hartland – avalon’s edge

I have a wild passion for the north Devon and adjacent Cornish coast. I farmed, twenty years or so ago, on a bleak windswept moor overlooking Lundy and the Atlantic. During this time the boys (my sons) and I explored every wind-blasted ridge, each hidden, veiled, greenly-secret valley; walked along peregrine-lifting cliff tops and discovered unknown coves. We collected driftwood from winter storms, and, against a backdrop of wild seas and towering rock faces, would make a fire and cook sausages – sizzling, spitting hot – and bake, deep in the glowing ashes, black charcoal-crisp potatoes. Never, ever, will food taste better than it did then. We, all of us, nurture a hunger, a need for the raw, shattered beauty of the place.