Bluebells and Wild Garlic burst from the high hedgerows on the lane up out of the North Devon village. Dad had said he’d show me the Bluebell Wood.

We headed out at 6pm for those last two hours of golden light, up along the lane that runs above the link road, hills rising in the distance. The Hawthorn was in flower (a little early?) and ‘the Old Fella’ told me how they used to eat the leaves when he was a kid, called them ‘bread and cheese’. I tried one, it didn’t taste anything like bread and cheese.

We passed a dell thick with Wild Garlic.

Over the fallow field and beside the perfect babbling brook to the edge of the Bluebell Wood.

The pungent aroma of the Bluebells fills your nostrils as soon as you step over the stile into the wood. The flowers cascade down the hillside to the brook below. It’s almost too perfect.

At the end of the wood you splash through the water running downhill over cracked shale to a hill crested with oaks. I swear I spotted a Hobbit puffing on his pipe sitting in the shade.

We didn’t have time to tackle the hill and the long loop back round to the village so we retraced our steps through the Bluebell Wood, over the fields and home.