Wandering As
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DISCOVER Dartmoor Y POOLS AND WATERFALLS and See more JOYFUL WATER-LIFE rillets the river Taw grew, flowing Williamson’s Tarka the Otter under steep hills that towered high hasn’t been out of print ‘ above. It washed the roots of its first since publication in 1927. tree, a willow thin and sparse of bloom, a soft tree wildered in that place of rocks and rain and harsh grey harrying winds.’ That place of rocks and rain and steep hills is Dartmoor; the words written by Henry Williamson in his classic book Tarka the Otter. I’m rock-hopping by the banks of the Taw near Belstone, along one of the two Devon rivers that star in Tarka’s ‘joyful water-life’, published almost a century ago. Half an hour ago I was up on the chunky granite blocks that top Belstone Tor, looking across the wild moor towards Cranmere daylight, of fair weather and foul, with eyes, Williamson was Pool where ‘The river’s life began without sound, weary it may be, but always alert and vigilant.’ going to call his in darkness of peat that was heather in ancient I find a flat-top rock and settle in to look. The title character sunlight’. The view up there spanned south chatter of the water down a bank of stones and the Lutra, but opted over miles of rusty tussocks, and far across the slow swirl of the pool below are mesmerising even instead for Tarka, ‘which was the chessboard pastures north of Dartmoor too. It was if you don’t spot any of the river’s wildlife – the flash name given to glorious, but this walk isn’t only about stirring of a kingfisher, the bobbing yellow of a grey wagtail, otters many panoramas. It’s about looking really closely. or a chocolate-brown dipper walking underwater years ago by Few people looked as closely as Williamson. along the riverbed. If you’re extraordinarily lucky, men dwelling in ‘Good writers’, he noted, ‘are always observant. you might even glimpse an otter, or Lutra Lutra. hut circles on the moor. It means Their intelligence lies in their powers of Otter numbers are far lower now than when Little Water observation, of eyesight... Their pages arrest and Williamson walked here, although they are Wanderer, or, hold the attention because their detail is fresh, recovering. These sinuous mustelids can grow over Wandering interesting, living.’ While working on Tarka, which four feet long from whisker to tail tip, and have lived as Water’. ranges hundreds of miles beside the rivers Taw and in Britain since late glacial times. Hunted since the Torridge, Williamson said he ‘walked every yard of Middle Ages for their fur, and to protect fish stocks, RIVER VIEW the country described, once with a measuring tape’. it was intensive pesticide use in the 1950s that Opposite page: You can now trek this same country on the Tarka precipitated a decline to near extinction. They’re Watching the Taw Trail, a 180-mile figure-of-eight route – on now back hunting for eels (their favourite), other u run through Belstone Cleave, and ‘the Dartmoor, Exmoor and the sandy dunescape of old year’s leaf-dust Braunton Burrows. I’m walking just over seven ANIMATE GRANITE drifting like smoke miles today, from the opening scenes of Tarka’s last Belstone Tor is topped under water.’ year. Despite the distances he covered Williamson by chunks of granite: often wasn’t walking at all. ‘It is not he who runs, Williamson memorably but rather he who remains still that is the best described a observer of wild creatures,’ wrote Sir John badger as ‘The Fortescue in the book’s introduction, ‘and it is easy grey waddler, to see that Mr Williamson has waited immovable animate through long hours of darkness and of granite.’ Wandering as WATER Belstone Start seeing the world from a fasinating new perspective, with the author of Tarka the Otter as your extraordinary example... WORDS: JENNY WALTErs; PHOTos: TOM BAILEY JANUARY 2020 COUNTRY WALKING 55 DISCOVER Dartmoor fish, worms, and even water birds on both of Tarka’s rivers, but they are nocturnal, shy and nomadic – a male’s territory can range along 12 miles of river. While Williamson’s Richard Adams, You’re more likely to spot their tarry black spraint muse was water; author of the famous on a riverside boulder, or their round five-toed print another man’s was the rabbit story Watership sky. Chelmsford office Down, was one of pressed into the soft mud of the bank, than you are worker JA Baker spent many writers inspired to hear their yikkering or tissing. a decade watching by Williamson. The Even Williamson found them elusive, and he the Essex skies for book began as a story walked with the Cheriton Otter Hunt as part of peregrine falcons, he told his daughters his research. It seems counterintuitive to join recording every detail in 1600 pages of on long drives; they insisted he write it people trying to kill the wildlife you seek, but those notes which he then distilled into a single, down. It’s very different to Tarka; these slim, extraordinary book. The Peregrine is rabbits talk, have imagination, and even hunting an animal have a deep understanding of a ‘fusion of man and bird’ and Robert extra-sensory perception, but much of its character and behaviour and they gave him his Macfarlane likens reading it to taking LSD: their behaviour is natural, based on a book best chance to see and to study. And that hunt – and ‘His Essex is landscape on acid: super- Adams studied called The Private Life of particularly Deadlock ‘the great pied hound with the saturations of colour, wheeling the Rabbit. And Watership Down is a real belving tongue’ – looms large in the tale of Tarka. phantasmagoria, dimensions blown out place, exactly as described, rising near For this is no sweet story like The Wind in the and falling away, nature as hypernature.’ Whitchurch in Hampshire where the Willows. Many of its animal characters have names WALK HERE: Download a walk at author lived for much of his life. Danbury, east of Chelmsford, at WALK HERE: Download a Watership – Tarka, his mates Greymuzzle, White-tip and lfto.com/bonusroutes Down route at lfto.com/bonusroutes. Marland Jimmy, Old Nog the heron – but they I splash into the always act as wild creatures in a harsh, bloody, shallows and“ crouch down; world. Williamson enriched his observations in the colours of the riverbed pebbles shaping the flow of wild with reading – The Life Story of an Otter by the peat-tinted river, and how the running water just a few feet lower and my JC Tregarthen was a particular inspiration – and has undercut the banks to expose knotted tree- alters. by watching an orphan otter he helped rescue. His roots. These hollows are where otters often hole whole perspective cat mothered it like a kitten, and later the cub would up during daylight, in dens known as holts. Best known for ” Tarka, Williamson walk with Williamson down to the river at twilight. Williamson plunged in even deeper for his later wrote more Until, that is, he caught his paw in a vicious gin- book Salar the Salmon. It tells the long journey than 50 books LooK SHARP trap. Once freed, the otter was never seen again of Salar ‘the leaper’ from the deeps of the Atlantic including his Clockwise from 15-volume, semi- above: Taking an despite Williamson’s desperate attempts to find it. Ocean up through Devon rivers to his ancestral I chase the river down into the beautiful wooded spawning grounds. ‘Before starting on the book,’ autobiographical otter’s eye view of Chronicle of the River Taw as it gorge of Belstone Cleave, alert for any signs among he said, ‘I had to get the ‘feel’ of the water. I spent Ancient Sunlight. flows along the edge the trees, many twisted as if grasping onto its steep altogether 5000 hours simply watching the pools of Dartmoor; the slopes. Williamson didn’t just look for otters in the and eddies until I ‘knew’ the stream.’ He started a Nine Maidens stone landscape; he looked at the landscape as if he were hatchery to watch the fish grow and read every new circle, each one a woman petrified for an otter. Robert Macfarlane describes how issue of Salmon and Trout magazine. He called this daring to dance on Williamson ‘crawled on hands and knees, squinting intense fishy immersion ‘keeping ‘under water’’. the Sabbath; a close out sightlines, peering at close-up textures, working Williamson’s fascination with the wild started look at Williamson’s out what an otter’s-eye view of West Gully or Dark young. He would cycle off from school to look for muse, Lutra lutra; Hams Wood or Horsey Marsh would be’. He often birds’ eggs in Holme Park Woods in Kent, keeping u and history in Belstone, with walked barefoot; often slept out under the stars. TAKE Two stocks on the village I splash into the shallows and crouch down; just This is a walk of green; and the old a few feet lower and my whole perspective alters. two halves: one up telegraph office. Fallen leaves caught like shiny copper pennies on on the wild, bracing the mossy rocks spring into focus, and the mosaic uplands of Belstone Tor, one down in the deep river cleave below, and both utterly beautiful. PHOTO: PR I SMA B Y DUKAS PRESSEAGEN Y DUKAS T UR G M B H/ A LAMY* 56 COUNTRY WALKING JANUARY 2020 DISCOVER Dartmoor PorTRAIT OF THE ARTIST ‘To me,’ said Ted Little makes you look Hughes, ‘he always as keenly at a landscape as YIMAGES TT resembled a fierce trying to capture it on paper.