Exmoor Lockdown Diary 99 - Trees, Hedgerows and Cool Places in a Heatwave

Today is reckoned to be the hottest of the year so far in the UK. It is bloomin’ scorchio… And I won’t be able to sit up here in my office for much longer because it is getting so hot it’s like being in that torture hut in the Bridge Over the River Kwai movie.

So in yesterday’s heat I took my GoPro camera with me and shot a few scenes from deep, cool, leafy lanes where slight breezes and zephyrs were just enough to wipe the sweat from my brow.

And here’s a surprising and little known fact - there are no fewer than seven million trees in the county of Devon alone. If that seems a large number you may be even more surprised to hear that these are only the free-standing trees - not the ones growing in woodlands or forests. 

The great majority of the seven million are to be found in hedgerows. Added to that around two million of them are ash trees…

Devon has more hedgerows than any other county, with an astounding 33,000 miles of “mini-nature reserves” lining its lanes and fields. 

More than 600 plant species, 1,500 types of insects, 65 birds and 20 different mammals have been recorded living or feeding in the county’s hedgerows, and they are now regarded as long thin nature reserves.

But Devon didn’t always have such pride in its hedges - records from the 1950’s show county used to have a staggering 45,000 miles of hedges, meaning that 12,000 miles – more than the distance from London to Sydney – have disappeared.  

So much for the facts and figures. Now I’m going to put up the short video I made and escape to somewhere like The Cutting just up the valley from me - a place that is always cool for some reason, even in the fiercest heatwave.