The deep local hedgebanks (as they call them in the visitor literature) have an odd, fortified quality about them. On closer inspection I see many are in fact ancient walls of stacked, flat stone now submerged beneath rich vegetation and turf. The surface reminds me of the ‘flowery mead’ seen in medieval woodcuts and tapestries – each leaf distinct in its vernal opulence, a translucent gem-like green. There are delectable nettles, primroses in yellow and purple and all the bruise-like shades in between, butterbur, cow parsley, wild garlic.
Some of these ‘walls’ are even topped with hedgerow plants - a kind of double decker boundary – and these in turn have grown dense, only to be recently ‘laid’ (cut and flattened at their bases), adding a final utilitarian capping.
Our B & B landlady is bleary-eyed from lambing all night with her unmaternal Exmoor Longhorn ewes. Several have died and left orphans whose nocturnal bleats I can hear as I type, even at 10pm. She will need to hand-rear them, bringing them into the warm farmhouse kitchen, out of the unseasonally frosty April night. She and her husband have some air-dried hams hanging from the barn beams. I tell them of our own home curing attempts, some of which had ended horrifically with maggots. We discuss salt and dampness and I admire the 1940’s wardrobe they have converted into a smokehouse.
The local quadbike dealership is the most successful in the UK. Rob pays his staff what are considered staggeringly high wages locally. He makes selling the bikes sound like a piece of cake. On the way out I notice a bike without its familiar ‘shell’, being quietly tended. Its loving owner is working in front of a framed UK championship poster of three anonymous quadbikers, each wearing a helmet and a number. Number two is a heavily sponsored Honda ‘pro’ biker, but number one is the biker here in the showroom.
In the tiny Cutcombe church a Nigel Mansell autobiography remains unsold on the book stand. Their preserves are £1 a jar.
Themes : Somerset, livestock, hedgerows
