Tarka Revisited

On the 80th anniversary of the publication of Tarka the Otter, rambler and writer Christopher Somerville traces the wanderings of Tarka through North Devon. He finds that Henry Williamson, for all his poetry, told it exactly as it was - and, miraculously - still is: the stone shippens with their owl’s-eye-yellow lichens, the mires of the Two Rivers estuary and the flowery sandhills of Braunton Burrows. And, down by Taddiport Bridge at Great Torrington, the very ridge of pale grey shillets where Tarka ran, lying downstream of the bridge just as Williamson had described it. Commissioned by The Ramblers Association for Walk magazine.