Ted Hughes Poetry Trail at Stover Country Park

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A woodland trail with a marker alongside it. On the marker is a plaque with the poem 'The Harvest Moon' by Ted Hughes inscribed on it.

Lonely keeper of the gold

In the tumbled cleave.

A bird out of Merlin’s ear.

from ‘Wren’, by Ted Hughes

One of the things I love about Taleblazers is that I get to spend most of my working week outdoors, exploring the coast and moors with our young people. Together we go to a whole variety of places, moorland, beach and woodland, and one of our students’ favourite places is Stover. It’s not the wildest of places but there’s always something to see: tufted ducks diving, dragonflies buzzing over the marsh, finches squabbling at the bird feeder. We always love to spend a few hours there.

The poem 'Nightjar' by Ted Hughes
Nightjar, by Ted Hughes. And a self-portrait

Dotted around the park, and linked together by a trail that weaves around the woods, are some of Ted Hughes poems. They are printed on shiny plaques attached to big wooden posts, and are usually sited in an appropriate environment reflecting the poem. You can sit by the water and reflect on To Paint A Water Lily, or read Roe-Deer deep in the woods. Hughes was born in Yorkshire but is closely associated with Devon, and his poems are perfect for this setting. It can feel very calming to sit by one of his poems and unpick the words and phrases, immersing yourself in each line. His work often needs a little unpicking, but Hughes will repay an investment of time many times over.

My favourite work of Hughes’s is A Cormorant, and on the trail the poem is sited at a spot where you can often look across the lake and see one drying its wings high up in a tree (for all their otherwise perfect adaptation, cormorants do not have waterproof wings and need to dry them off after diving). A Cormorant is a masterpiece, contrasting Hughes as an ‘optimistic, awkward, infatuated’ fisherman with a cormorant ‘dissolving fish naturally’. Hughes is cumbersome, overloaded with gear, entirely unsuited to the task of catching fish, while the cormorant is a sleek marvel, perfect for the task. I love the way Hughes even uses clunky language and lumpy phrases to describe himself, while when describing the words spill out in a wonderful flow. I thoroughly recommend you go and find the poem by the lake and take some time to digest it, and if you are incredibly lucky you may even find you have a cormorant for company.

I hope you enjoy it half as much as I do.

Here before me, snake-head.
My waders weigh seven pounds.

My Barbour jacket, mainly necessary
For its pockets, is proof

Against the sky at my back. My bag
Sags with lures and hunter’s medicine enough

For a year in the Pleistocene.
My hat, of use only

If this May relapses into March,
Embarrasses me, and my net, long as myself,

Optimistic, awkward, infatuated
With every twig-snag and fence-barb

Will slowly ruin the day.  I paddle
Precariously on slimed shale,

And infiltrate twenty yards
Of gluey and magnetized spider-gleam

Into the elbowing dense jostle-traffic
Of the river’s tunnel, and pray

With futuristic, archaic under-breath
So that some fish, telepathically overpowered,

Will attach its incomprehension
To the bauble I offer to space in general.

The cormorant eyes me, beak uptilted,
Body-snake low — sea-serpentish.

He’s thinking: “Will that stump
Stay a stump just while I dive?” He dives.

He sheds everything from his tail end
Except fish-action, becomes fish,

Disappears from bird,
Dissolving himself

Into fish, so dissolving fish naturally
Into himself. Re-emerges, gorged,

Himself as he was, and escapes me.
Leaves me high and dry in my space-armour,

A deep-sea diver in two inches of water.

‘A Cormorant’, by Ted Hughes

See also: the Ted Hughes Poetry Trail on the Devon County Council website (external link).

National Poetry Day: Inchcape Bell

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Rough seas washing over a rock in the ocean

To celebrate #NationalPoetryDay, we have a poem of wrongs and retribution, read by our very own storyteller and balladeer, Kev Johns. The poem is ‘Inchcape Rock’; a ballad originally written by Robert Southey in 1802.

The poem tells the story of a warning bell that was placed on Inchcape, a notorious hidden rock that posed a great danger to sailors in Scottish waters. The bell would ring to warn sailors of danger but was removed by a sea pirate. The bell removed, the not-so-savvy sea pirate later perished upon the rock, with his ship and his goods to boot 🏴‍☠️

Podcast

7. The Inchcape Rock

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Read a New Book Month

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Have you Read a New Book this September?

Which is the latest book you read?

Did you learn anything new?

Have you shared your thoughts about the book with anyone?

Please see below a list of suggested books which I have found inspiring;

  • Happy Moments – How To Create Experiences You’ll Remember for a Lifetime by Meik Wiking
  • Wabi Sabi – Japanese Wisdom For A Perfectly Imperfect Life by Beth Kempton
  • Ikigai – The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles
  • The Mountain is You – Transforming Self-Sabotage into Self-Mastery by Brianna Wiest
  • To Listen is to Love – The Simple Path to Joy in All Your Relationships by Liz Scott  

“Our lives are not the days that have passed, but the days we will remember forever.”

Meik Wiking

How To Plant A Tree

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Today we have been planting acorns, beech nuts, cherries and rowan berries. We hope that in the spring some of them will have grown into seedlings so that we can plant them in the woods. This is how we did it.

1. Get a pot about 10-15cm in diameter
2. Put some gravel in the bottom
3. Fill the pot up to the line with compost.
4. Gently squish down the compost.
5. Push two acorns into the compost
6. Put a little more compost on top of them
7. Get a label to put on it.
8. Write the name of the plant and put it on the label.

Now we just have to wait until spring and hopefully we will have some baby trees!

John Muir Day: Hembury Woods

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I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

John Muir

Today is John Muir Day, marking Muir’s 184th birthday and commemorating his life and the Trust and Award set up in his name. Muir is known as the ‘father of national parks’ and is famous for his explorations of the American wilderness, having moved to America with his family at the age of 11 and spent most of the rest of his life exploring and writing about it. The story of Muir’s life is inspirational and his writings still carry a freshness about them, vivid descriptions that still have the power to pull you into the landscape. There is a lot of excellent writing about Muir’s life, not least in the hundreds or articles and books he produced in his life, so in this post I will talk about the John Muir Award and how Taleblazers are involved.

The John Muir Award is an open award that anyone can take part in, centred around discovering, protecting and celebrating wild places. It has three levels – Discovery, Explorer and Conserver – each of which requires a greater depth of commitment and immersion in the natural environment. To achieve the award, you have to work towards four challenges: Discover, Explore, Conserve and Share. The award is quite open and can be adapted easily to fit individual needs, so it fits our 1-1 programmes really well. It gives a reason to be out and about in wild places and provides a context for the activities we do.

Kev and I ran our first John Muir Award many years ago, working with Bovey Tracey Guides at Broadhempston to complete the Discovery Award. We had a lot of fun running it and when we started Taleblazers one of the first things we did was to put together a John Muir programme to offer to individuals and schools. It suits our blend of environmental education and storytelling incredibly well, and as adaptable leaders we have a lot of fun delivering it.

I love the John Muir Award so much that I decided to work towards the Conserver level myself. There are a lot of places I love, but I decided to focus my award at Hembury Woods just outside Buckfast. The area has a fascinating history, with a Norman castle sitting on top of the earthworks of a hillfort, and a silver mine in the valley below. But it’s the natural beauty of the woods, sitting on the western wide of a twist of the river Dart, that I get most excited about. The wood is managed so there are areas of new growth and there is often some thinning taking place, but down by the river the woods are wonderful. Old oak and beech trees sit side by side on the river bank, watching the water tumble over short rapids and fan into quiet swimming spots. Birdsong is everywhere, wood ants busy themselves as only ant colonies can, and underfoot there are bluebells and bilberries.

I realised early on that there is so much I don’t know, so as part of my award I’ve been working on my wood lore. With the help of Steve from Basic Bushcraft I’ve been working on my tree identification, and although I’m no expert yet I can at least spot hazel, alder, larch, western hemlock and others. On each visit I spot a new mushroom or flower that I rush home to identify. It’s a fascinating and immersive process, knowledge gained by exploration and experience gradually getting to know every part of the wood. Every day brings new questions, and excitement in the search for answers.

However, my journey hasn’t just been one of learning. Influenced by the young people I have been working with as well as the environment, I have discovered an enjoyment of more creative activities: photography, sketching, writing, painting. I have sat quietly by the river with my students or by myself and just allowed time to pass. The benefits to my own mental health have been profound. Doing the John Muir Award has reminded me to take time out in nature myself, to open up to creativity and sometimes to just let the world go by.

I still have more to do before I finish. I haven’t visited the wood at dusk or dawn yet, looked for bats and kingfishers. I’d like to set up some NPMS squares to find out what plants live in different areas of the site and to track their abundance over the coming months and years. And I feel ready to start the Share phase of my award in greater earnest. This blog has been part of that process but, as a reward for getting to the end of it, I’d like to invite you to share it with me. On Saturday 30th April I will be leading an early morning walk at Hembury Woods. I’d like to show you around the woods and tell you the story of the hillfort and mine, introduce you to the river and some of the species that live on its banks. There is no charge, but I would appreciate donations to the John Muir Trust if you feel able to do so.

If you would like to come, booking is essential – please check the Eventbrite page for ticket availability.

The Bigge Fountain

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A fountain with the text 'Given by Francis and Elizabeth Bigge of Hennapyn 1897'

Taleblazers was an idea that Kev and I had been discussing vaguely for several years, but it was only in lockdown that we started to take it more seriously. The Bigge Fountain, officially called simply Chelston Drinking Fountain, played a big part in getting our social enterprise off the ground.

Victoria and I live very close to one another, so when we were allowed to meet in twos to go for no more than an hour’s walk we would regularly set off together to stretch our legs. Our little rambles took us all around Chelston, through the arterial streets connecting up its green parks, never quite as far as the sea front for fear of being asked our business by the police. As we walked things would catch our eye and we would wonder what they were. What was the little marker stone outside the school? How old is the Chelston Manor? Was the first occupant of Sharon House really called Sharon? And as we started to answer these questions with the power of Google, we shared our snippets of information with one another, and the idea of the Chelston Heritage Trail started to form in our minds.

We always felt a bit sad walking past the Bigge Fountain, next to the little green where Walnut Road meets Old Mill Road. It has been there since 1897, when Chelston was going through a rush of development and, presumably, a burst of civic pride. A hundred metres to the north the new church of St Matthews was nearing completion, and the fountain is sited at the bottom of a little avenue of lime trees that leads up to its door. It’s a nice spot to have a quiet moment to imagine upper Chelston as it would have been back then: the age of the automobile has left the area looking a little less grand than it would have been in Victorian times.

A dragon's head looming over the fountain
The head of a Celtic beast forms the spout of the Bigge Fountain

The fountain was installed by the remarkable Elizabeth and Francis Bigge of Hennapyn (the largest villa in Chelston until its demolition). Francis Bigge was born in Northumberland in 1820, joined the Navy at 15 and before he turned 20 years old, doubtless helped on his way by good family connections, was living as a pioneer in Australia. He ‘squatted’ on Crown Land with his brother, survived encounters with escaped convicts and eventually became a politician (the camp he originally founded grew and is now the city of Grantchester). He returned to England briefly in 1853 and married Elizabeth before returning to Australia where he enjoyed a long political career before returning to England in 1873. They retired to Cockington where Elizabeth was one of the leading lights of the local anti-vivisection movement. Their love of animals is well represented on the fountain: the water spout is a great swan-neck curve of metal which ends in the head of some fantastical Celtic beast, while below there are water bowls for dogs to drink from. The fountain is grade II listed, and the designation includes the railings and green behind – now mostly occupied by an electricity substation. I always feel a little sad when I visit, this formerly grand little meeting spot now utterly transformed by the arrival of the automobile, flooded by rivers of tarmac, even the fountain itself now normally hidden behind a parked car.

These places however are fundamental to our understanding of our ‘home patch’. They remind us of the rich lives of people that once lived in our part of town, the people who developed it and shaped it, even as their life stories fade from living memory. It’s natural to aspire to leave some kind of legacy, a tangible impact on your community, something that people will look at and remember you. The Bigge Fountain is more than just a fountain. It’s a fragment of the Victorian era looking back at us, a reminder of the days when these streets belonged to horses and dogs and people, who would have all stopped for a refreshing drink as they passed by.

A Rubbish History of Ilsham Valley #KeepBritainTidy

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As it’s Keep Britain Tidy week, I wanted to explore a little of the history of our relationship with refuse and how our attitudes and practices towards waste have changed over the years, shining a spotlight on Torquay in particular.

 Now, rubbish isn’t a new thing by any means; as long as there have been humans there has been human refuse. First and foremost, there’s our biological waste… which is significant. 

 The average human produces 145 kilograms of poo (approximately a grown pandas worth) and 135 gallons of pee (two bathtubs full) per annum, so as you’d imagine, an efficient sewage system quickly became a necessity for our ancestors. Neolithic people dug shallow ditches to channel their waste away from their villages more than 12,000 years ago and by the time of the Roman Empire, underground sewers developed by the Etruscans became the template for cities across the world. 

 Yet humans produce more than just biological waste and bringing us straight up to the present we now produce staggering amount of rubbish as a society. This rubbish is taken away from us by various governmental or private firms; some (although not enough) is recycled, most ends in landfill and some is burned in specialised stations. This was not always so. 

 As a guide at Kents Cavern, more than 15 years ago, I was on the crew helping to clear the woodland area around and to the side of the caves. The woodland trail was created to give a bit more value to the average cave visit and includes displays and replicas of the beasts that once roamed Ilsham Valley. 

 The area was professionally prepared; several trees were taken down and a circular, levelled path was cut throughout. Kents Cavern staff then headed in to tidy up. We quickly discovered that beneath the leaf-litter, ivy and soil there lurked a rather unpleasant surprise: years and years of trade waste and litter from the Caves! 

 See, when the caves came into the ownership of Francis Powe in 1903, there were no regular bin collections in Torbay and in fact, even up to the 1970s, local businesses had to manage much of their own waste. The most cost-effective solution that that time was incineration and at the top of the woodlands there is a kiosk (and a Cave Bear – it’s not easy to miss), this was the site of the incinerator, everything that could burn was burnt – sink a spade into the earth here and you will reveal layer upon layer of ash-streaked soil, striations of red earth, black, white and grey, like a slice of particularly unappealing Walls Vienetta. 

A can of Quatro (discontinued 1989) and some bones found during the clearance.

What could not be incinerated was dumped, over time this formed the very basis of the wood itself and so under every patch of soil hid forgotten discarded relics of the past. There were broken bits of Kents Cavern pottery, cans of popular soft drinks (including Quatro, hands down one of the best carbonated beverages of all time), bent clothes hangers, a few horse and cow bones (one of which is still used today in the Stone Age Trail display) and innumerable crisp packets, glass bottles and plastics.

 It quickly became obvious that the further we dug the more we would find and so the executive decision was made to just stop digging – we covered up what we could and left nature to swallow our shameful secret refuse. To be fair she’s done a pretty amazing job. The woodlands look great today and when I’m taking school groups round watching them excitedly track down all the stations on the Stone Age Trail it is very easy to forget that this once was just a secluded space to dump rubbish in. 

Back for its seventh year, the 2022 Great British Spring Clean takes place 25 March – 10 April. This year the message is simple. Join the #BigBagChallenge and pledge to pick up as much litter as you can during the campaign.

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