love.  Some bugger told ‘er father I’d been going’ down there a-courting - and you will never guess what er did!  He locked her up!  Would not let ‘er out the house!  And ee sent word to my father that he’d shoot I, if I ever dared go near the place agin.  “But I ‘ave my ways. I knew a way of getting a message to her, even if she was a prisoner in that dark old farmhouse.  And I also ‘ad a friend who was an old country parson.  Fond of the bottle, ee was.  And I’d done un a favour with a horse the month afore.  “So I got the old vicar ready to marry us - and off I went over The Chains one full moon in the middle of summer. Two horses I took.  Our best two horses.  Cos if I was going to be in trouble wi’ my old man, I may as well be hanged for a pound as for a penny.  Didn’t take I long to get down to that lonely old farm of theirs.  Desolate, ’twas called.   Can you believe that, My Boy?  She lived in a place called Desolate! ’Twas a matter of following the stream up to the old manor farm, all quiet like… And because I’d got word to her, she were waiting for me.  Up there in the open window, I could see her beauty in the light of that moon.  I was all ready for it.  Planned the whole thing.  I ‘ad hessian sacks which I tied round the big horse’s hooves to keep the bugger silent. And I led un up to the house, quiet as a mouse - and by standing up on the saddle I could just reach her feet as she climbed out the window.  I got ‘er down safe, and then we were off up o’er the moors.  “Cor…. Didn’t us ride! Like the wind we went over they Chains… The most dangerous bit of Exmoor - did you know that My Boy?  The most dangerous landscape in the kingdom!  Full o’ bogs and runnels.  But they was good ‘orses and the dear old things never put a foot wrong.  Out over, we went.  Out over and beyond.  Until we comes to the house of the country-parson-vicar who was as drunk as a lord.  I’d seen to that, see!  But I marched un down the chapel and the old bugger married us there and then. At dawn.  Wi’ only mice and owls as witnusses.  But that is how ‘er Ladyship here became the wife of Bentley Bampfylde. “Don’t you think that’s romantic, My Boy?” shouts the old man bringing his stick down on the table so that it creates a great cloud of dust, which unfurls itself golden and billowing across the sunbeam. “I reckon tha’s the most romantic thing you’ll ever ‘ear anywhere up in these yer hills. Ever!” I agree.  It is the most romantic thing.  And I think of Sasha and Cosmo. They had also done the most romantic thing.  But for them, it hadn’t lasted.  For Bentley and Delphine, it had. But I ask the old man if there were any repercussions after their marriage.  “No, course there weren’t. What could ‘em do? What was done, was done. ‘Er father disowned ‘er, so she ‘ad to come up ‘ere to live.  And my father charged me five pound for each horse, saying I’d ruined ‘em with that ride through the bogs.  Er was more upset about his arrangement wi’ the Queen of the Gypsies than he was bothered about me getting ‘itched.  Bugger the Queen o’ the Gypsies, I told un. I got the Queen of Exmoor yer to be my lawful wedded wife.” With that he puts down his stick - for the first time ever, as far I know.  I have never seen him without it before - and he reaches out for Delphine’s white-gloved hand. She looks across at me and says: “I remember that moonlit ride over The Chains as if it were yesterday.  I do not know much about the ways of the world, but I would think that a young couple running away like that would be a rare thing in these days of telephones and the like.  What do you say, Mr Writer?  I have never used a telephone, but I’d imagine a young couple today could arrange an elopement without the use of a horse and a ladder.” What can I say?  That I know a couple who’d done the same thing - a car and a ladder - and that somehow I had become involved and ruined the whole romantic story?  This is not the place or the time for that - and anyway, tiny doll-like Delphine has not waited for an answer…  “And how could I have known - in the whirlwind of that night - that my dear Mr Bampfylde would bring me here to this earthly paradise?  You can see what a special place it is.  That is because my darling sweet husband knows things that have been forgotten by the world.  Important things.  The secret ways of nature.  It is not something he has learned - it is something he was born with.  They are things he has always known.  Now they say that we have to move away from here.  But it will mean the death of both of us,” she sighs, her little voice petering out into silence.   Then she appears to wake up and she finishes the thought… “We shall be gone from this earth as certainly as the spinning of the planet is about to extinguish that sunbeam.” How she knows the sun will disappear from the room at this very moment, I cannot tell.  But she does. As she voices the final word the beam of light vanishes as if someone had turned off an electric switch.  Just like that.  Gone, like it never was.  Another silence ensues - and because silences make me nervous, I eventually ask Marmaduke what he’d been doing in the pond earlier. “It’s the fish that live there,” he says softly, in his West Country burr. “They nibble at my toes and at the hairs on my legs. I like the feeling when they do that.” He smiles and I realise in the darkening room why I’d thought Marmaduke’s smile was sweet.  It is because the youth usually carries an expression which is ever so slightly clouded with tragedy on his big rough face - but this vanishes in a trice when the smile wipes it away.  “We will drink elderflower cordial,” announces the woman from high on her chair. At this, Marmaduke mutters approval, turns and disappears through what I can only suppose is some kind of internal door.  Bentley also leaps into action.  In another corner of the dusky kitchen, he lifts a trapdoor and throws a bucket on a rope into the black void beneath. After a second or two the bucket reaches its destination with a splash and Bentley begins the laborious business of hauling it back up.  I wonder why they have no kind if winding apparatus.  Maybe too modern.  Looking around the room, you get the impression that the passing of time has no place here.  The pewter-ware on the ancient oak shelves looks of an age which speaks more of Norman invasions than modern departmental stores.  The furniture is all hand-made; the one exception being Mrs Bampfylde’s singular perch.  There are six chairs in all, and five have been bent and formed from hazel boughs lashed together with honeysuckle vine.  One, nearest the door, still clings to life and sprouts leaves.  The table is a massive affair which probably weighs the best part of half-a-ton, so thick are its rough planks.  But it’s the three denizens who impress me most.  The air of timelessness also hangs about them, like gossamer in early morning mist.  You could imagine Bentley being at large in the hills way before the Huguenots had landed, before the Vikings came to rape and pillage along the coast, before the early Christians came and built their lonely chapels in the remote sea-coombes.  Before Christ himself.  Bentley Bampfylde has that about him which speaks of ancient runes and standing stones.  You have the feeling that - not only is he aware of the dryad in the spring and the naiad in the wood - but that he actually belongs to some older more ancient race himself.  There is nothing in this darkening room that reminds you of the century we dwell in. With one glaring exception, apart from Mrs Bampfylde’s voguish, out-moded clothes, that is… I refer to the anomaly of the bin-liners. “Do you mind if I ask why you wear those dustbin bags?” I ask. “We never used to,” puffs the Bentley, as he pulls the rope.  “But someone keeps leavin’ ‘em at the end o’ the track. For a while we took no notice, and just left ‘em there.  Then one day ‘twas rainin’ and Marmaduke put one on ee’s ‘ead.  They works very well against the rain, you know.” I think about the council refuse men who must be leaving the sacks down at the end of the lane, and how they must wonder why no dustbins are ever placed out for them to collect.  And I wonder about things like rates and community tax.  Surely, nothing like that ever gets paid by these people.  Then, close to where I stand, I notice that, in the darkest part of the room, a flight of wooden steps leads upstairs - or it would do if the aperture through the ceiling had not been blocked by a panel of wood fixed into place with enormous wedged-shaped nails. “We can’t go up there no more,” says Bentley when I ask. “Not since the White Lady moved in. We’ve ‘ad to nail ‘er up to keep ‘er out o’ harm’s way.” I ask if she is a ghost.  “In a way she is, but I’m afraid it’s far worse than that,” pipes Mrs Bampfylde in one of her talking bouts of laughter. “The White Lady is very, very bad indeed,” says Marmaduke, who has reappeared from the dark hole, holding the sort of jug archaeologists find in ancient tumuli. “She was doing bad things and we had to nail her up.” For a moment I wonder about that owl I’d seen flying from one of the upstairs windows. Was that bird the thing they called the White Lady? In fact, I wonder about everything to do with the Bampfyldes.  “Some might say she’s a witch, but us don’t think about her in that kind of way” concludes Bentley. “We never asked the old bugger to come yer, but she’d a-come anyways. And then she caused problems, so we ‘ad to nail ‘er in.” Mrs Bampfylde’s cordial is poured into pewter mugs by the big red hands of Marmaduke, while Bentley adds the cold water he’s drawn from the well.  I have never tasted anything like it.  It is sharp and sweet all at the same time, but there’s also the pungent haunting perfume of creamy white elderflowers.  It is the taste, the very essence, of late spring.  A spring day with a kick in its heels.  After I drain the mug I feel a little odd and wonder what else had gone into the potion. Bentley is talking about his gypsy friends from years ago.  They had known how to deal with spirit-folk who caused trouble.  Especially the woman he called the Queen of the Gypsies.  He says she was at war with them, once upon a time, a long time ago.   “In was a little boy first time I see’d ‘er.  She came in Ralegh’s Cross back-bar an’ hupped ‘er pint down like a man,” says the little man, excited by the memory. “Caw! What a woman she was! Even a little boy like me could see that. You didn’t never want to argue with her, that was vur certain!” His father had horse-traded with the Romany-folk for years, and Bentley declared they were good people.  If you treated them right.  He had always done so and they had helped his family with some of the troublesome spirit people who haunted the hills. “There’s things behind they hedgerows, my boy, that most folk never do see.” “Like what?” I ask. “Like the gentleman-hare I saw not five-yurs ago - dancin’ wi’ a lady in the field just past the wood...” Bentley tells me he’d been walking in the field one morning when he noticed that the sheep had arranged themselves into a semi-circle.  A big horse-shoe.  Everything had stopped still - at least in the old man’s mind.  The birds in the sky, the water in the rivulet.  Even ‘the summer’s play’… Which he explains is the shimmering mirage which ripples the air close to the ground in hot weather. All these moving things stopped still as if time itself were frozen. Then he’d observed something moving in the corner of the field. A woman was entering through the gate down by the lane.  “A proper old-fashioned washer-woman,” he says, explaining how a hare had also run into the field by another gate.  Soon, both these moving things were entering the great horse-shoe of sheep - but the strange thing was that, as the hare came closer, so it began to walk on its hind legs like a man.  In fact, it soon became a man - except that it kept its hairy animal legs.  But the top half metamorphosed into what Bentley claimed was a handsome human being. “What a fine man ee was!” the old man says, as if awe-struck by the memory. “A proper country-gentleman-parson.  And they came together and they embraced and then --- caw… Did’n ’em dance! “I’ve never seen dancin’ like it My Boy!” shouts Bentley, “Not in all me life!” His bright, impish eyes are glazed with the memory.  Quietly now, he adds: “I’ve had a long and happy life up yer on the hills, My Boy. Very happy.” And now shouting again: “But the love and affection they ‘ad for one another! I never seen ort like it! They showered love upon one and t’other...” Now all three Bampfyldes are in tears.  I am.  Silent tears.  An unexpected emotional backwash or turbulence which, perhaps in my case, has been heightened by whatever mildly hallucinogenic substance is in the cordial.  I can hear only the evensong of birds.  Had anyone else told such a story, it would have sounded like the ramblings of a mad man.  But when the words are delivered in the old man’s high-pitched Brendon Hill sing-song, they ring true as the bells of the churches in the vale. There is necromancy, sorcery, magic here. That is what I am thinking as I leave.  I turn as I walk across the grass to my car and Marmaduke is there - standing in the black gap between the leaves of ivy and honeysuckle where the kitchen entrance is, waving slowly and smiling his big sweet smile.   Above his head, in the dark place where the owl had been, something white flits quickly out of view.  Whatever it is, it is not a bird.  Something else. Eloping, perhaps, from this life to the next.

We are entering the darkest days of winter as we come to the end of the present lockdown and head for an uncertain Christmas - after which January might see us worrying about yet more restrictions. Not the most jolly way of starting a food article, but if you are a fighter or one of those half-glass-full-instead-of-empty sort of people, you’ll be planning your own personal counter-attack in the war against doom and gloom.  One easy way to do that is to add sunshine and zest to your diet. Indeed, it’s a wise thing to do every winter because consuming lively raw foodstuffs, such as those found in dishes like a daily salad, can really make a difference to our health and our immune systems.  Of course, supermarkets sell imported lettuces and tomatoes, which are fine in their own way - but things grown under plastic thousands of miles away won’t necessarily have that oomph and zing that you need to freshen your palate and you have to wonder about the environmental cost of flying in bulk foods by airliner. However, there are plenty of ways to enliven diets with lighter brighter foods without wrecking the planet.  And by the way, please don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love the heavy soups, stews, casseroles and roasts of wintertime - but why not have, say, a dish of freshly made coleslaw on the side? Slaws are a style of winter salads that you will find in cuisines across Europe and beyond.  The classic coleslaw that we know so well is based on a creamy or mayonnaise-based dressing, but there are countless other versions dressed with vinaigrette and other types of edible lubrication. Slaw comes from the Dutch sla, short for salad, but travel next door to Germany and you will find a similar dish called Krautsalat, which includes apples and onions.  There are literally thousands of ways of creating fresh-tasting, sparkling, crunchy winter salads without having to rely on a lettuce which has seen the insides of a Boeing 747 cargo plane.   Apart from various types of cabbage, plenty of veg from the winter root crop are capable of starring in a salad.  Many rely on the practice of grating - but it is one that rather “grates” on me, if you’ll forgive the pun. Julienning is far superior. By which I mean, cutting root vegetables into crunchy little matchsticks… It seems to maintain more of the original sense of, say, a humble carrot, than the act of grating. The same applies to a beetroot, or a hunk of earthy celeriac. Perhaps that is why you will often find julienned vegetables in the cuisines of people who really care about food. The French, for example - who presumably invented the word - make a great song and dance about their remoulade: that pungent, creamy, mustardy winter celeriac salad that you will see being sold in delicatessen and charcuteries across that large and productive country. Remoulade is delicious and also very easy to make. The usual way of avoiding all the knife work involved with julienning is to use a mandolin - all well and good in its own way, but they are a faff to wash and of course they are notorious when it comes to slicing into careless fingers. Do yourself a favour if you haven’t already got one and buy a little handheld julienning device. They look like those Swiss vegetable peelers, but have a little row of steel teeth beneath the cutting bar. Simply pull the tool along a carrot (or across the creamy white fresh of a peeled celeriac root) and you will instantly see an impressive nest of julienne strips piling up as the result. Making enough for a two-portion salad is the work of seconds.  It’s not just remoulade that gets made in my house at this time of year. Years ago I was island-hopping off the coast of Thailand when I was served, in a jungle hut, with the best salad I have ever eaten. It consisted mainly of julienne vegetables, but was helped out with a handful of savoury smoked, dried, fish flakes – not common ingredient to be found in Westcountry shops, but easily obtainable of the Internet in the form of Dashi No Moto, the most popular of Japanese stocks. This bonito flavoured powder is used in a wide variety of dishes - most famously miso soup - but can be sprinkled onto a salad where it will mix with the citrus dressing to give a smoky taste. The salad also contained bean shoots which are now available in all British supermarkets and which really do add an amazing punch of raw goodness to any salad. But here’s a tip: as the thin white sprouts age in the bag their little roots and leaves turn increasingly yellow and brown. This will add an unwelcome bitterness if they’re to be eaten raw - so spend a few minutes pulling off the offending ends with your fingers to produce pure white shoots. Bean sprouts are also fabulous in stir-fries which - when you think about it - are really hot salads. The careful finger pulling process is not quite so necessary here as cooking sweeten the sprouts anyway, but it’s still best to get rid of as many brown ends as you can. For stir fries I do this by washing the bean sprouts with much vigour in a salad spinner, which I then revolved at the speed of a steam engine… This process will get rid of three quarters of the unwanted bitter ends.   There was something about that Thai salad… It was somehow life re-affirming. It reached parts of my inner spirit that I hardly knew existed. I've been trying to emulate it ever since. Not always successfully. In fact, it’s taken me years to evolve my version of the dish. Midwinter Salad for Two I’m not going to be exacting here - simply julienne enough veg to make a mix that looks balanced and is to your taste.  3 carrots half a celeriac root half a cucumber handful of washed bean sprouts 1 shallot garlic clove small thumb of ginger 2 limes (zest of one finely grated, and juice of both) a dash of good oil (your choice, today I used a light truffle infused olive oil) 1 sachet of Dashi No Moto (available on the Internet) squeeze of wasabi paste pinch of sea salt and freshly ground white pepper handful of cashews, roughly chopped Peel carrots and the celeriac and wash half a cucumber. Julienne all three (only go down to the central seed core in the cucumber, then turn it over and do the other side until you are left only with the seeds which you discard).  Immediately toss the julienne strips in a bowl with the lime juice and zest. Add the finely chopped shallot and bean sprouts and, using a micro-grater, add the garlic and ginger paste - and also the sachet of Dashi No Moto, plus the oil.  In the meantime heat the chopped cashews in dry pan - be careful not to burn them as they can turn from gold to black quickly. Let them rest on a plate for 10 minutes, which helps the cashews to crisp. Toss the whole lot together adding the wasabi paste and seasoning to taste. Options: you can do different things with this basic zing-filled salad - for quick lunch I’ll often bung in a can of tuna, a few dry-fried bacon pieces, or a selection of other dry roasted nuts (chopped walnuts or almonds) and seeds. It also makes a perfect accompaniment for something simple like hot-smoked chicken or a fast fried fillet of sea-bass that’s been marinaded in garlic and ginger. If you’ve still mint in the garden ,and it will take this basic dish into another stratosphere.

For us it was upwards and onwards – this time to the St Etienne Cantalès Lake where we were to do a walk around the Puech des Ouilhes peninsula. The lake is in fact a reservoir – a rather beautiful wood-lined one – and it has all the usual refinements the French love to go in for. Give them a watering hole and the French will erect diving boards, float pedaloes, create artificial sand beaches, build cafes - and great gangs of well behaved teenagers will droop around looking ethereal and beautiful. After another night’s stay at the Auberge de Concasty we were off to the area’s capital the next morning. Aurillac is a splendid and ancient market town built on a river - and we were given a tour of its vast cathedral and the older districts before being taken to a perfume making place in a backstreet. Lunch at Les 4 Saisons in a quiet backstreet was a masterpiece of French cooking, primarily because the main course consisted of a huge lump of rare beef which had left this mortal coil while being part of a Salers bullock. I’ll tell you more about these first class beef and cheese producing beasts because now it was upwards and onwards again – this time miles and miles, higher and higher, up into big hills which you could even call mountains since their peaks are over 6000 feet. And what were we to visit in all this vertiginous glory? A special museum that extols the virtues of the aforementioned Salers cattle. At which point I must ask: why haven’t we got a special museum to highlight the virtues of Red Devon cattle? I’ll tell you: because the French are much better at celebrating their natural wonders than we are – and also because they seem extraordinarily adept at persuading the EU to part with essential funding. Anyway, the museum was interesting as it explained the transhumance which used to take place and to some extent still does – although modern farmers no longer driver their cattle up into the mountains for summer on foot, but take the beasts up in the back of trucks. If I liked eating Salers beef and also liked learning about the strain of cattle - I liked visiting the town which gives them the name even more. Salers is often said to be the most beautiful village in France – sometimes it gets beaten by some place on the other side of the mountains. Think: medieval Dunster – but perched vertically above the meeting of two huge deep mountain valleys.   It’s a bit touristy, for sure, but I liked the old place and all its cobbled streets and ramparts. And I loved my suite at the Hotel Saluces – one of the more elderly buildings in town – by which I mean, it probably isn’t a day under 1000 years old. The next morning we went hiking in one of the vast valleys – called the Cirque de Récusset – and then climbed higher towards the mighty Pas de Peyrol. Up here I had one of my Les Grand Meaulnes moments – or, at least, a vibrant memory from my youth. The cow-herds who used to bring the Salers cattle up here would stay all summer tending the cows, milking them and making cheese – and in order to do so they occupied solid little stone buildings called burons. Some 3,000 burons once peppered the hills of the Auvergne, now only three are occupied by cattlemen making cheese. However, one isolated buron has been preserved intact and, with the help of a solar panel on the roof, even has a kind of interactive information centre inside. The first thing you hear is the disembodied voice of a cattleman singing a truly haunting song. I recognised it instantly as being one of a collection of folk songs entitled the Chants of the Auvergne which were collated and arranged for soprano voice and orchestra or piano by Joseph Canteloube between 1923 and 1930. In Britain this music became famous in 1972 after it was used in a well known Dubonnet TV advert – and it was the first bit of “classical” music which I went out and bought. Hearing the raw original version up here on this lonely mountainside sent pleasant shivers down my spine… The cattle still munch on the mountain-sides – indeed, they reckon there are five to every one human in the Cantal. But, then, these people do love their cheese. In fact they like it so much it is served in places like Le Bailliage restaurant in Salers and in the Hotel Beau Site Garabit (where I spent my final night) as a special course before pudding. And don’t think of ruining your cheese with bread or crackers… The people of the Cantal just eat the stuff on its own in big flavoursome slabs. I can think of worse ways to die. But then I can think of worse fates than being lost forever in the Cantal.    Fact File Martin went to the Cantal as a guest of Atout France – see www.auvergne-tourism.com and www.cantaltourisme.fr ATOUT FRANCE Email: info.uk@atout-france.fr

There are times in life when you can find yourself humming along to David Byrne’s famous lines… And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself in another part of the world And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house With a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, well How did I get here? Well, I wasn’t in a shotgun shack exactly - whatever that is… But I was in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak. And there were times when I did wonder how the hell I got there - maybe because I originally went there fascinated by the story of the White Rajahs - a family from Dartmoor, who literally became emperors. And I found a plaque, and a bar with the Brooke name attached. But I enjoyed a great many adventures getting to see those two unmemorable things… Later I wrote the article bellow in which you can learn all about the White Rajahs from Devon - but my adventure was one of several trips I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy in Malaysia and its islands. This one began with the most amazing firework display I’ve ever seen - it went on and on for many hours - which was a bit of a waste on me because I am not the most ardent fans of pyrotechnics. But there were a lot of other things to enjoy, first in mainland Malaysia, then off to the south in Borneo where the White Rajahs used to rule the roost. Food being one thing. Lots of interesting food like sea-cucumbers and edible jelly fish. And then there was the strange sometimes rather little city of Kuching. I like the place and had lots of fun visiting amazing restaurants and bars before heading off into the high jungle… There are three graves tucked away in a corner of a lonely Dartmoor graveyard which represent one of this region’s greatest ever stories. The tombs contain the remains of three kings who had the power of life and death over countless thousands. Collectively the men who lie there are known as the White Rajahs. Many West Country folk interested in the region’s history will have heard of them and perhaps know a little about the remarkable Brooke family - but there is no way anyone could understand just how big their story is without going half way around the planet to visit distant Sarawak. It is now one of two Malay states on the vast island of Borneo, but Sarawak used to be kingdom of the Brookes - and to this day their name survives long, loud and highly conspicuous in that distant, hot, humid, rain-forested land. Go to Sarawak’s capital, Kuching, as I did recently and you will see evidence of the Brooke dynasty everywhere. There are streets and roads named after the family, trendy bistros bear their name, dockyards, boats, bridges, roundabouts, institutes... Indeed just about everything imaginable that has some kind of public face or input will have at least one example named Brooke. And if the Brooke title doesn’t do it then there are places named after the Christian names of the three White Rajahs - James, Charles and Vyner - who all now lie in peace in the graveyard of St Leonard’s Church at cool and quiet Sheepstor. But it’s not just in the physical presence of place names that the Brooke dynasty remains highly conspicuous in Sarawak. It’s right there at the heart of the way in which people think and talk about their country. You hear constant reference to the “Brooke Era” or to the “Post Brooke Era”. For Sarawakians the dynasty remains a much more important part of everyday life than, say, our own historical link with the Tudors - or even, nowadays, to our referencing of concepts like “post-war Britain”. The men who rest at Sheepstor were everything to Sarawak. They ran it, they built it, they extended it - they just about invented it. In the past dozen years writing for this newspaper I have referred to the White Rajahs on numerous occasions, simply because I’ve always been in awe of the pure exoticism of their story - but never did I imagine they held such massive sway over an entire nation.  When I was invited to Sarawak by the Malaysian government recently to take a look at the eco-tourism they’re developing in the magnificent rainforests there, I promised myself I’d grab the chance to follow in the footsteps of the White Rajahs and put aside some time to see if any trace of them remained. There was no delving necessary. As I say, I was confronted by Brooke-this-that-and-everything-else the moment I entered the small and charming city of Kuching. I say small, but the place is beginning to sprawl in the most anarchic and materialistic of ways – the sort of thing none of the Brooke’s would have ever allowed. They were a disciplined and controlling trio - nothing much happened in the 105 years they ruled the roost there that they didn’t create, inspire, ban or veto. After talking to various people in Sarawak I think you could say that the Brooke Dynasty could otherwise be described as a benign dictatorship. They controlled everything - sometimes with a rod of iron, sometimes with violence - but they did it for the general good. And I came away with the impression that, although no such dynasty would be welcome now, the Brookes are generally regarded as having been a good thing rather than out-and-out bad - and that their form of colonial imperialism, though riddled with faults, eccentricities and failures, helped establish Sarawak to be the rather civilised place it is today. So who were these people who’ve now turned to dust in deepest, dampest, Dartmoor - and how on Earth did they get to be monarchs of such a distant land? The story has been written many times before - in fact there are even references to it in famous tales like The King and I and Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim. is said to be based on James Brooke, the first White Rajah - and, believe me, by the end it had all become very eccentric and colourful indeed. But here’s a brief outline of what must be one of the best ever tales to be related to the West Country: just under 200 years ago James Brooke was trying his luck as a trader in the Far East, and not doing particularly well at it. But in 1833 he inherited £30,000 - a vast sum back then - and he spent some of the money on a 142-ton schooner called The Royalist. Five years later he was in Borneo where he found the town of Kuching facing a tribal uprising - he promptly offered to help the Sultan of Brunei and, with his crew, was able to help bring about a peaceful settlement. The Sultan was impressed and - to cut a long story short - eventually offered Brooke the title Rajah of Sarawak after the Englishman had threatened him with military force to come good with his promise. Once Brooke was on the throne, he wasn’t about to give it up - on the contrary, he set about extending his influence and his domain. He formed a proper Western-style administration and civil-service, drew up laws and fought piracy which was endemic in those parts. In 1847 Brooke returned temporarily to England where he was granted all manner of great honours - and also given an estate at Burrator on Dartmoor as a thank you from a grateful British nation for his work in enlarging our influence in the Far East  Back in Sarawak, Brooke took charge of what amounted to 3,000 square miles of swamp, jungle and river, much of it populated by various tribes who were basically still living in the Bronze Age. They marked important events in their lives by taking the heads of other people in the community. If a Dayak husband failed to present a human skull to his wife after the birth of a child then it was feared that the newborn would meet with illness or even death. Likewise, no young Dayak warrior ever went courting without first donning an animal mask and skins and ambushing a fellow, often a woman or child from his own community. He then made his intended a present of his victim’s skull. Such acts were quickly outlawed by Brooke - as the new nation’s self-appointed judge, he presided over court sessions in the front room of his own house, a hastily assembled plank-and-thatch affair in Kuching. With his pet orang-utan, Betsy, scampering around in the background, the legal proceedings attracted much interest in Sarawak, although not for the reasons Brooke had intended. For many, the main draw was the opportunity to place bets on the fate of those on trial including, in one bizarre case, a man-eating crocodile. This creature stood accused of killing a court translator who had toppled drunkenly into the river one night and, after much weighing of the arguments for and against its punishment, Brooke solemnly recorded the verdict in his journal: “I decided that he should be instantly killed without honours and he was dispatched accordingly; his head severed from his trunk and the body left exposed as a warning to all the other crocodiles that may inhabit these waters.” Brooke never married - indeed, Google him today and you will find mention of his rather worrying liking for very young men - but before his death in 1868 he nominated as heir his sister’s son Charles Johnson, a former sailor, who changed his surname to Brooke upon becoming Rajah. A beneficent and much-loved ruler who was 39 when he came to power, Charles extended the boundaries of the land under his control into the interior until Sarawak was the size of England. He also abolished slavery and built roads, waterworks and even — in the style of a true Victorian — a railway. He also encouraged his British officers to take native women as lovers in the hope that they would become ‘sleeping dictionaries’ who could teach them the local language. But at home he was somewhat less easy-going. Charles was “a queer fish” according to his British wife, Margaret - an understated description of a man who had lost his eye in a hunting accident and replaced it with a glass one, taken out of a stuffed albatross. Charles did all manner of odd things – for example he forbade his sons to eat jam because he deemed it effeminate. His marriage became strained after he killed his wife’s pet doves and served them in a pie for her supper one night. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Margaret spent much of his 50-year period of rule back home in England - seldom seen without a green parrot perched on her wrist, she lived in a house near Ascot called Greyfriars and became obsessed with finding wives for their three sons. She did so by inviting eligible young women to join them in forming a musical ensemble known as the Greyfriars Orchestra. Among those attending the first rehearsal in 1902 was the Honourable Sylvia Brett — daughter of the 2nd Viscount Esher — later to become known by newspapers of the day as Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters. Although she had no musical skills, Sylvia’s contribution to the Greyfriars Orchestra was as a percussionist. She obviously performed with beguiling effect, because one day the Brookes’ eldest son, Vyner, then 28, made his move, asking if he might tune her drum. A subsequent courtship resulted in their marriage in February 1911, after which they set sail for Sarawak By then, the Rajah’s Palace was an imposing affair, perched on a hill overlooking the river in Kuching and comprising three airy bungalows with wide verandahs. The couple would sleep through the afternoon, then have tea and play tennis or golf in the cool of the evening. It might have been an idyllic existence living there as son and daughter-in-law of the Rajah, had Sylvia produced a son to ensure the succession. She became pregnant almost immediately, but the child she gave birth to in November 1911 was a girl — much to Rajah Charles’s disappointment. The following year, however, he received news from England that filled him with joy. His second son Bertram had married Gladys Palmer, an heiress to the Huntley & Palmers biscuit fortune, and she had a boy called Anthony who would serve as an heir if Sylvia failed to produce a son for Vyner.  Sylvia went on to have two more daughters, but no sons - and the antics of Princesses Gold, Pearl and Baba, as they were nicknamed by locals, would for decades fascinate the press in both Europe and America. By the 1930s Sarawak had become something of a music-hall joke and as he grew older, Vyner (who’d succeeded his father Charles) appeared to lose interest in the day-to-day business of government and considered abdicating.  Since his brother Bertram had suffered a nervous breakdown and was incapable of rule, his natural successor was his nephew, Anthony. In 1939, during one of Vyner’s annual pilgrimages to England for the flat-racing season, the 23-year-old heir apparent was left in charge of the country for six months, but was never made Rajah. He made a good impression on the British Colonial Office, despite his aunt Ranee Sylvia accusing him of inflated self-importance. She reported, among other things, that he had attached a gold cardboard crown to his car and ordered ox-carts and rickshaws to draw aside as he passed.  He denied these charges, but he was never allowed to inherit the rule of Sarawak because in 1946 Vyner agreed to cede it to the British Crown in return for a substantial financial settlement for him and his family. So it became Britain’s last colonial acquisition - and by then it was a broken nation having endured some of the worst horrors of the Japanese empire building in the Second World War. After failing in a long legal battle to have the sale of Sarawak reversed, Anthony began a second career as a self-styled ‘ambassador-at-large for the people of the world’, travelling the globe and campaigning for peace.  By then all three White Rajahs were lying in their final resting place at Sheepstor. Go there now and it is quite impossible to understand or imagine what power the three men had on the exotic and distant nation which is now part of Malaysia. Likewise, if you describe their modest Dartmoor burial plot to people in Sarawak they will gaze at you in disbelief. My rainforest guide Henry was appalled: “Surely,” he said, “the Brookes have tombs in one of your great cathedrals?” He couldn’t believe the photographs I showed him of Sheepstor. It is the very antithesis of the hot jungle where the Brookes held so much sway for 105 long, sweaty and eccentric years.

First day out of the second British pandemic lockdown - and nothing’s changed much. It’s cold, grey and raining - and we’re not allowed to go to the pub for a pint. So I am. continuing my memories of travelling around rural France instead… At Auberge de Concasty, Martine Causse’s family have converted a large old farm in to what we’d describe as a boutique hotel. I know the French like to have their own terms – but somehow “auberge” doesn’t do justice to the luxury of the place.   Martine uses words like “harmony, serenity and charm” to describe her establishment – but somehow the mix is more than that. There’s a swimming pool, there’s quality linen sheets, and so on – and there’s a restaurant and terrace where her own cookery is served – but somehow this place is rural France at its very best. We stayed for two nights while exploring the area. And our first full day included what, for me, was the biggest treat of all. We were to spend the morning at a country market in the town of Maurs in the company of a brilliant young chef called Renaud Darmarin. I can’t think of a better way of wiling away a few hours. The beauty of going around a proper country market with a good chef is that they will know all the very many things that you don’t – like which trader is best for cheeses and why they are best, who sells the finest ripe apricots, where to buy superior fish, snails, meat and wine, and so on…   Best of all, they will cook all this stuff for you. I loved the entire experience so much Renaud gave me an open invitation to spend time at his restaurant being a general dogs-body on work-experience – and who knows, I might just take him up on the offer. Here’s an example of how a chef can introduce you to the wonders of an area in a way that no one else can. Announcing he now wanted to buy cheese, Renaud set off down the busy sunlit Maurs main-street passing endless classy looking stalls selling assorted dairy products. Eventually, right down at the end of the street where the shoppers were thinning out, we came across a shabby looking van where a young woman was selling her own homemade cheese. “She might be young,” Renaud whispered to me. “But she has won every award going. Her cheeses are brilliant.” And they were. I imagine it won’t be long before she is able to claim a better pitch at the market. Anyway, after a couple of hours of Renaud explaining why this product was better than that, etc – we headed off to his restaurant in a neighbouring village. Which, of course, meant a 25 minute drive. Marcolès is a famous medieval village (think: Dunster in the middle of nowhere) and to be honest the Auberge de la Tour where Renaud cooks looks just like any other inn that you can find in the main square of any French community. I won’t go on about the three hour lunch that we somehow put down after a morning of sampling everything at the market – suffice to say it was one of the three best meals I’ve had in 2012. After the giant repast we travelled just a few miles from Marcolès to call on an Italian couple who run an extraordinary bed and breakfast establishment called La Clairiere. I say extraordinary because I have rarely visited a B&B which makes you feel quite so much at home. Surgeon Alessandro - who lives there with his wife Camilla, and their children Blu and Lupo - told me why his family has left Milan for the French good life. They’ve certainly found it. They even have a separate garden flat in their big country house which they rent out at special low rates to anyone who has some artistic project - literary or otherwise – which perhaps I’ll take for a week when I do my week’s work experience with Renaud. In my dreams. Le Grand Meaulnes style dreams, I’m afraid…

If there is one thing I really miss in these days of lockdown it is setting out somewhere foreign with nowhere particular to go - and just going… There’s a French novel called Le Grand Meaulnes which has accrued cult status among young people of a more romantic bent – it’s about a youthful wanderer who, somewhere in rural France, comes across an estate where a party is being celebrated, he falls in love with a beautiful girl and spends the rest of his life trying to find both her and the magical party venue. Alain Fournier’s novel is a muse upon many levels – the vagaries of lost youth, the untouchable ephemeral nature of lost love – but one rather prosaic thought has always bothered me about the story… It’s this: how could anyone be stupid enough not to be able to find a place where they’d once been? But I say this as a West Country person – I come from a peninsula that has marked confines of shorelines, escarpments and river systems. France is different. It is huge. Nevertheless, having travelled extensively in that country for many years, the question about Le Grand Meaulnes has continued to bother me. Until now. For I have been dallying deep inside the rural Auvergne – journeying through its most beautiful, mysterious, heady, sumptuous, bewitching, area called the Cantal. And now I know why the wanderer could never find his hallowed place… The realisation began to dawn on me shortly after I’d arrived at Rodez regional airport – we’d driven to a village called Mourjou in the heart of the Cantal’s chestnut growing area where I’d met the writer Peter Graham – and it was the way he talked about our next destination that began to put me in mind of Le Grand Meaulnes. “So you’re going to stay at Auberge de Concasty? It’s not far - near a neighbouring village just 20 minutes up the road,” said Peter. I was trying to imagine a neighbouring village in the West Country being a whopping 20 minutes drive away as we meandered along ridges, down valleys, across hilltops, through forests, across streams, between hayfields, past isolated farms and the occasional petit chateau. The journey went on for so long that if we’d been travelling in most corners of the West Country, we’d have crossed county borders. Peter regarded the excellent Auberge de Concasty as being in the next village - because it, more-or-less, was. And every kilometre of the way I became more convinced that this must really be the world of Le Grand Meaulne – so unutterably and mysteriously beautiful was the endless countryside. I don’t get lost easily – years of walks writing has sharpened my sense of direction – and yet I’d have become instantly befuddled geographically speaking had I been dropped off in one of those endless country roads. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t have minded in the least. I can hardly recall an afternoon of travelling in the heat when I was happier. We’d been to Mourjou, by the way, to meet Peter and to learn about the Cantal’s once important chestnut industry. The village – whose name derives from an ancient term “Monjovis” meaning Mount of Joy – may only have 329 inhabitants, but it also boasts a splendid museum dedicated to the delicious and useful nut which once dominated the region’s economy. There wasn’t much the locals couldn’t do with chestnuts or assorted bi-products. They made everything - from flour and bread out of the flesh of the dried and pounded chestnut - to roof-tiles from chestnut wood. All this and much more did we learn before being introduced to the charming English writer who has lived in the village for longer than almost anyone else. Peter has written a book called Mourjou, The Life and Food of an Auvergne Village – which, having bought a copy for £5 off the internet, I can warmly recommend it.

Another walk for a rainy day in the West Country… Lonely, remote, dramatic, sweeping stretches of coastline… Such places are one of the hallmarks of our peninsula. Wherever you find a well-trodden bay full of tourists and sandcastles, you can be sure that a wild and little-visited shore will be lying not much more than a gull's shriek away.  Especially when it is raining. Which is what it was doing in stair-rods the other day when I found myself on the untrodden expanse of shore that stretches west from Westward Ho! It's ideal walking territory, but Clovelly is the only bit most people ever get to see. From the village's fine old stone quay you get a great view of the perpendicular, wooded, coast that heaves the county's northern-western shoulder at the sea.  To east of Clovelly there are places like Buck’s Mills and Peppercombe - which are the twin venues for this walk.  To find the former you must go to Buck’s Cross on the A39 between Bideford and Clovelly. A lane drops seawards from here down through beautiful steep woodlands and just before it reaches the hamlet of Buck’s Mills there’s a car park.   Climb out of your car and all trace of the 21st century, is gone. You find yourself in a sylvan world of magical beauty in which a brook skips and scurries down a dark ravine in its brief journey to the sea. As it plunges it passes cottages that punctuate the valley as if they were placed by some clever pastoral landscape designer. It is all most alluring - but I’d made up my mind to do a circular walk and so turned right where two wooded combes meet at the heart of the hamlet. By walking up through paths in the woods I was able to reach Lower Worthy Gate-  then, by turning left, we climbed further to Higher Worthy Gate and so reached the tiny quiet lane that runs east over to Peppercombe.  Eventually we came to the small spur which departs this lane to the right at the hamlet of , and a few yards down came to a public footpath on the right. This took us down through woods to the depths of Peppercombe-proper where we turned left again down the track that leads to the sea. The area was bought by the National Trust in 1988, and was all part of the large Portledge Estate. The strangely named Pine-Coffin family ruled the roost here ever since they acquired the land during Henry II's reign, back in the mid-12th century. Peppercombe, according to a Trust leaflet, not only boasts rare lichens but: “There are woodland plants such as moschatel, sweet woodruff and wood millet. Within the areas of open grassland, marsh orchid, early purple orchid, ragged robin and betony are found, as well as the pearl bordered fritillary and dingy skipper butterflies.” Exotic stands of bamboo and fig lurk in the coombe adding a visual whiff of something as oriental as opium - their verdant luxuriance, somehow just as acceptable in this Atlantic glade as they would be in some far-flung oasis or paddy-field. The gardeners of the great estate put them here and the exotics have flourished. Call me a romantic fool, but I like the way in which a big, elegant, ever-rustling display of bamboo manages to warm the cold cockles of my northern heart. Towards the bottom of the coombe our track joins the South West Coast Path and, shortly after, follows it almost vertically up the wooded hill to the left. But, before you ascend, take my advice and go down to the beach. It's a stiff climb indeed that takes you west up from the bungalow to Sloo Wood, but once you're up there it's fairly level going along to Gauter Pool above Worthygate Wood.   We continued along the coast to eventually make the long descent down to Buck's Mills. There used to be a small quay here after a break in the rocks, known as the Gut, was created by blasting the rock with gunpowder in the Elizabethan era. this created a small harbour for fishing boats and later, in the 18th century, the place was used for the import of culm which was burnt in the kilns you can still see to produce fertiliser. The massive kilns that still dominate this steep coastal demesne, almost like ruined castles, were used to burn this mix of anthracite and limestone. But it must have been damned hard work hauling both the raw materials up from the beach, then taking the resultant mix on up the combe. The Braund family used to rule the roost in this valley and I am told that King Cottage was once the home of Captain James Braund who was known as the King of Bucks. Neither he nor his ghost - or anyone else for that matter - was around the day we called by. But I did learn about the Braund Society which was founded in 1982 by the late Cyril John Braund to “promote the study of the history, biography and genealogy of the Braund family and to encourage friendship and fellowship between its members”.  I read that some claim the Braunds - noted for their dark hair, broad heads and brown eyes - owed their existence to local women who married survivors of a Spanish Armada ship, wrecked on the North Devon coast more than 400 years ago. However, I am told this myth is debated by the Braund Society which claims that documentary evidence shows the clan lived in Devon long before the 16th century.  For some reason I rather like the idea of swarthy folk haunting this lonesome shore and using its natural ingredients, perhaps, to make a North Devon form of paella and other Spanish seafood.   But the Spanish sun seemed a long way away the day we were there - heavy May-time rain had settled in for the day and we made our way up through the hamlet as fast as we could - happy at least to have enjoyed a pleasant taster of North Devon's secret coast.

Looking ahead just a bit and thinking about this year’s stranger than normal Christmas, I’ve started thinking about the kind of walks I’d be doing during the festive period. Maybe I’m in a minority here, but I like my Christmas festivities to be snug and cosy and traditional. I like log fires, comforting midwinter food and something mulled and tasty to drink. But everything in life should be about balance, which means that my outdoor activities are best done on the wild side.  Bring on the December gales or the snow and ice, I say. And let me walk in places where you get to see Nature at her most extreme.   Extremities don’t come more edgy than Hartland Point. It is the place where the soft shires of England seem to finally give way to the ravages of the Atlantic. Where the Anglo Saxon gives way to the Celtic. Where the West Country musters and hunches its massive shoulder to the wilderness of the waves. Hartland Point is one of the region’s great corners. A glimpse at a map of the West Country will reveal it in a trice, for it is the northern apex of the peninsula’s vast triangle. You approach the charming town of Hartland thinking you must be close to the famous Point, when a sign tells you that there are still five more long miles to go. And so you drive on, forever westward, until you see the breathtaking view from the car park at Hartland Point.  Well worth the entry price compared with some of the region’s other parking spots. From which other car park will you see seals frolicking and doing whatever seals do, from the comfort of your vehicle? You can at Hartland, although a good pair of binoculars are advisable as the seals are a long, long way below. An interpretation board greets the walker heading off towards the Point, and the first thing you learn is that the narrow road down to the lighthouse is out of bounds to the public. You also learn that Hartland Point is further away from a railway station than any other place in Devon, and that it marks the beginning - or end - of the Bristol Channel. Basically this walk follows the Coast Path south along Blagdon and then Upright Cliff, before crossing the deep valley to cut inland of the strange spur called Smoothlands. Then proceed around Blegberry to Blackpool Mill where a footpath climbs inland above Berryhill Wood to the lane at Markadon. Here a track sets off across the fields north to the farm at Blegberry where another lane leads east and then north down into the deep coombe so that it can join the bridleway that eventually climbs back up to Blagdon Farm, which is more-or-less where you began. Sounds complicated but a glance at Ordnance Survey's Explorer Map 126 will clarify the route and show you just how simple it is. We walked out to the Point and, rather dangerously - so we cannot recommend it to readers - scrambled out onto the high rocks above the lighthouse. Do not even think about this detour if you suffer the slightest twinge of vertigo. You’ll see the remains of a shipwreck in the region lying on its side just to the west of the Point. The entire stern section of the cargo ship Joanna is just underneath the cliffs and you can gaze down at the massive superstructure and wonder at the power of the waves that hurled this mighty thing to its destruction. A quarter of a mile along the shore you will see the bow section, with a single mast pointing like a forlorn and accusative finger at the sea that did for it. The Joanna foundered here on 31st December 1982 within hailing distance of the lighthouse. As a New Year treat her crew got a helicopter ride on a chopper from Chivenor. The three officers were later taken off by the Clovelly lifeboat. She was carrying wheat to Barry in South Wales when she came to grief, so you’d think they might call this Wheat Bay. I say that because the great sweeping bight east of Hartland Point is for some reason called Barley Bay. It was around this that we then walked to National Trust owned land at East Titchberry. Here there's another impressive indentation in the cliff-lined coast, called Shipload Bay. Exactly which ship and which load, no one has been unable to establish: you can take your choice from hundreds of vessels wrecked in these parts. After all, Hartland Point was, for centuries, known as "The Sailors' Grave". The first documented wreck around here occurred in 1321 and since then the razor rocks, have been piling them high with regular monotony. Man himself was responsible for a good many of the sinkings: in the First World War this was a favourite hunting ground for German U-boats and between 1914 and 18 no fewer than 268 vessels were sunk by the Wolf Pack in the Bristol Channel - the majority in the vicinity of Hartland Point. After walking the basic route described we headed back north wondering what the giant 150-foot mushroom is doing perched on top of North Cliff. The folk flying large aeroplanes many thousands of feet above know more about this than walkers - it is part of the country's air-traffic-control network guiding the airliners in from the Atlantic. The mushroom, and the old lighthouse hundreds of feet below, somehow underline the impression that you are very much on the edge of things out here on the very edge of a West Country consumed by Christmas. Fact File Basic Hike: circular route from Hartland Point to Blackpool Mill and back via inland paths. Recommended Map: Ordnance Survey Explorer 126. Distance and going six miles. About the abbey Much of the landscape we see in today’s walk belongs to the Stuckley family of Hartland Abbey. You must check the website ( http://www.hartlandabbey.com ) for opening times but I think it’s one of the most charming and interesting historic houses in the region.  Cue: pub at the quay If wild is what you’re after today’s walk will supply it - and there’s even a watering hole located in one of the most exposed places in the entire region for lunch. Check out http://hartlandquayhotel.co.uk for info on the pub at Hartland Quay.  Jump for Johns If a picnic is what you’d like to enjoy while walking on the wild side in North Devon, check at the amazing John’s delicatessen conveniently located at both Appledore and Instow ( http://www.johnsofinstow.co.uk )