What I wouldn’t do for a huge box full of fresh spring vegetables during this coronavirus lockdown. The idea has had me thinking about various people I’ve interviewed down the years - growers of fabulous vegetables across the West Country peninsula.  I also happened to remember going to a Somerset community that was once named “The Happiest Village In England” to do a story for my newspaper - and on the way back from Hinton St George on that occasion I called at Muchelney to see my old friend, the potter John Leach… You can hear all this in the podcast featured here. - And it begins with talk about garlic.  In fact, I’d say West Country veg doesn’t get much better than the garlic and the shallots grown by my old pal John Rosewell, of Barrington in Somerset.  As sales pitches go, the idea that someone might approach the region’s top chefs carrying strings of garlic which have gone through the “Slap-ma-Girdle treatment” might not appear to be the most sought-after of unique selling points… But it’s a USP that has worked well for Somerset farmer John Rowswell, who uses prunings from his Slap-ma-Girdle apple trees to smoke the giant sweet garlic he grows. “We use Slap-Ma-Girdle, Tremletts, a Dabinett, a Red Streak or Kingston Black - and they all give it a really wonderful aroma,” said John, explaining that the smoking process can extend the period he sells the garlic.  “Sometimes we put a bit of cherry in the mix and that makes it different again,” he added. The new West Country garlic season will begin in the next few weeks: “We start with the skypes (or stalks) and we take them off so it forms a bigger bulb - if it’s left it will go to flower and then you get a very poor result.  “So we take the skypes off and those are sold - chefs fry them up and serve them with steak. They are absolutely delicious,” added John who became famous a few years ago for developing his own variety of shallot at Barrington, near Ilminster.  The Barrington Banana has now been featured in countless newspaper articles and on TV, but it is the garlic which gets the delicious smoking treatment.  “I’ve been growing it for 35 years - we have a couple of acres of it in this sandy soil which is very, very good for garlic. We started thinking about having smoked garlic to extend the season and we were planing to build a smokery - but then a guy set up a small unit near us and he came here to buy garlic - so I decided he should smoke it for us. “We took it around the restaurants and they absolutely love it,” said John. But it does come at the cost of hard labour… “All garlic is very labour intensive and we could do with three days of heavy rain to boost it right now,” he told me. “We’re just going up there to put on some chicken manure and blood, bone and fish, which we apply by hand so it just goes on the garlic - we don’t want it going onto everything. And then we put a rotator up between it to clean out the weeds, and go back with a hoe. “I have the smoked garlic with cold meat or fish - or you can just eat them on their own,” beamed John Rowswell. “They are like jelly babies, they’re so sweet.”

The lockdown became altogether more serious last night - but it is strange how even in a crisis you can have seemingly trivial thoughts or reactions… Today dans with glorious spring weather again and the birds have been out in full song. Which had me thinking the most irrelevant and passing of thoughts - and that was how wildlife has absolutely no idea that we humans are undergoing such a worrying drama at the moment. The buzzard wheeling high above my home-office at this moment isn’t going to think: “Weird… There aren’t so many of those loud flying machines passing overhead as there used to be.” The crabs in West Country harbours aren’t thinking: “Where are all the kids who normally come here to put us in buckets when the sun shines?” There can be few people in rural areas who have not been woken by the loud and wonderful dawn chorus in recent days. Since the weather improved, our feathered friends have been singing their hearts out as part of their ambition to reproduce - and there’s no reason why domestic fowl can’t emulate what the wild birds do. Local people who keep chickens will tell you they are in full laying overdrive at the moment, which is good news for all those of us who like to eat eggs. Hens that are left to run more-or-less wild probably get to eat a much greater range of bits and bobs than any bird that is farmed commercially, no matter how free-range they’re allowed to be - and all those different grubs and insects do make a difference to the flavour of an egg. Several people keep hens in our valley and to be honest I would like to do the same - although getting hold of live chickens during this lockdown is obviously not going to happen. So I will have to rely on the intermittent honesty box just up the lane.  But how do you cook such things to perfection? Indeed, are there fool-proof ways of preparing any egg? When I say perfection, I refer to an egg white that has set firm, while the yolk inside remains cooked but runny.  You could employ a sous-vide machine, or wand as the Americans call it. There are plenty of models on the market nowadays costing anything between £70 and £140. Basically you attach the device to the inside of a large straight-sided pan filled with water, plug it in and set the temperature. The point of these machines is that they will take the water to exactly the temperature you set and hold it, precisely, for hours on end. Once you’ve used one to cook steak, you will never prepare that (or just about any other cut of meat) in any other way ever again.  Eggs are in a class of their own when you use the device. By setting the device to 63.5 degrees centigrade and carefully placing your eggs in the pan, all you have to do is walk away and do something else for an hour. You will then have perfectly boiled eggs complete with nicely cooked runny yolks and whites that are firm enough so that you can remove the shells without coming to grief. This is fantastic for homemade scotch-eggs or things like Caesar salads, but also enjoyable just mashed on to a bit of sourdough toast. Of course, there are times when nothing but a fried egg will do - and here I admit to having just learned something it’s taken me 60 years to understand. Fried eggs always taste and eat better when they have a crisp underside - and you cannot achieve this in a non-stick pan. You can cook an egg that looks good and doesn’t break apart, but it will not have the the pizzazz of an egg which has been fried at very high temperature so that the white has bubbled up and turned brown and satisfyingly crispy on the underside.   The best (if not the only) way to achieve this is to take a good non-coated stainless steel or cast iron pan and season it.  Heat vegetable or some flavourless oil to a high temperature, swirling it about in the pan until it smokes, then carefully rubbing it around the interior with a cloth before discarding that hot tablespoon-full and repeating the process two or tree times.  Treated like this, a stainless steel pan is as nonstick as the most expensive of coated examples - but you can heat its cooking surface to far, far hotter temperatures, allowing you to “shock-fry” an egg in seconds.  The difference between that and a “nonstick-egg” is like comparing a steak which has been thrown onto a live flame with one that’s been lightly stewed. The former has flavour and attitude, the latter will be a lifeless also-ran.  If only I had known about this lockdown I would have bought some chickens weeks ago, and I wonder how many other people lucky enough to have gardens will think the same? Our very own food providing machines - and they’d help fertilise the veg many of us will start growing in the coming weeks.

A truly glorious day on Exmoor, and what do I get this sunny Sunday? A press release from Exmoor National Park Authority saying the hills are besieged with visitors. You can’t blame people for wanting to get out during this lockdown - but what happened to the government’s plea for people to stay away form one another. Apparently car parks at the more famous spots on the moors are crowded and local village cafes and pubs which have been doing a takeaway service have had to close because so many people are turning up and queueing.   Plus, holiday cottages in the national park are being let like proverbial hotcakes as people flee the cities. In one way, you can’t blame folk - but of course it totally overloads the tiny local shops and services we have down here that are trying to help their communities as best they can. I guess all that might be a little different IF this Mother’s Day was producing the West Country’s default weather - ie thick cloud and rain.  And I have to admit the glorious weather has taken me out - but only to my garden. For two reasons other than to soak up some sunshine…  One is that I am going to pick nettles to make soup - which is truly delicious if you know how to do it (see below)… The other has been a trip up to the old 1990s holiday chalet at the top of the garden which was wrecked in recent storms. Huge shame - I loved that old chalet. We had electricity put into it many years ago and it happened to be where we kept our freezer.  I had assumed since the roof collapsed that it was kaput. But I crawled in among the fallen roof beams this morning and found it was, miraculously, still working. So with a great deal of effort, we rescued it and hauled it down through the garden for a clean-up before we take it inside where I hope it will do service.  If only we had some food to put in it! Just a week or so ago, thanks to the collapsed chalet, I cancelled a box of Exmoor beef which I had on order from a farmer friend. I wish very much now that I hadn’t - 150-quid’s worth of prime grass-fed beef would have kept us fed for months.    Which brings me to another photos here - my Japanese kamado barbecue happily doing its thing for the first time in months.  Not because the weather has been rubbish - but because I haven’t had any charcoal.  Now I need to see if I can get some ordered locally, because the last bag (found in  the corner of an outdoor cupboard) has finally gone up in smoke.  If all else fails, though, it will be nettle soup that keeps us going.  What a fantastic standby during a crisis - because if there’s one thing we are never going to run out of in West Somerset, it’s nettles.  The first thing people ask is, does it sting your mouth? Not a bit. I think of nettles as a slightly interesting version of spinach. And it’s just as good for you, if not more so - full of vitamins and minerals. I read that nettles have diuretic properties that help eliminate waste products, especially excess acid, from the body.   The super-weed is good for arthritis, gout and as a general blood purifier.  It is also high in iron, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, silica, chlorophyll and vitamin C and D.   And get this… The super-weed is supposed to be really good for respiratory problems - so why not give it a go in the times when this particular medical problem is at the top of everyone’s mind?   I put on some thick gardening gloves - although this isn’t 100 per cent necessary because what you do is pinch out the very tips, by which I mean the two small leaves right at the top of the nettle. You can actually do this without gloves, but why risk a sting? The little buggers hurt at this time of year.  The thing to do is prepare a basic “soffrito” by gently frying what the Italians call the Holy Trinity of finely diced onions, celery and carrots. You only need a small handful so you are not majorly robbing your vital veg store on this. I add one or two finely diced potatoes at the end of the frying before pouring in, say, a pint of vegetable or chicken stock, or just water would do if you have anything else.  Bring this to the boil then chuck in the nettles which you will have washed carefully in a colander. I do the cooking in my electronic pressure cooker because you can shut down the lid and cook under pressure for ten minutes which allows almost all the minerals and vitamin to be kept locked into the food.  I then stir in a small pot of single cream or some full fat milk and simmer for five montes before blitzing with a hand blender. You can play around with flavourings at this point. Black pepper goes well, as does a grating of nutmeg.  If I’m in the mood, I go one step up from the hand-blender and use my extremely powerful Heston Blumenthal “bullet-style” machine which nukes everything you put in it to such fine particles you think that a soup like this must contain loads of double cream.  It’s what professional chefs do when they serve this little amuse-bouche sous in espresso shot cups.  In the posh restaurant you think: “Blimey - this must be made with the richest Jersey clotted cream…” But really the ultra-fine blending just introduces a lot of air into the liquid so you get what is almost a light suspension. Smooth, healthy, and delicious.   Definitely go for a big dollop of the wild garlic pesto I mentioned in a Lockdown Diary the other day. Stir this into a bowl of nettle soup as you serve - or fleck the whole served soup with fragments of crisp fried bacon.  This is cheap nosh, we’re talking about.  In fact, it doesn’t come much cheaper. For two of us I’d use one carrot, one onion, one stick of celery, a knob of butter for the initial frying, a tiny level teaspoon of vegetable bullion power and half a pint of the cheapest single cream or some old leftover full cream milk.      Feeding two for less than 50 pence during a lockdown. Can’t be a bad idea…

I promise not to do the gloom and doom thing in this Exmoor Lockdown Diary - the whole point of it is to see if we can keep feeling positive at a time when most people are anxious or even downright scared. One of the things that will inevitably come out of it is the vast difference between rural and urban life - and what I’m writing about today perhaps accentuates the void that exists between those two worlds.  I am reluctant even to mention the phrase “food shortages” because even a whiff of that threat is enough to worry anyone - but we folk out in the deep countryside do at least have nature’s larder to help supplement our diets.  If we know what we are doing - and, if I’m honest, I wish I had far more knowledge when it comes to edible plants than I do.  The downside of living out in the sticks is that you can be at least a ten-mile drive to the nearest supermarket - although of course we do have marvellous village shops like the fabulous, newly refurbished, Roadwater Community Store . However, if you are heading for a supermarket for a bulk shop, the idea that you could drive all that way with valuable fuel only to find the shelves empty is off-putting to say the least.  So village stores could well come into their own and garner much needed support as long as they can get supplies. Which hopefully will be a good thing for communities going forward after the pandemic is over.   Anyway, it’s that time of year when the folk who like to go out foraging for wild food in the countryside begin to stir after the winter lull. And chief among pickable and delicious things to eat in the hedgerows right now is wild garlic.  I am lucky, the valley in which I live is rich in the stuff - if you know where to look. Some believe this pungent plant is on the increase - and in an edition of Gardeners’ Question Time on BBC Radio Four not long ago there were even complaints from amateur horticulturists desperate to get rid of the pungent wild herb.  The answer was: “You can’t. It’s difficult to rid your garden of wild garlic - try eating it all instead.” But if London’s Borough Market is anything to go by - where small bunches sell for eye-watering amounts - those fortunate enough to have it in their gardens should be proud of their crop.  Large swathes of the West Country region are rich in wild garlic, or ransom - which is unfurling its green leaves right now. Which means that now is the ideal time to pick the herb before it eventually flowers, then turns brown and bolts.  I have used two of the plant’s common names - it is also known as buckrams, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, bear leek or bear's garlic.  I’ve also hinted at its usefulness in the kitchen, but it does come with a health warning: every year in this country there are a few cases in which people have been poisoned after picking and eating the similar looking leaves belonging to Lilly of the Valley. Similar when young, that is - which is now. As these plants mature, you should easily be able to see the difference. The wild garlic leaves are slightly convex and smooth edged with a single main vein, whereas the Lilly of the Valley has irregular edges and numerous deep veins. In my garden the two grow side by side, so it’s easy to see how they differ. However, anyone who has even the slightest doubt should not to go out harvesting ramsons unless escorted by an expert. If in doubt, either forego the delights of wild garlic altogether. But if you do have the knowledge and confidence, wild garlic makes a superb form of pesto - which some Italian purists might feel snooty about because they’d say any sauce of that name should contain but one herb, and that is basil. However, the word comes from the Italian verb pestare which means to crush, to trample, to pound - it in no way describes which type of herb should be used.  Go to Italy and you’ll find many types of pesto, from a thick sauce made of sun-dried tomatoes to one created from olives and capers. If the ingredients vary, so do the recipes. Every part of Italy will have a different way of grinding up various ingredients to make a sauce - the contadini (farmers or peasants) simply adapt it to the season and to whatever grows in their immediate area. Basically what you need is a fistful of herbs (in our case this week, wild garlic), a smaller amount of nuts (a few walnuts, cobnuts or blanched skinned almonds), some hard cheese (parmesan, but some hard English cheeses will do), and a squeeze of lemon juice.  These ingredients are all placed into a mini-food-processor, and whizzed with some glugs of quality extra virgin olive or rapeseed oil. If the cheese you’ve used hasn’t been salty enough, you can always bung in a big pinch of Cornish sea-salt after tasting. And that’s it. Within seconds you will have a small cup or bowlful of the closest your garden will ever get to producing rocket-fuel - at least, in the flavour stakes…  A spoonful or two thrown in to any kind of fresh cooked pasta creates an instant and delicious lunch, but you can also use it as a sauce for meats or fish or as a marinade. Stir a little into a spring vegetable risotto and you will have a vegetarian dish worthy of an award winning restaurant, or add it to soups or stews and you can transform the weary and overcooked into something that fresh and full of zing.     The perfect herb to have around if you are running your kitchen on just a few bulky staples like pasta, potatoes or rice, during a lockdown. I will return to the subject of wild garlic on another day and share a recipe that the Dorset chef, Mark Hix, once gave me…

Most of us Brits go to London at some time or other. Some of us are lucky enough to have close friends or relations who live there and who can give us a bed - but sometimes nothing but a hotel will do.  Now there is an excellent new option right in the heart of town. As I’ve already pointed out on this website, I am a big fan of the German-owned Ruby Hotel chain having stayed in one in Vienna. There are three of these remarkable, funky and inexpensive hotels in that city and more opening up across Europe all the time - including the one in London which has just opened. The Munich-based hotel brand is pioneering what they call the ‘Lean Luxury’ philosophy, and the new 76-room Ruby Lucy, forms part of an ambitious expansion plan for the brand to unveil a total of eleven new hotels – including a second London property by 2022.  Enjoying a prime position on the Southbank’s Lower Marsh, Ruby Lucy’s interior design is inspired by the area’s historic fairs and markets, not to mention its entertainment and theatre scene.  Which is why there’s a carnival theme running throughout the hotel. According to the Ruby Hotel team “Rich, dark tones meet bright brass accents and subtle stripes are accented with playful props including circus drums and juggling pins.” An accurate description. And the really good thing about the hotel is that it is located just a three-minute walk from Waterloo station, close to the South Bank’s rich collection of theatres, galleries, concert halls and independent shops.  In short it’s a fantastic location, and the hotel boasts high-quality fittings, and outstanding design.  And all of this is offered at an affordable price by rigorously cutting out the superfluous and focusing on the essential.  And like other Ruby Hotels one of the coolest things is that the rooms are increasingly well soundproofed. To prove this each is equipped with its own big Marshall amplifier and speaker - and you are free to turn up the volume as loud as you like. Whether the resulting music is from your smartphone and you are playing your own music collection or because you have borrowed one of the electric guitars that hang around the walls of the reception area, you can very loud fun indeed. A great way to unwind after a frenetic day out in London… At least, that’s what I found.  By the way, I’m not payed by Ruby Hotels to say any of this, nor do I have any financial link with their London based PR agency. I am a genuine fan of their affordable “lean luxury” regime and look forward to staying in yet more of their hotels around Europe.

Another day, another storm. You can hate them, or love them. I know people who get very down as the mighty Atlantic winds queue up to hurl the wet stuff at this peninsula – and there are others, albeit a minority, who worship the way Nature flexes her muscles at this time of the year. It would seem sensible to have a well-shod foot in both camps. The big winter storms can be restricting and even downright dangerous, but they should not be depressing.  But why not get out into the teeth of the gale? Reasonable quality all-weather gear is cheap nowadays – there is no excuse for sulking indoors. And so what if you get a bit damp anyway? It’s a good underlying principle to make the best of whatever comes our way and try and delight in it if we can – but it’s more than that when it comes to winter storms.  We all complain that we are losing our classic seasons. Summers are damp-squibs, winters are warm, and spring has become a non-entity. You only have to look back over the past five years to believe this blurring of the seasonal edges is a reality. But winter – good old rumbustious winter – doesn’t apologise for being the awkward kid on the block. It comes raging in with its jackboots on. Autumn is when the West Country peninsula comes into its own. It’s when our hills and dales turn into a race track for winds. Try standing on the sea-cliffs above Parson Hawker’s Hut on the North Cornish coast in a big blow. I’ve been knocked down by the wind out there on the Devon-Cornwall north coast – 13-stone of countryman lifted and thrown like a tissue.  Last week up at Countisbury – 1000 feet above Lynmouth Bay’s salty maelstrom – I saw a flock of folk undoing their anoraks and holding the bottom tags to form a wedge-shaped wing. The fun thing to do then is lean at a seemingly impossible angle into the wind. One kid almost had his nose touching the ground - while remaining standing on two feet. Careful though. This is a sport that’s only safe if you know for sure the gale is blowing permanently inland. One gust the other way and you’re a gonner.  But at least you can rug up by the wood fire and feel snug as the gale continues to roar and rage. If I had to single out one word that I love most at this time of the year it is that humble four letter one. Snug.  Sometimes opposites are best – one thing throws another into high delightful profile – and for me the best thing about an autumn gale is coming home to my cottage and rugging-up to feel utterly, unbelievably, soul-warmingly, snug.

Welcome to the Valley of the Snow Piercers. It sounds like the wonderfully romantic title of some Pre-Raphealite fantasy novel, but the phrase could well have been coined for real on the northern flanks of Exmoor some 800 years ago. For that was when the Benedictine monks of old first brought snowdrops to this country. Or, at least, that’s what people think. There is no evidence to suggest snowdrops are indigenous to this country, but the first mention of them is found in medieval manuscripts written by the monks who called the little white flowers “snow-piercers”. Today the hordes who visit the now famous Snowdrop Valley, tucked in a deep hollow several hundred feet below the flanks of Dunkery Beacon, probably don’t care much who introduced the flowers, or how, or why. They are simply content to walk the short specially made circular path that runs for half a mile along the stream-side and admire the extraordinary floral phenomenon that each year blooms along the higher reaches of the River Avill.   It must be the only valley in Britain that is closed to traffic annually, just so that vast numbers of people can go and gaze at wild flowers. So narrow are the steep lanes into and out of the remote valley that a mini-bus park-and-ride scheme is now in operation for the ninth year running. Supported by Exmoor National Park Authority and with permission from landowners the Badgworthy Land Company, the Snowdrop Valley park-and-ride scheme from Wheddon Cross runs from the end of January until Sunday 23 February.  Eric Norman, landlord of the Rest & Be Thankful inn at Wheddon Cross and a member of the Snowdrop Valley committee, said: “With the mostly mild winter that we have enjoyed this year, the snowdrops are looking great already and the buses will be standing by from 10:30 am to take people down to see them.” He went on: “For years the Holland family from Timberscombe picked snowdrops in the valley, tied them in bunches and sold them in Minehead, with no great loss to the snowdrops.  However, with widespread use of the motorcar the valley became better known and, despite no right of access to the privately owned site, many more came to pick the snowdrops and caused damage.   “Since the mid 1980s Exmoor National Park Authority has worked with the landowners to manage the site, allowing public access and improving the experience for visitors whilst encouraging responsible behaviour and attempting to limit damage.” As for the Benedictine connection, it is known that the old priory at Dunster had trout ponds in the upper part of the Avill Valley and some people believe that it was monks who introduced the snowdrop there in the 13th century.   Others believe the brave little flowers to be native – at least in a few damp and sheltered West Country woodlands, such as Snowdrop Valley.   Writer Richard Mabey, in his famous Flora Britannica, writes: “Where it turns the ground white as in Snowdrop Valley, it is difficult to believe that the plant is not anciently native.” Apart from botanists, no one really cares whether the tiny white jewels are British or not, what people are really interested in is: will it be a good show this year.  Having visited Snowdrop Valley a day or two ago, I can report the carpets of white are in very fine fettle. Sidebar The shuttle bus service will operate continuously from 10:30 am to 3:30 pm - last bus back from the valley 4:30 pm. The service collects passengers from the car park next to the Rest & Be Thankful Inn at Wheddon Cross. The last bus back from the valley is at 4.30 pm. The fare is £6 per adult; senior citizen £5; children 5-15 £2. The price is for the round trip or the journey back up from the valley.

John Buchan, of 39 Steps fame, once wrote a book called Salute To Adventurers - which is a relevant way of starting this article because this is a salute to one West Country adventurer in particular, whose new book is attracting much praise in high places with one pundit likening him to a modern-day John Buchan.  And salute is just about all you can do when you learn for the first time, after being good mates with someone for the best part of 20 years, details concerning one of the most remarkable interludes in their life. I knew that my friend, the Somerset-based writer James Crowden, had lived in the highest mountain range in the world, but I had no real idea what his altitudinous adventures entailed. At least, I didn’t until this week when I read The Frozen River, Seeking Silence in the Himalaya (published by William Collins). Not only did the book come as a revelation for me as a friend, it also happens to be the most gripping and fascinating reads I have enjoyed for a very long time.  When someone tells you that they once spent the best part of a year living in a high valley in the Himalayas, you vaguely imagine a hardy young soul with a rucksack yomping over icy passes, living in rough village guest-houses and staying in the odd monastery here or there.  You do not imagine a country-boy born on Dartmoor organising his own one-man expedition and hiring horsemen to carry six-months’ worth of belongings into one of the most inaccessible valleys in the world so that he can become the first or maybe second Westerner ever to overwinter in its freezing wastes and live among the subsidence farmers and monks. There had been an obscure and brilliant Hungarian linguist who’d been in Zangskar in the early part of the 1800s, but he’d left few notes or records about his winter there. And there’d been been a rather unlikely expedition undertaken by three British housewives in 1958, but they stayed briefly and escaped long before winter. So when James entered the high valley in 1976, just a day or two before the first seasonal snows closed the entire area off for winter, his appearance was regarded as very novel indeed.  Things have undoubtedly changed quite a bit in this remote corner of India now the first road has reached the valley (something James went back to see just recently) - but back then Zangskar meant a six or seven day hike over some of the highest passes in the world.  More than that, it meant planning. There would be no shops or bazaars up in this high valley where James could purchase the necessities for his lengthy stay. Everything - all his food, medicines, even his ration of candles (half a candle a day) - had to be purchased back down in civilisation and hauled physically over the passes to a valley located more than two-and-a-half vertical miles above sea-level.  And all this had to be done before the snows arrived, because once they did, Zangskar was almost entirely cut-off and isolated from the rest of the world.  Almost cut-off… This beautiful, high-altitude, ice-bound, sparsely-populated, prison had one extraordinary, perilous, ancient, and some would say extreme form of ingress and egress. James’ book title refers directly to that one deep and dangerous avenue of hope, survival and commerce. The Zangskar River is the somewhat terrifying waterway that eons ago formed the deep narrow gorge which allows it to escape the high valley which bears its name, and tumble and roar its way north, cutting through the vast Zangskar Range to join the Indus River (which in turn gives India its name).  Just beyond from that eventual, distant, meeting of the two rivers, stands the ancient trading town of Leh. It is to this centre that the Zangskari people travel during winter so that they can sell their high-value yak milk - and they can do so thanks to the fact that the extreme low temperatures tame the wild and mighty river by turning it to ice. That is the theory, anyway. But nothing is ever as simple as it seems - and in high altitude mountains everything is always a good deal more difficult and dangerous than you’d ever dream.  Even in good times when the river is hard frozen, this five, six or seven day journey by foot is difficult, arduous and perilous. In average times when there are holes in the ice and the river roars underneath, it is downright dangerous. And in bad times it is impossible and potentially deadly.   The Zangskari people call this extreme avenue of commerce the ‘chadar’ and some of them do it two or even three times a winter (although of course that is becoming increasingly difficult nowadays thanks to climate change). Back in the early 1970s a young Army recruit from Dartmoor got to hear about the ‘chadar’ and - having fallen in love with mountains and lonely places - began to plan ways of getting to the Himalayas so that he could try this insane journey for himself.  That meant buying himself out of the Army; it meant endless in-depth researches; and it meant scrimping and saving - then purchasing enough of everything he’d need to survive for more than six months in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.  James did all this and then - once he’d set up house and home (in a tiny draughty room) in Padum, the village capital of Zangskar - was tough, resilient and charming enough to persuade the local men to take him on a ‘chadar’.  That fact that he has now - all these years later - written about it in such a beautiful and thoughtful way is enough to have me re-evaluating my friendship with him. I have always admired this Westcountry writer and poet, now I am adopting something approaching reverence for the mild-mannered, soft-spoken, adventurer from Winsham. Not only does the book detail the week-long journey down the gorge that James took with a gang of Zangskari men - it also rather modestly describes the even more dangerous journey back up. And just as gripping in their own way are the accounts of village life spent up there on the roof of the world in temperatures that would often sink below minus 20 degrees (indoors, that is - more like minus 40 c outside). The book is also coloured with the dazzling prayer flags and chants of the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries which dominate that remote valley. And James goes further - his text resounds with the deep and sombre backdrop of mountain and tantric silence.  In short, The Frozen River is one of the most remarkable tomes ever to come out of the West Country. James Crowden describes a style of life that seems as strange, magical and far-fetched as an existence endured on another planet.  Alas, it is a life that is fast-disappearing thanks to climate change, road-building and the reach of globalisation.  Why risk your life two or three times a year traversing one of the most dangerous and difficult commercial journeys imaginable when you could buy a pat of industrially made butter off the back of a truck?  But to even ask that question is to miss Jame Crowden’s underlying point… The traditional existence in the high Himalayan valleys wasn’t/isn’t so much a lifestyle, but an entire philosophy. If it disappears, the world will be a much poorer place.   The Frozen River, by James Crowden, published January 23 by William Collins, price £16.99. On Friday 31st January 2020 James will be delivering a talk on his book and on his remarkable Himalayan adventures at The Ebenezer in the Seed Factory ( Aller, Somerset TA10 0QN) Doors open at 7.00 for a 7.30 start

Opening new doors is almost always a good thing to do. One should never be frightened to open up new opportunities. It has just been announced that I am the new Editorial Director of RAW Food and Drink PR - which is a wonderful opportunity for a journalist like me in these times when the entire media landscape is changing.  I have never worked for a public relations company before, but I know the team at RAW and believe the company is one of the most forward-thinking, intelligent and humble operations of its kind in South West England if not the entire UK. So we’re going to be opening up new channels through which we can tell the stories of clients, and others besides. However, if I am ever paid directly to put something on this website I will announce that on the page - or make it clear that a certain company mentioned is a client.  At the moment and for the foreseeable future there is no paid for content in these pages.  Anyway, I thought I’d talk about opening new doors with RAW - partly because it gives me an excuse to put up photographs of delightful doors I’ve spotted in countries all around the world over the years…

Turkey, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, ham (both home cooked and Iberico) and tongue - not to mention numerous sausages, bacon and a few other carnivorous delights. Having got that little lot down last month, we thought we'd feature vegetarian food. Somehow the body cries out for a little light and easy going, easy-to-digest, plant-life. Of course it is a lot easier in summer. Salads - whacking great big salads filled to the brim with nourishment from the garden. That is exactly what many would eat by choice right now. And it would be easy enough to pop into a supermarket and buy some of those ready picked and washed salad leaves, a few greenhouse tomatoes, a cucumber and a pepper or two. But many people have a thing about seasonal eating. You don’t need to be religious about it, and you can drizzle extra-virgin olive oil over a bowl of Canary Island tomatoes happily enough - especially if you can add a handful of the herbs that still grow in the garden, not to mention leaves from the pot of basil that is struggling on the window sill.  Somehow though, it seems to miss the point. All those un-ecological food miles that the tomatoes have flown, all those poly-tunnels where the Spanish and others bung on the artificial fertilisers with enthusiastic abandon… Having once over-wintered near Motril on the Costa de Sol, and I know what goes into the average Spanish iceberg lettuce - and not a single crunchy but tasteless leaf of the stuff has passed my lips since The sunshine taste of the Mediterranean CAN be enjoyed however, with the help of a pulse and a bean or two. There is a bit of a problem here and it is that most dried pulses need a soak in water - some for lengthy periods - so you really need to get your act together and give your hardened dried vegetable jewels a plunge the day before you intend eating them. Or you can buy them in a can. Nowhere near as good, but what for instance could be more instantaneous and delicious than a simple salad made of cannellini beans, sliced red onion and a heft sprinkling of parsley from the garden? The only work you have to do after opening the can is to slice the onion and chop the parsley (what’s that, 30 seconds?) and make a substantial vinaigrette from the best extra virgin olive oil you can afford, lemon juice and a spoonful of French mustard. A sprinkle of sea salt, some crusty bread, a glass of wine, a little Flamenco music - and for a moment or two you could dream warm Spanish dreams of distant summer holidays. But I’d advise taking the time to prepare the dried pulses. That salad really does taste a thousand times better when you’ve soaked and boiled your own beans, but make sure you pour on some extra virgin olive oil just after you have drained them. This not only prevents them sticking to one another, but somehow heightens the flavour when combined with the eventual vinaigrette. And the great thing about bean salads is that you can add what you like to highlight the dish. If you don’t care who you breathe over and you fancy a little pizzazz - throw in a couple of finely chopped chillies as well as some olive oil soaked sun dried tomatoes, and add half a clove of garlic with some anchovies that you have crushed in a pestle and mortar. Nothing could be more simple and yet that dish will put the taste buds in overdrive. More-over, it's extremely healthy and remarkably cheap - especially if you buy the beans dried. In fact dried pulses must rate as one of the most inexpensive foodstuffs that you can purchase, and if you have a pressure cooker (like the electronic Instant Pot which is the one I’d recommend) they don’t even take that much expensive energy to cook. Add a couple of cans of tuna fish to the above and you will have a supper dish that will feed several people and cost under two quid! Chickpeas are another example of dried, value for money, nosh - and are so adaptable that you can find a thousand and one recipes for turning them into lip-smackingly good sunshine food. They go particularly well in tagines - those warming, Moroccan style, stews cooked in a shallow pot, usually made of brown earthenware with a strange conical top. You must soak chickpeas for at least eight hours and boil them for no less than one-and-a-half hours, but in a pressure cooker this can be reduced to just 30 or 40 minutes. A great favourite of mine is a fish tagine which requires a kilogram of any white fish you can buy. Cheap and cheerful will do, but best if you can to buy something fresh and delicious caught locally. Add large quantities of garlic, paprika, ground cumin, a chilli pepper as well as salt and lemon juice to taste. Simmer this lot in olive oil over a lowish heat for half-an-hour and then add the chickpeas and a little of their cooking water, stir gently in and simmer again for another 10 minutes. Not exactly difficult, but the dish is exotic and it will give you all the warmth of Morocco and brighten even the coldest of January days. Lentils are another great dried gift from summer gardens - especially the slightly more expensive green beauties from Puy in France. I say expensive, but compared to meat or fish they are the food of paupers, yet the flavour of these small pea-like wonders is exquisite. A Sicilian friend taught me this dish… Boil Puy lentils until they are al-dente, fry some garlic and onions in olive oil until soft and slightly browned, grab handfuls of spaghetti and break the stuff into inch long sticks, boil and drain. Combine the whole lot in a large ornate bowl and stir in copious amounts of the very best extra virgin olive oil. You really can’t get much simpler than that - the only other thing you add is some sea salt and lots of fresh ground black pepper - and yet this basic peasant dish is an absolute sensation for lunch.  It’s the sort of stuff you just can’t stop eating, which surely is what you want from any food. And I for one will be taking the simple, sunny, healthy, Mediterranean route to cooking in the next few weeks to save the poor old body from the heavier excesses of midwinter.

Post Christmas walks are a feature of the British countryside. You need to walk off all that festive excess. But not too excessively. When you get to a certain age and over it is wise not to overdo things - especially when your physical-being is already labouring under the Christmas excesses.  So what’s recommended is a little series of post-Christmas hikes that get more demanding each time you go out.  Perhaps the under-50s can do what they like, but I reckon people over that age who’ve been hammering away at the food and drink for a few days would be well served by a short Boxing Day hike of just three or four gentle miles. I know fitness buffs who’d laugh at this - indeed I write these words after just completing a crazily difficult yomp over the most difficult terrain in Southern England, by which I mean Exmoor’s boggy and sodden Chains - but health-care experts tell me that just a couple of miles walked at a brisk-ish pace can do wonders for your ticker and other bits as well.  For example, a friend who has diabetes has one of those little testing devices which measures sugar levels in blood, and he informs me that he can bring his count down a good few points just by walking twice around the flat recreation ground near his house. My dog Finn wouldn’t even regard that as a pee-break - let alone a hike. On the other end of the scale, I know people who believe in the big Boxing Day walk like some people believe in the Second Coming. Nothing will do for them but to punish themselves by yomping for miles over hill and dale in a guilt-ridden frenzy to make amends for the seasonal excess. Let’s be sensible and go down some kind of middle road. Not that middle of the road needs to be boring. Take the short, fairly unstrenuous, walk from Sennen Cove to Land’s End as the perfect example of the genre. Simply walk west out of Sennen on the coast path which runs up Mayon Cliff to the National Trust’s historic little look-out building at the top. That's the climbing bit over and done with and you can look over your shoulder and see all of Whitesand Bay in its great curving glory - and then turn to peer south west where the cliffs march with so much majesty to reach Dr Syntax’s Head and, ultimately, Land’s End. Dr Syntax’s Head? No, I don’t know why it’s called that either, but you pass it on the more or less flat stroll to that most iconic of all Cornish locations. And at Land’s End you can stop and stare at all that maritime wonder, proud of the fact that, just for a few minutes, you are the most south-westerly human beings on the British mainland. At the other end of our peninsula, there’s nothing easier - or perhaps more dramatic - than a walk in the Somerset Levels. And this year, touchwood, you won’t need your snorkel of flippers to enjoy the vast flat landscapes of this very special area.  One easy option would be the four mile hike around the RSPB’s Shapwick Heath Nature Reserve. From the Shapwick-Westhay road, stroll along the old railway line south east to the reserve - but do take the detour through the woods around the ancient Sweet Track as you go. This is very easy going – there’s not a slope in sight - and you can stop off in the various bird-hides along the way and watch countless feathered friends. If you are there early or late, you will even stand a chance of seeing the famous starling murmurations.  When it comes to easy walks, two organisations immediately come to mind. The South West Lakes Trust and the Forestry Commission are both ideal candidates when it comes to providing paths for people of all abilities - partly because they both look after what could be described as controlled environments. The SW Lakes Trust has the region's reservoirs - and most of these have circular paths around their shores which tend, by their nature, to be fairly flat. At Roadford Lake, just above the A30 on the Devon-Cornwall border, there’s Coombepark Walk which is a real lazy doddle because it only takes some 20 minutes each way. Access is from the dam-side car park, and the route takes you past the restaurant along Coombepark Valley towards the fantastic little cob shelter on a spur that stretches into the lake. Up on Exmoor the huge expanses of Wimbleball Lake offer more water’s edge hiking. On Dartmoor, Fernworthy Reservoir has a truly magical saunter right around the region’s highest sizeable stretch of water. From lakes to forests. A spokesperson for the Forestry Commission in the West Country once told me: “We have a policy of open access where we are able to offer it - so where you get car parks and notice boards with forest walks, then the public is welcome to explore.” One excellent area for a bit of post-Christmas walking - which offers stupendous views of the Exe Estuary and central south Devon as a bonus - is to be found at Haldon Hill above Exeter. Another easy access forestry zone can be enjoyed at Cardinham Woods on outskirts of Bodmin. On Dartmoor the Forestry Commission has woods at Bellever where there’s a car park and countless easy routes, including a short trail down to the East Dart river. And then there’s the newly laid, easy-access, footpath that runs down the River Barle from the central Exmoor village of Simonsbath to spooky and lonely Wheal Eliza… In fact, that might well be the route I’ll be taking to mark my own version of a healthy New Year

Carols are an important part of Christmas, but there was a time when they dominated seasonal proceedings. Almost every community would have had its own festive song which would have been performed again and again each December around the parish.  Alas, most of these have now been lost or forgotten, but there is one Somerset village which is fighting hard to pass down its own unique carol for future generations. The Dunster Carol is a joyous, melodic, song performed each year around the village’s famous medieval streets - as well as in the magnificent church - and it has always been sung in the crowded bar of the ancient Luttrell Arms on the last Sunday before Christmas for as long as anyone can remember… But the Dunster Carol would have been consigned to the history books like so many others had one local man not been determined to keep it as an audible jewel for the community.  “I was born here in the village and as soon as you were able to walk years ago, you were in the choir at Dunster Church,” I was told by retired garage owner Steve Bowden. “The men in the church choir used to go around singing carols and the boys were dragged in to sing as well.” After World War Two Mr Bowden moved away from the village for a few years but eventually returned in the early 1960s to find that carol-singing had almost died out in the village.  “There were no carols being sung at all - so I went around and got a few of the older chaps together and we started singing again,” said Mr Bowden. “I got some little books printed out with the words - because none of the carols we knew were written down.  “I got them from the old fellas who were still around - and now we’ve been through songbook after songbook as they’ve worn out over the years.” Mr Bowden believes the Dunster Carol may first have been sung during, or just after, World War One. The melody is identical to the music of an ancient French folk tune and the hypothesises is that one of Dunster’s men serving in the trenches would have heard it, memorised the melody, and then brought it home. After that someone adapted a poem (I Hear Along Our Street) by the British poet Longfellow to suit the music - and so a carol was born. “Actually, we do have another carol which is unique to this village,” said Mr Bowden, leafing through his old homemade book of carols. “Christ The Lord Is Born This Day is really more of a Dunster Carol than the other one in some ways because it is older. But I know nothing whatsoever as to how that carol came here.” But Mr Bowden, who is in his eighties, now fears there’s a danger the old carols could be lost sometime in the near future. “When I was a boy there were no televisions or radios much, so as you went around the village people were more interested in listening to you. These days they open the door and say, ‘Sorry, we’re watching the telly.’ “And of course, a lot of our members nowadays are ‘going up to see Our Maker’ and our numbers are dwindling - but we are still trying to recruit some younger people. And we have some in their 50s and 60s which, as far as I am concerned, is young,” said Mr Bowden, who is delighted that staff at the local school are now teaching the village carol to the children.   “It is very important to keep it going and I hope we will manage to do that over the years. For all I know it might well be the only village carol still being sung in a small community like this each year,” he said. Many towns and villages used to have their own distinctive repertoire of carols in times gone by. In fact, carols have been part of Britain’s festive tradition since the Middle Ages. Today the word 'carol' tends to be attached to any non-pop or commercial song connected to Christmas, but originally ‘to carole’, meant ‘to dance’. Then, through the Middle Ages the special festive songs began to be connected with the nativity story and were often featured in plays and church processions. But it seems that local carols did not travel far. Certainly, Mr Bowden remembers how the Dunster Carol would only ever be sung in and around his West Somerset village - with one exception… “The only place we used to go to outside the village of Dunster was the Butcher’s Arms in Carhampton,” he recalled. “This was in World War Two and there were no lights or head-lights or anything - you weren’t even allowed to use a torch. So the only way we could get there in the pitch dark was to follow the white line in the middle of the main road.” At least the men and boys walking in the dark would have had their spirits lifted by the following words as they sang the Dunster Carol… I hear along our street Pass the minstrel throngs Hark! They play so sweet On their hautboys Christmas songs. (Chorus) Let us by the fire  Ever higher, ever higher, Sing until the night expire Sing until the night expire In December ring Every day the chimes Loud the gleemen sing In the street their merry rhymes. Who by the fireside stands Stamps his feet and sings But he who blows his hands Not so gay a carol rings. Shepherds at the grange Where the Babe was born Sing with many a change Christmas carols until morn.