TGO Challenge 2009 A Walk from Glenuig to Montrose Day 1 My note book says we left at eight. That seems a remarkably quick getaway for me, but I know we left well before nine because I questioned Ian whether we should leave before the stipulated nine o’clock start time. In any case Ian phoned up Roger to let him know the two of us were starting, and we set off along the road towards the first mountain – Roshven – from where a rugged mountain ridge winds its way eastward. As we walked we became so engrossed in conversation that we walked much further along the road than we should have and realising our mistake had to climb over a fence and struggle up through a very steep wood to reach the slopes of Roshven. If taking the wrong turn so early in the walk was a bit worrying, the scramble up through the wood was great fun - we had to pull ourselves up with our hands it was so steep. Emerging from the wood we followed a natural line up and to the right until we got onto the ridge from where it was just a very long slog up a steep slope to the top of Roshven. Just before the top Ian shouted “Ptarmigan!” and I turned to see something that seemed all wings, claws and beak plummeting to the ground. To be fair it was hardly ideal flying conditions, and if at sea level it had seemed that the wind was easing off, up here it was still blowing half a gale and freezing. There was a scattering of snow and the cairn was nicely iced up. Roshven is 2895’ (878m) high. Not a tremendous height, but we had climbed all the way from sea level. We set off in an easterly direction along the ridge and straight away found that whilst the seaward windblown side of the hill only had a scattering of snow, the leeward side had enough snow to make things decidedly slippery, and we were both to have our feet shoot out from under us several times before the day was done. Given the alarmingly steep drops that sometimes appeared to either side this made it necessary to proceed with caution. The drop from Roshven to the Bealach an Fiona (2313’ 701m) (bealach = pass) seemed much further, and a much greater drop than I remembered from a previous visit, and this was the case all day, partly because of us having to travel slowly and carefully. At the very draughty bealach we stopped for lunch, watching the clouds race across the cliffs of An Stac. The very steep pull up to Sgurr na Ba Glaise warmed me up a little, but I’d already realised I’d left one important bit of kit at home – a pair of gloves. The ridge is very defined, but because we were in cloud a lot of the time we kept surprising ourselves by taking a wrong turn, and it took some time arrive at the summit of Druim Fiaclach (The Notched Ridge), from where the ridge slowly descends to another pass. I don’t know about Ian, but I was now just relieved that it was an easy downhill to the bealach where we were to camp. The map gives no indication of problems on this part of the ridge, but after a few hundred metres the ridge became very craggy with no obvious way forward. Luckily we were below the cloud now so we could see the problems quite well, and after a bit of a struggle managed to scramble down. Now at last the way was surely clear to get down to the bealach. Yes it was, but the 1300’ (400m) descent really took it out of me, and it wasn't until 7pm that we could put the tents up, put our dinners on, and read a book (an easy to read James Herriot) whilst the dinner rehydrated. Then cups of tea with various nibbles whilst I wrote up the day’s notes, looked at the map, and read more about the unlikely places vets put their arms. I settled down to sleep at about 9:30 listening to the rain on the tent a few inches above my face. I settled down to sleep at about 9:30 listening to the rain on the tent a few inches above my face.

Once upon an a long time ago I took my family on a long road trip to Spain one winter. Along the way we stayed in a vast semi-ruined castle. Like the man in Alain Fournier’s book Les Grand Meaulnes, I have now forgotten exactly where that castle was. Somewhere south-west of Zaragoza I think. It belonged - or partly belonged - to a nice young Englishman called Nick who was a pal of my old friend Neil Hopkins, who was with us on the road trip. Neil will remember more - because he has one hell of a memory. Anyway, my wife and little son Harry (my daughter was not yet born) and Neil and I explored the castle and the area and enjoyed our stay immensely. I remember that much. And now I have just stumbled across some old Hi8 footage which you can see in the video. I have hardly touched it in the editing - just let it roll on - and have added a track from the amazing Sophie Hutchings which I think suits the strange dream-like mood of the place. I think it has the kind of air of one of those art-house movie shorts we used to go to places like the Arnolfini to see in the 1980s.

An expert was on Radio Four just now talking about bats and viruses. He said there are an awful lot of bats in the world - and they are harbouring a truly frightening number of coronavirus threats. Covid-19 is just for starters. Which worries me more than most. Because I am the only person I know who has nearly died directly because of bats.  Indeed, I am one of the only people I know who was put on a ventilator and kept awake after a lengthy heart operation - all because of bats. The medics had to keep me conscious because they needed me to re-inflate my lungs, which I can sure you was a most unpleasant experience.  The most unpleasant few days I’ve spent in my 63 years on the planet. Which is why I am in no hurry to ever be on a ventilator again… Or to get anywhere near a bat. So why do I claim to have been nearly killed by these wild upside down creatures? Or killed by their excrement - would be a more accurate way of putting it. I am probably the only man you will ever meet who has been at death’s door because of bat-poo. I shall tell the story briefly here and add some photos… Briefly - because it’s getting hot in the loft where I write - and also because it’s a subject I do not like dwelling on much. So… back in 2007 I went on a press trip to Malaysia. It was all very exciting - and after a few days generally living it up in Kuala Lumpur I joined a group of young journalists to travel north to the very heart of the Malaysian peninsula and an amazing national park called Taman Negara. It is said to be the oldest and least messed about with rainforest in the world - and it is a marvel it’s still there given all the palm-oil exploitation going on across that country.  Anyway, we did many wondrous things in that jungle. We hiked and yomped, picnicked and canoed, swam and generally messed around enjoying ourselves immensely in the sweltering heat.  But one thing we did which I didn’t like much was to go down a bat-cave deep, deep in the rainforest. I didn’t even want to go down the blessed thing - and when we got to the very bottom of this extensive pot-hole we did indeed see loads of bats hanging from the roof and walls. Then our guide wanted us to go on through a tiny little aperture - which was far too small for me to squeeze through. So I turned around and made my way back the way we’d come. Which was a crazy thing to do, because I could very easily have got lost.  I did take a few tumbles in the darkness and had to crawl out of various tight spots - and when I at last reached daylight I was horrified to find I was covered in bat-poo. There happened to be a waterfall nearby, so I semi-stripped and washed all the horrible stinky stuff off - only to discover I was covered in leeches.  It took a while to carefully remove them all with an ammonia insect-pen - and then I leaked like a sieve for the rest of the day. Leeches inject you with a de-coagulant so the blood won’t clot - which isn’t good after you popped them all off and you are swimming in a jungle stream full in nibbling fish who want a taste of your blood.  Apart from leaking the red stuff for a few hours, I thought no more about it. Until about six weeks later when I got some kind of flu at home. But it was no ordinary flu. I lost two stone (almost 13 kilos) in two weeks and eventually, when I realised there was a ring of sweat on the tiles beneath my breakfast stool, decided I’d better go to the doctor. I hadn’t been for about 20 years, but was scared because I thought I’d got a dose of malaria. Luckily for me I went to see our local GP back then, one Maggie Wilson. And with her brilliance and her experience with cardio-matters, she realised I’d got a thing called endocarditis - which is basically where bacteria go to live inside your heart.  Not only do these bacterial bugs set up house and home in the m middle of your ticker (I’m told it can look a little bit like broccoli growing on your heart valves) but the wretched stuff begins to eat your heart away.  So I was rushed to hospital where they immediately were able to verify Maggie’s diagnosis. And, to put my nerves at rest, they told me I was nearly dead - that the white corpuscles in my body were at a record levels and that I should not really be alive.  To be honest, I didn’t feel that bad. I’ve had worse hang-overs.  Anyway, it was all very frightening. They put long tubes up your arm and into your heart and then flood the old ticker with the strongest cocktail of antibiotics they think your body can stand. Six times a day. Eventually I had to learn to mix this potentially deadly cocktail for myself — because after two weeks I told them the hospital would definitely kill me before the endocarditis.  It was only on the last day - after I’d had every test imaginable - that a specialist came to see me and he said: “We have sent your blood off to every school of tropical medicine in the country and to other places, but none of them have been able to say exactly what go into you out there in the rainforest. It was probably something that entered your system when you went swimming in the river.  “At least you didn’t go into any bat cave - because if you had, we’d definitely know where it came from…” “But I did!” said I… And that was that. They settled on bat poo. “The warm excrement in those rain-forest caves probably makes them the most dangerous places on Earth,” said the Doc. “That poo is heaving with bacteria and viruses…” Great. So I really did nearly die because of bat poo. The endocarditis did some damage to my mitral valve, which I eventually had replaced in a big operation exactly three years ago. And I sprang another of my leaks during that operation - I don’t know if some pesky leech managed to get in there - but meant I had to be rushed back into the operating theatre and they had to do it all again. So I was out for about 12 hours instead of five or six. Which meant my lungs collapsed.  And that is why I was on a ventilator - but instead of leaving me out cold and comfortable in a coma, they had to bring me round to get me using my own efforts to get those lungs re-inflated.   Believe me, they were the worst moments of my life. By far.  So I am in no hurry to break my self-isolating during this pandemic. I’m not unduly scared of coronavirus - I think I’d be OK (famous last words) because I’m quite fit and pretty tough (as the above will show) and my cardiologist said my little heart adventures would make no difference. Indeed, some of my friends wonder if I might not be totally immune to any bat-produced virus, given my little history.  But why rush out when I can be amusing you folk with interesting tales like this? Just don’t ask me to go back down any bat cave.  Me and bats are finished. I don’t care if I never see or hear of one again…

Back in 1976, when gender wasn’t fluid and correctness wasn’t political, men were men and women were girls  – or that’s was the way it was for most. But some of us were ahead of the curve, with our long hair, androgynous clothing and freedom from the kind of hierarchies and formalities to be found in most work-places and institutions of the realm 50 years ago. So when I stumbled on Nettlecombe, tucked away in the lower edges of the Brendon Hills, it seemed like a paradise of free souls in a paradisal garden all of its own. And when I was invited to live there, after a few months of working as a reporter on the very local paper, I leapt at it. Not only did I feel at home, an added benefit was escape from endless weeks of Prid’s everlasting stew.  Randolph Priddy (see LD 4) was the photographer of choice for weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs and the Free Press and lived with his large, protective Alsatian, Anushka, in a little cottage tucked away in Roadwater. There he played classical music at full volume on his record player and lived off a constantly topped up stew, seemingly all winter long. Nevertheless, I survived several months living with this wonderful round gooseberry of a man and his other lodger, a young woman. The phrase ‘ahead of the curve’ most certainly didn’t apply to the West Somerset Free Press, one of the last of the Methodist tradition of independent, family-run, hand-built local papers, most of which have long gone now.  Top management resided on the ground floor of the Williton office, including the gentle and self-effacing editor, Jack Hurley, and rather more bullish elements elsewhere. The three reporters, one junior (me), one senior and the Chief Reporter shared one room upstairs in the Williton office. And of course there was the almost mediaeval print shop across the walkway from the office.  Here another world of hot metal, blocks, ink, and vast rolls of paper was squeezed, along with the sub-editor and a small army of print workers, many from generations of the same families, who kept it all, literally, rolling, as they had, on a weekly basis, for a hundred years or more. Nor does ‘ahead of the curve’ apply to one of my principal peccadillos, then and now, I’m ashamed to say. This is a strange inability to resist cars of a certain character, nearly all old, cheap and not usually good at being ‘ahead of the curve’ in any sense – if they could get round the curve at all. I’m very glad that my dearest friend of the last 44 years is still around to invite me to contribute to his august Lockdown Diary. The fact is, he might well not have been if the gate-post, and the gate – but I’m getting ahead of the curve myself here. This is the story of how Martin and I met. I was the new boy on the block at the Free Press, in the very seat Martin had sat in himself not many months before, if from a more tender age than me. This was where my strange experience with the ghostly ring and the Poltimore Arms (see LD 66) had led me to, thanks to a lift from the then Chief Reporter who took pity on this young man down on his luck.  Well, by the end of our conversation in his car, he had virtually offered me the job. A rash, impulsive, kindly move which might not happen in these more exacting times. Fortunately, Jack Hurley, bless him, took pity on this wandering soul at my interview and I was formally given the job of junior reporter a few days later. Pubs, I should add, come a close second in the peccadillo stakes, so it didn’t take long for me to sniff out the best watering holes. The White Horse near Roadwater was one of many, with the initial attraction of a grumpy landlord, which always adds character, I find. Much more attractive was the array of folk, from traditional farming and artisanal trades, to loose-limbed youths of both sexes, some distinctly more exotic than others. And the cider was okay too. One of these characters of the loose-limbed variety, was a handsome, somewhat louche young man who turned out be my predecessor at the paper. His name was Martin, Martin Hesp, usually to be found with a bevy of sparkling-eyed women surrounding him, hanging on his every word. We got on immediately and a pint or two was sunk before the subject of vehicles arose. It so happened that my car outside was low and yellow, had no doors or roof (it had blown off somewhere) and not much bodywork altogether. Oh, and a very loud exhaust. I know. And am, fairly deeply, ashamed. But Martin loved it. So, predictably, a ride was suggested and off we roared. No more than half a mile up the road on this lovely Spring evening, just at twilight, when light and shade merge in an opaque, hazy sense of well-being, there was a gateway. And in the gateway was a gate. Closed. Attached to a sturdy, oak post. In the dim light, which headlamps just made dimmer, I mistook the gateway for a bend in the road and made a very bad choice. I was, indeed, ahead of the curve. We went under the top bar of the gate, splintering the rest of it and tore out the gatepost with my right wheel. Coming quietly to rest in the field, miraculously untouched, I turned to Martin to see blood streaming down from a cut in his forehead. Much more concerned about him than the car, I’m glad to say, we abandoned ship and somehow made our way to A&E, or its equivalent, in the hospital in Minehead. There I handed him to a nurse and, promising to return, I quickly made for the nearest pub to settle my shaken nerves. Feeling guilty, after a soothing pint, I ordered another and carried it carefully back to the hospital where I found a sewn up and bandaged Martin to whom I held out my peace-offering. What the nurse made of it all, I can’t remember but at least it made Martin laugh and still does, I believe. Well, he hasn’t sued me yet so it must have worked – so far – despite the scar. The farmer whose gate I’d demolished wasn’t very pleased. In fact he wished I’d well and truly crossed the bar, so to speak. But Martin – as I said, we laugh about it now but if the gate had been solid steel, and the gate-post ditto, as, of course, it is now, at a rightly hefty cost to the low-waged perpetrator, well… Did I learn my lesson regarding my ‘principal peccadillo’, or the second, for that matter? That’s a story for another day, I’m afraid. And My Own Memories of That Day What memories from my dear pal Tim… He writes so well - far better than my old newspaper style hackery - which is apparent because it’s here for all to see. I took a huge liking to Tim Bannerman the very instant I saw him in the White Horse that night more than 40 years ago, and I am pleased to say we have remained very good friends ever since.  And that’s despite the run-in with the gate just 30 minutes after our first ever meeting… Or maybe because of it, because the incident brought us much closer together than a couple of quick pints in a pub normally would. I’d left the Free Press in just a little bit of high-dudgeon, as they used to say, having been told that - after 18-months of writing the front page and half the paper most weeks - I was being sent to journalism college to be trained. Apparently I needed to learn shorthand and journalistic law - but as I already had rapid Pitman classic note-taking capabilities and an A-Level in law, I didn’t see the point in going to some awful college in Cardiff when I was having such a wonderful time in my native West Somerset.  Spending time at dreamy and beautiful Nettlecombe “surrounded by a bevy of sparkling-eyed women”, as Tim puts it, suited me far better than the lure of stale classrooms, boring lectures and dodgy digs. So I told the extremely unpleasant managing director at the paper (a smiling bully of a man who was loathed far and wide) to shove his training up his arse… And I walked out one sunny morning to a future promising nothing but, perhaps, for bevvies of sparkling-eyed women. (Whatever happened to such dreams….) A walk-out which upset my dear old dad for quite some time, but later he envied me the freedom I’d managed to gain through not adhering to the inside of a newsroom. Although, he probably envied the poverty less.   God knows what kind of journalistic career I’d have endured had I stayed on. I’d probably be dead by now. Had I gone off to work in newsrooms and climbed the slippery pole of newsprint and editorship, I’d have hated it - and the boredom that is news-news-news would have killed me. And I’d never have met my dear friend Tim Bannerman.  I remember being told that the guy who’d been given my job at the paper owned a rather special yellow sports-car - so, driving past the White Horse early one evening and seeing the beast parked by the river I immediately requested my companion, a diminutive moustachioed man called American Bob, to pull over.  It took Mr Bannerman and I all of 30 seconds to become pals. After a while the car was mentioned and this friendly new mate said to me: “Why don’t you take her for a spin…” I’ve always been a little notorious for my overly fast driving style, but this habit was honed on a series of Morris 1000s and A35s which had difficulty in accelerating from 0-to-60 in two minutes. You can imagine the thrill I felt when I found myself grasping a steering wheel the size of a digestive biscuit, sitting as high as a viper’s arse-hole, blasting up the road from the White Horse to Fair’s Cross.  I’d never experienced speed, handling or acceleration like it.  But I was being careful - after all, I’d only just met the really nice chap sitting next to me, so the last thing I wanted to do was prang his beloved car. After ten minutes we returned safe and sound to the White Horse - and I shall never forget the words which came out of Tim’s mouth as we clambered out from its doorless fuselage… “Let me show you what she can really do.” When you are young, you are so stupid. I’ve been stupid for a great deal of my life, but not even I would climb into a vehicle after such an invitation in normal times. But these were not normal times - I was held entranced by the lure of my new pal.  It took far less than a minute for the enchantment to fall away. I can still vividly remember hurting south up the Roadwater road at a speed which I’d never before have believed possible. The world had turned into a blur, and it wasn’t so much a case of IF we were doing to die, but WHEN. And I didn’t have to wait long for the answer . There is a point in the road where it leaves the Washford Stream - if you can imagine a Y shape, the road curves gently to the right and the river swings to the left. In the middle of the Y there is a field - and at the apex of this field, there stands a gate. Today is it is a big sturdy steel gate. Had it been there back then, neither Tim nor I would be writing on this website.  We were lucky. It was a fairly rotten old gate back in those days. And suddenly it had a sort of cut-out shape in it - the shape of a very low sports-car with just one higher bit, which happened to be left by the rapid passing of my forehead. We went right through that closed gate, leaving the top bar of it intact. It was almost cartoon-like. I can see how, in the gloaming, Tim thought perhaps that a wide and wonderful road continued south. Why would you turn up the little lane to the right if you could carry on blasting up that nice big wide highway? I, on the other hand, knew the road well - and remember thinking that perhaps he was going to demonstrate the amazing braking power of the car. Why else would he be heading straight for a five-bar gate? Bang! Through we went —- and the next thing I knew were were spinning and spinning in the field, and I was clutching for dear life watching as four wheels went bobbing off in all directions. Then my world went red, because the cut above one of my eyes started to pour blood in a mini-tidal wave.  I remember walking a little shakily back to the pub where the charming landlord - one Bill Mills - roared at me to get out as I was dripping blood on his very dirty old slate floor. Then American Bob conveyed us in his Morris 1000 van to Minehead Hospital, where a nurse ushered me into some place where a middle aged doctor with an Indian sounding name told me to lie down on an operating slab. What bothered me at that moment was that the nurse - a girl I knew - fainted. Crash! Down she went pole-axed. I thought: “What has she seen that is so horrible it has caused her to pass out? Whatever has happened to me, it must be very bad indeed.” She later told me she had never fainted at work before, despite seeing many terrible tings in hospitals - but it was because she knew me and there was so much blood.  So the poor old Doc had his work cut out looking after her - then he turned to me and began the painful process of stitching. At which moment the double swing doors crashed open and there stood my new sports-car owning pal with a frothing pint of ale in his hand, purchased from the Carlton Plume of Feathers (now long gone) across the street.  The doctor protested, but I croaked that I could really do with a drink - and at that moment the nurse moaned from her bed next door - so he shrugged and saw to her needs while Tim duly delivered the pint.  Eventually, after a great deal more painful stitching, American Bob took us home to Nettlecombe where Tim Bannerman’s life was about to change forever - and where I sought solace among the aforementioned bevy of sparkling-eyed sirens. So a lifelong friendship had begun - and it’s not over yet. Tim and I have many, many, adventures yet to come when this lockdown is over - but hopefully none quite so painful. Here are a couple more photos I’ve found from the time - the first of the beautiful Nettlecombe girl Tim would later marry - then there’s John Wolseley who owned the place and still does with his sons - and also dear old Alex Hollweg who passed away recently…

The robots at Facebook tell me that it is exactly a year since I went to interview a wonderful elderly chap on the edge of the Somerset Levels. Chris Burnett’s private nature reserve is one of the most special places in the county of Somerset - I really mean that - and look forward to visiting again. Here’s the article I penned 365 days ago… There are too many people creating hell and havoc in this world and all too few making paradise. That is what I thought as I strolled one sunlit day recently behind a 79-year-old Somerset farmer who was riding slowly along on a quad bike.  Our meandering journey was taking us through the 22-acres of earthly paradise which Chris Burnett has spent the best part of half a century creating in a southerly corner of the Somerset Levels.  As the farmer’s passion gradually took a hold over the years, so he would nibble away at his pasture lands - armed sometimes with naught but a trowel, but more often with an old JCB digger - transforming blank grass fields into a kind of Garden of Eden all of his own design and making. And so a lake would appear here, and a woodland there. Bridges, towers, waterfalls, meandering paths, grottos, homemade sculptures, islands, viewpoints all were built and made to work in this unique Arcadian vision over the decades… All these features and a great many more besides came from the mind of the creative and altogether individualistic farmer who now opens his Town Tree Farm Nature Garden to the public everyday. Not that a great many folk turn up, because the oddly named farm is in a very obscure corner of the Levels, down a cul-de-sac lane somewhere near the River Parrett near the town of Martock, not too far off the main A30 West Country-to-London road.  But don’t think you could begin to imagine the Burnett-style of Eden from this bare geographical description. What you see in the nature garden is nothing like anything else you’ll find in the South West region. On the hot day we visited, for example, I was fully expecting crocodiles to glide smoothly out of the overgrown lakes amid the jungles that are the wild and luxuriant results of Chris’s creation. However, before I wax too lyrically, there is trouble in paradise… At 79 Chris is not the indomitable man-of-action he used to be, mainly because he is suffering a few health problems which he shrugs off as “the wobbles”. So what he and his wife Margaret are looking for - and the reason why I’m writing this article - are volunteers to help with the nature garden. “Without some help, the bullrushes are going to take over in the lakes and the whole lot will be finished,” sighs Chris, as we take tea in the lovely garden in front of the slightly tumbledown 17-century house that is Town Tree Farm.    I cannot think of a more pleasant volunteering opportunity for any person who may want to find some deep sense of peace and restfulness in their lives. The nature garden is beautiful and wild and unexpected. I was going to say unworldly, but it’s very much part of a the natural world.  Better, perhaps, to describe it as being a kind of oasis far from the modern world. Added to that, Chris is a gentle spoken natural philosopher and Margaret is one of those kindly cheerful country women. When I visited the couple and explored the garden with photographer Richard Austin, we had difficulty in tearing ourselves away. There is something magnetic about Town Tree Farm that draws the human soul. The effect is like having your psyche wrapped in a beautiful green duvet full of birdsong and illuminated by a dappled filigree of light. “I was born here in June 1940,” Chris told me. “I’m still ticking on, but only just. I can’t do it all now and I shall have to bring in people from outside - but you’ve either got to pay a good wage or you’ve got to have them on a voluntary basis. The National Trust has voluntary people so my daughter was keen on me trying that out. If I employ someone I’d have to make it more commercial - and that’s not doing anything for the wildlife, which is what I set out to do.  “I made the first pond here,” Chris went on as we sipped tea in the garden. “Then we made the next pond and the swans came in - and they wanted more room - so I moved out into another field. And so it went on.  “Dad came here when he was young - his father set him up here because it used to be a county council farm. Just after I left school the county said they were going to sell some of the farms - so dad bought it. He had a small dairy herd and he kept a lot of pigs.” As for how the nature garden began, Margaret had a few choice words to say… “This was just a hobby to start with - now it’s a hobby gone mad,” she laughed.  I pointed out that it wasn’t the kind of beautifully manicured garden which people normally open to the public. Town Tree is wild and unkempt and overgrown in many places… “I didn’t do it to open to the public, but for the wildlife and for a hobby,” chuckled Chris. “Then I was being called a bit of a lunatic, so the council came round and said did I want to open to the public? My reaction was: who the bloody hell would want to come here and walk around?  “But we went to Torquay on holiday one day and I was sat there watching them go up and down to the beach all day - and I thought: I dunno there’s nothing here, not really. I thought: I don’t know if people aren’t looking for somewhere to go and if I were to open and run it, it might help the nature garden to expand. I opened for 12 months and we’ve been open ever since. It’s not a commercial thing because that is not good for the wildlife.  “I have no idea how many people come a year. A few hundred? We just trust people to put the money in the honesty box. The experts leave us alone because I’m an odd-bod. They’ve all been to university and they are all highly educated - but where’s the common sense? They’ve got none.  “There was no trees here. No water. Only the old orchard out the back and there wasn’t many of those trees because dad kept pigs and they rooted them up. Some of the poplars here are now 110-feet high. I put them in, but someone said they wouldn’t be any good. They all grew. When I was young and I came out that door what I would see would have been a bloody great big pig. Now we’ve got 100-foot trees.  “We’ve always done a bit here and there to make things meet,” Chris mused as the birds san and the breeze rippled through the poplars and the oaks. “We had trouble with the otters at one time and they were having all the fish. Someone said they don’t like things that are moving. So I went off and got 12 televisions and put them around the islands and around the pond and switched on. They weren’t too happy over at Kingsbury because they could hear them at night.  “But lo-and-behold I went out there one night and one had killed a fish right by the television. Now there are no fish and the otters have moved on. “The JCBs you see out the front - one of them was working until last year and then he had the wobbles, and that was that. We’ve got ‘un for sale if you want one. “Now the main thing is that the rushes are spreading so fast and we can’t get in there by machine, so it has to be done by hand and I can’t do that anymore. We need a couple of chaps that can handle a boat and a hook.” Suddenly the breeze picked up as a zephyr blew through in the midday heat, and Chris looked up at the trees and said: “When we have a gale force wind though here I say - they’ve come to prune the trees. Like that one there, look, leaning over - you give ‘un another 12 months he’s going to say bye-bye. Tiz nature. I got brambles out there 15-foot high - all the birds go there and feed - but if you get in your car and drive to Bridgwater, see how many brambles you’ll see. None.” I put it to Chris that he had a special talent for landscaping - because a tour around the nature garden is like a never ending adventure and the path turns this way and that, opening new vistas and points of interest all the time… “I can walk in anywhere and landscape it in no time at all,” he shrugged. “A builder who used to come and pick me up because when he bought property he’d take me there and say - what can I do with that? He got very rich in the end. I can walk in anywhere and landscape it, but I can’t put it on paper. Just common-sense isn’t it? When you come to a place like this, or anywhere else, you pick up the vibes. Peaceful. That is one of the reasons I did it.” At this point Chris became philosophical…  “Someone said to me not long ago that he wasn’t feeling well and he wondered if we die, would we go to heaven? I said - hang on! You’re in heaven now, my son. You don’t know what is coming after this. But this is heaven. You’ve got absolutely everything you want. You’ve got all this - trees, plants, animals…” The thought seemed to cause the old farmer to become a little political: “There’s too many people,” said Chris wafting a hand at the great noisy world beyond his natural oasis. “Give every girl a good pension if she only has one child and in three generations everything would be put right.  “No, I have never thought about going into politics,” he laughed before adding, as if in explanation: “I’ve only got one tooth left.” Single tooth or no, I’d vote for him.

You can find yourself thinking weird things during a lockdown, like this, for example… If we humans disappeared along with all those powerful machines that help us keep nature in check, who would be king of our West Country jungle?  Bracken would probably have a good shout. At this time of year the great green frond is cropping up all over the place. It totally dominates many wild untamed hilly areas like the Quantock Hills, but as summer gets into gear it begins to creep beyond the high heaths and into the lowland hedgerows. In evolutionarily terms it’s no wonder bracken may be considered to be one of the most successful ferns. It is one of the oldest plants we have, with fossil records that stretch back over 55 million years – and its generally agreed to be the most successful fern there is. First you see its short single finger of a frond beginning to unfurl, looking for all the world like some alien intruder that been lying dormant underground. That, indeed, is part of bracken’s storyline - it does have that Triffid look about it - if ever there was going to be an invasion of verdant body-snatchers, bracken would be up there among the culprits. You can eat these very young bracken shoots - they're supposed to taste a bit like asparagus - but I have eaten young bracken in Borneo, of all places, and it wasn’t asparagus that came to mind. Bracken shoots are regarded as a delicacy in the Far East, but I think there is something just too green about their appearance - those tender fronds seem to shout "Watch out - I'm poisonous." Of course bracken does become poisonous in its adulthood - or carcinogenic anyway. The spores that collect under its feathery branches are not healthy things to inhale – indeed, a Danish scientist published a study in 2004 showing that the carcinogenic compound in bracken can leach into the water supply – which he said may explain an increase in the incidence of gastric and oesophageal cancers in bracken-rich areas. I’ve always had a fondness for the plant because it seems to signify the wild places, which I happen to love – but that last bit of information is enough to put me off the King of the West Country Jungle for ever. By the way, this is our 62nd day of lockdown - I only began doing this diary three days after the start. nd today I am left wondering if there is anything such thing as a lockdown. The Minehead road was packed earlier, as was the seafront and all the town’s supermarket car parks. What lockdown? I came home in a hurry, I can tell you.

We are not allowed to gather for VE Day, for obvious reasons - so I thought I’d put up a few photos from the last time my village of Roadwater gathered en-masse for a celebratory event. It was June 2120 - the Queen’s 60th Jubilee. These are in a completely random order. I have managed to retrieve them off a corrupted camera disc - if I can find the originals I will put them up in better quality and there are 100s more I took that day. And a few more - remembering they are in random order - and somewhere I do have lots more from this event… And the last ones for now - Roadwater Recreation Ground Jubilee Party June 2012

What a truly beautiful day - not a cloud in the sky,. Time to take up smoking again…. I’m not talking about the evils of tobacco, instead I refer to the primeval joys of having the tang of wood-smoke flavouring my food.  It really is that time of the lockdown when you’ve tried everything and anything to liven up the freshness and vibrancy of your food offerings, only to be frustrated by meals which turn out to be just that little bit more dull than perhaps they should be.  A while ago my friend Alyson Murray, of the specialist barbecue equipment firm Hot Smoked (based in Wellington), sent me one the starter kits after which her company is named. The hot smoked kit introduces non-smokers to the art of adding woody fragrances to food. Basically, it consists of a small steel box and a number of bags of different wood chips. You select a handful of, say, oak or beech chips and place them in the box (which has ventilation slots), lay this in a hot barbecue and close its lid. Hey-presto, you’ve got a hot-smoker. As I write, the Hot Smoked wood-chip box is now sitting on a bed of glowing charcoal and smoking like the Flying Scotsman climbing a steep main-line incline. What this cave-man style of cooking does is give even the blandest of food an opportunity to shine. Even a cast iron pot full of vegetables can gently smoke its way into a different league. After a while the chunks of potato, carrot, parsnip and capsicum begin to soften and caramelise - just like they’d do in a conventional oven. But there’s something about the waft of woodsmoke that takes the vegetables into another realm, especially if they are slow-cooked over many hours. Some people say there’s a umami hit which comes from the smoke. But I think it goes deeper than that. My theory is that humans have been cooking over open fires for the best part of a quarter of a million years - so we’ve become hard-wired when it comes to enjoying the flavours which woodsmoke can impart.  We’ve only had clean-burning electric or gas ovens for a tiny fraction of that time - so it would make sense if the pleasure-receptors in our brains had become attuned to the taste of wood-smoke escorting the foodstuffs we love to eat.  If you were to simply boil chunks of potato, carrot and parsnip along with a few other vegetable bits and pieces and put them on a plate, you probably would not be deafened by the round of applause, even from your most hungry guests. But you try slow-roasting them over a live flame with a bit of woodsmoke involved… For extra punch you can add de-skinned cloves of garlic to the mix - or roast entire heads of garlic on top of the veg before squeezing out the flesh and mashing it to a creamy paste. Add this to an egg yoke and knock up some home-made mayonnaise to go with the roast smoked vegetables, and suddenly you are in the land of trendy restaurant cooking.    This smokey version of aioli goes amazingly well with chicken - especially the hot-smoked chicken you can cook on your barbecue at the same time as the vegetables.  Some would say it goes even better with hot-smoked salmon. And, indeed, what is better than hot-smoked salmon? Not much. But I can tell you that lightly-cured slices of belly pork (which you’ve prepared yourself by keeping the meat in a container full of salt, sugar, pepper and spices for 24 hours) cooked in the same smokey barbecue will please a meat-lovers beyond almost anything imaginable. Think: thick, juicy, fragrant slices of smokey bacon… The world is your smoked oyster, so to speak, when it comes to the act of cloaking your food in fragrant woodsmoke.  But you can overdo it. You can make foods too smokey - and certainly you would not want to eat smoked food every day. But as an easy - almost foolproof - way of jazzing up your late-winter dinner parties, adding a touch of oak, beach or cherrywood smoke is one of those no-brainers.  Try it once and you’ll soon be kicking yourself you never took up smoking before.  You can check out Hot Smoked at https://hotsmoked.co.uk

I haven’t been going out much. In fact, for more than 50 days now I’ve hardly been anywhere outside my valley - but one trip I am intending to make is over the Withycombe to buy some of Steve Crossman’s wonderful asparagus. Fresh asparagus represents one of the crowning glories of the English food year, and the season is about to come to an end - but there is still just time to get out there and buy some bunches of the good stuff here in the West Country. Grab it while you can, I say. No other vegetable offers you quite such a bang for your bucks. It might not be the cheapest green item at the greengrocer’s, but it does offer good value for money if you value flavour over weight. A little bit of asparagus goes a long way, especially if you ignore all previous advice and utilise those woody stalks that people normally throw in the compost. A modern high powered blender - of even better one of those extremely gutsy smoothie-making machines - will knock seven bells out of those stalks so that you can use the resultant puree to flavour stocks for soups or risottos. All you do is whizz the stalks up in some water, or perhaps a mix of full cream milk and water, then bung it all in a saucepan with other flavourings. If I am making a spring or summer soup then I’ll use up offcuts from my organic veg box - things like chopped cauliflower or cabbage stalks, carrot tops, onion sprouts and so on - all go to make a glorious vegetable stock and can be whizzed up in the same machine.  The important thing is to pass the finished slow-cooked stock through a fine sieve to extract any woody bits, and you are ready to begin making a light summer soup or a nice fresh seasonal risotto. For a pure and simple asparagus soup, I’d leave out the other offcuts, but I would I fry some new-season onion and garlic chopped fine until it is just cooked through, then add the little green cylinders snipped from the rest of the asparagus stalk above the woody bit. However, I keep back the plump and tender tips until just before serving.  You can add a little flour if you want to make a weak roux which will thicken your soup a bit, then start adding that magical, homemade, stock - which actually should have the ability to thicken the soup on its own. I also bung in some good local cream.  Season all this as you go and add the precious tips just a couple of minutes from the end - and you should end up with an asparagus soup that will match anything you’d see in a top restaurant.  It’s all about keeping things simple when it comes to asparagus. Why would you want  to add anything else? When I serve it as vegetable, all I add is butter and maybe just a little pepper and salt with the tiniest squeeze of lemon.  And if I’m just spoiling myself and my wife, I’ll go for a plain bowl of the stuff - no cutlery, just fingers, a napkin and a glass of dry but fruity white wine.  Perhaps the most simple and best way to prepare asparagus of them all is simply to put the asparagus into a roasting tin, pour a little olive oil over it with a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. Shake and roast for a dozen or so 15 minutes - and prepare yourself for one of those sensual, voluptuous, experiences which make life worth living. “Don’t buy asparagus unless you can hear it squeak,” I was told by West Somerset asparagus farmer Stephen Crossman. “That’s the best way to tell if it’s fresh. With the best will in the world, the stuff from places like Spain cannot be as fresh as this.” Cornish chef David Williams once told me: “I would say Cornish asparagus tastes better than any I’ve cooked with in any other place. Asparagus seems to have a natural affinity with the sea and the coast - for example, the asparagus we used when I worked in one of the world's top Michelin starred restaurants, in Paris, came from the coast at Normandy. But I’d say this local Cornish version is better.” For decades the main British crop was grown in and around the Vale of Evesham before cheap air freight saw it being imported in huge quantities from Peru, which is the world’s largest exporter of asparagus. But in recent years more and more farmers have begun nurturing the difficult to grow spears here in the West Country.  “Peruvian asparagus you can get all year round nowadays, but in my opinion it is entirely without flavour,” said Mr Williams. “I know it is difficult to grow here and that farmers sometimes get just a few weeks harvest out of their crop - but the Cornish asparagus is far superior. You have to treat it with respect - for example it should be stored like a flower, standing up. Asparagus sizes range from slender, young ‘sprue’ to thicker-stemmed, jumbo-sized pears - and some farmers refer to misshapen stems as ‘kitchen’ grade. It is an expensive crop for growers to produce as it takes about three years for asparagus plants to become established, and even longer to reach a fully productive state. It was the Romans who first brought asparagus to Britain with the Romans and for a long while it did thrive in certain coastal corners of the country as a wild plant. It has a high tolerance of sandy, salty soil and will grow along riverbanks, shores of lakes, and coastlines - which is why some horticulturalists believe it was originally a coastal plant. A few swear that adding a dose of salt to ground when preparing it to plant the crowns helps the spears to mature more quickly and firmly. In the past couple of years asparagus has become so popular in Britain that major supermarkets have been putting money into new high quality, early season varieties that can be grown in this country. One, called Jubilee, has won plaudits from foodies for its distinctive flavour. But many chefs have an unshakeable belief that the West Country spears are best. “If you really want to get the full flavour from the very freshest local asparagus, don't cook it,” David Williams advised. “My favoured way to eat it is raw - I simply use a veg-peeler to take off the thin but fairly hard skin and then put the thin spears in salt and olive oil for five minutes. This has the affect of almost 'cooking' it, but it will give you the ultimate asparagus flavour…"

Funny the things your mind begins to miss on a cold, damp, grey drizzly day during lockdown. My mind has turned to memories of the various deserts I have visited down the years. And the little towns with their amazing markets. How come they can grow such amazing vegetables in the middle of warter-less deserts when I am struggling to grow a single radish here? Must be something to do with the cold and the dark grey skies today. Anyway, I am not going to write much today because I’ve been busy editing my old novel, The Last Broomsquire, which I hope to release on the internet soon as the hard copies have apparently sold out. So here are some more photos from various visits to deserts down the years, if you’ve feeling cold, grey and drizzled upon… And now just a few curious shots from hot deserts down the years, like abandoned American tanks, beautiful hand-woven rugs hanging on a wall in a forgotten Sarah village, and a man in an unr. WTF was he doing in that urn? I just can’t remember all these years later. Oh, and me on a camel…

This website was never meant to get close-up and personal, but so many people have contacted me over the past 24 hours on social media asking about the old manor house where we lived for years, I thought I’d put up a few more photos I’ve just found and scanned. A lot of these were taken during one memorable New Year’s party we had there. Our get-togethers on those occasions really did become legendary - sometimes w’ed have more than 50 people sitting down for a 7-course dinner - which I’d cook. God knows where I got the money or the energy from. There are some legendary West Somerset characters in these photos - alas, some of them have gone on to that great lockdown in the sky now… Altogether I lived at the manor for over 15 years - at first renting a flat at the rear of the house form my old friend Sir Edward Malet. Later I returned there to live with my beautiful wife Sue and our little boy Harry and then our wonderful daughter Nancy… One of my brothers, John, even built a beautiful gaff-rigger in one of the barns while we lived at the manor. We had some very, very, good times in that old house.

Many years ago I rented this old manor house in the Brendon Hills. I lived there for 14 years and attempted, rather hopelessly, to run a video, filming and media business from its many vast rooms. Alas, it turned out that I was a truly hopeless. businessman. Great ideas, absolutely useless business brain. Anyway, we had a lot of fun. And one of the many memorable times we had (not that I can remember much of it) was when a whole bunch of folk singers turned up so we could record some old cider-songs for a video documentary I was making. You can have a listen to them in this podcast…