Wistman's Wood, Dartmoor, May 2023 & February 2024
One of England's highest-altitude oakwoods, and one of only three fragments of high moorland woodland surviving on Dartmoor, Wistman's Wood is a stretch of dwarf, wind-bent oaks barely taller than head height, their trunks and branches smothered in thick moss, lichen and fern over a chaotic boulder-strewn valley floor. Long associated with local folklore, it feels unlike anywhere else on the moor.
A first visit in May 2023 caught the wood at its greenest: fresh growth lighting up the moss-wrapped boulders and branches in warm evening light, along with close-up studies of the lichen and unfurling fern fronds that cover almost every surface. The walk in from the road passes a stone gateway looking across the open moor towards the trees.
By February 2024, in leaner winter light, the canopy was down to bare branches, which opened up the wood's structure and the wider moorland setting around it: tangled branches silhouetted against blue sky, boulders picked out in low winter sun, and a backlit view across the granite-strewn valley floor to close out the set.
