Wistman’s Wood is one of the three remaining fragments of what would have once been a vast wildwood covering the entirety of Dartmoor till it met it’s match at the axes of Neolithic farmers, creating the foreboding yet eerily beautiful moor of today. The ‘Wood of the Wise Men’ however remains, clinging to the landscape with moss-soaked boulders and gnarled, feeble oaks dwarfed by the force of the elements.
It’s undoubtedly one of the most magical places I’ve ever visited in our otherwise ‘tame’ countryside. Some take it literally, local legend tells of witchcraft here and demon hounds emerging from the rocks on stormy nights to hunt the moors. But the smell of raw earth, the scent of a distant past you could say, and just the sheer calmness of the place when you step inside is enough to slip you one place above the rest of reality. A slice of ‘pure’ nature: And I hope it stays this way for centuries, millenia even, to come.