Wistman's wood, Dartmoor

You walk up from Two Bridges along the West Dart, the moor opening wide on either side, and then the wood appears at the valley's edge as something you weren't quite expecting. Not a forest, not a grove. A field of boulders, and growing from the cracks between them, oaks. Stunted, horizontal where they have to be, every surface coated in moss so thick the branch underneath has nearly disappeared. The boulders carry moss too — continuous, unbroken green that blurs the line between rock and tree.

The trees are old. They look it. The trunks are not straight; they're torqued, each one having negotiated its own path toward the canopy. The branches are dense and low. Some of them reach the next tree. The canopy is not high — these are not tall oaks — and the light inside the wood is filtered almost out of existence.

There's a weathered stone gate at the edge of the access land before you reach the wood. No signs about keeping out. No notices. The moorland rolls away behind it, the hills in pale winter colour.

It was February. No other walkers. The path into the wood threads between the boulders — you have to pick your way, there is no maintained trail. One image I keep returning to: vertical trunks packed close together, the moss on them so vivid green it reads almost artificial. Another: a single branch reaching across the foreground, the slope of the boulder field dropping behind it toward the valley floor.

Local folklore has it as the home of the Wisht Hounds — Dartmoor's spectral hunt, the black dogs the Devil rides with. Walking through in February light, you can see why someone would say that.