Travel by car any distance around the narrow lanes which surround the open moorland of Dartmoor and you will be greeted with what Bill Bryson likes to call the Malhamdale Wave. It consists of the right index finger raised, or flicked upwards, while both hands still grip the steering wheel, as cars pass. Bryson connects it to Yorkshire thrift, a minimum acknowledgement. On Devon's narrow, single-track lanes, it is simply that continual control of the steering wheel is necessary where only inches are available for vehicles to pass even at recognised passing places. The single- finger wave is part of the common courteousness which is essential. Being in a hurry is not an option.
Those narrow, twisty lanes are bounded on both sides by Devon's unique hedgerow system. A stone outer shell, a metre or more high and thick, is filled with earth and topped with trees or shrubs; they are not to be tangled with. They are amazing wildlife habitats. In effect, you have a raised linear woodland network lying across the landscape. Where the trees have been allowed to grow full, a woodland flora of bluebells and greater stitchwort carpets the metre strip on top of the walls. In between the stones, some of which weigh more than a tonne, primrose, navelwort, wild strawberry and polypody ferns have established themselves.
Ivor, the manager at Hole farm, showed us his field map of the farm. No field is more than four acres, many are less than two. Each one has its own shape and name. Upper and Lower Oxen Closes indicate their antiquity.
Walking the lanes, we found badger latrines in the lee of the hedgebank. The leaf shoots of bluebells lay scattered around. The bulbs had been eaten, but was it by badgers or rabbits? Overhead, buzzards mewed to each other as they soared in circles above the valley. On the edge of the open moors, ravens challenged magpies and carrion crows to the pickings of a dead rabbit. Here the landscape changes rapidly, from rolling pastoral mosaics to a rugged, harsh, exposed moor. The whole has changed little in hundreds of years.