I am heading to Exmoor for the first time since I was last there in 1977 — and as the train pulls into Tiverton Parkway station my childhood rises back up at me like ground rush.
We head north and pass Ravenswood, the gothic building where I spent six years of my life when it was still a prep school. And suddenly I am back on the same road we’d take on Thursdays, in a van heading up to a farm on the moor’s edge. Back then, 43 years ago, a shaggy-haired farmer’s boy called Kevin would lead us out hacking on rough ponies across the heather and marshes.
In winter months, mists and rain hugged the pagan landscape, and even in summer, curtains of cloud swept across the gorse and granite. As we rode, our guide would tell us ghost stories about phantom riders, about Jack-o’-lanterns — the souls of dead, unbaptised children that lured you towards boggy drownings — and then there was the Hairy Hand, a disembodied thing that lurked on remote moors, waiting to leap on lonely dog walkers.
A farmer’s boy called Kevin would lead us out hacking on rough ponies across the heather and marshes
The cold mists of winter were more of a threat than wild rides and Kevin was clearly superstitious about getting lost in them. ‘Bain’t right to stay out in this yer crewdling. Time uz get off the moor or we’ll get the chillbladders!’ Which was to say, it was time to get out of the cold and go home.
At other times, Kevin would boast about his drinking escapades. ‘I was sham’fered up and puggle ’eaded,’ — which was to say he had got drunk on cider.
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