A Moor With a View

I recently went on holiday, or rather I went home to visit my parents in Sidmouth, East Devon. On a rather gloomy, summer afternoon we - myself, my parents and my youngest child - made our way to Mutters Moor. Mutters Moor, such a wonderful name - it wouldn't be out of place in Tolkien's Middle Earth or Sapkowski's Rivia. Worth noting incidentally that Tolkien was a frequent visitor to Sidmouth and wrote some of the Lord of the Rings while on holiday there with his family in 1938.
But I digress. I visited Mutters Moor as a child but had not been back in some twenty-eight years, then with my grandfather, mother and eldest child who at the time was three. It is a beautiful place, one of Europe's oldest and largest pebble bed heaths, more than 200 million years old and is quite rightly a nationally protected landscape. A heathland intersected with ancient stony tracks and with spectacular views to Sidmouth, Ladram Bay, Berry Head, Lyme Bay, and Woodberry Common. Mutters Moor has quite a history, it was heavily populated in the Stone Age for thousands of years; it was the site of worship, a Bronze Age stone circle, the Seven Stones, once stood here (unfortunately they were stolen in the 1830s); during World War Two it was a site for barrage balloons and gun emplacements; and the Moor is also the silent keeper of smuggler's tales due to the actions of its namesake Abraham Mutter, an 18th century log merchant and smuggler on the side with the infamous Jack Rattenbury gang.
A wonderful history, a wonderful landscape; but what struck me on this particular visit was how my memory was appearing to play tricks on me. I didn't recognise this wide, beautiful panorama. On the contrary, I recalled narrow, springy, mossy paths with towering gorse on either side. Could it be that I was not remembering by last trip when I had been in my twenties, but my trips as a small - and much shorter - child? It was quite unsettling. What was also unsettling was the memory of being told to watch out for the soldiers with their guns and explosives hidden in the gorse and heather. Had I, as a child, heard of the Moors' role in the Second World War or of its smuggling history, and had my imagination run riot; or had my grandfather (a tease) told me this in a moment of mischief or as a way to stop his little granddaughter from wandering too far? I guess I'll never know, but I couldn't shake the idea of hidden, armed men.
We wandered Mutters Moor for quite some time, my mother keen to find a particular view - inland, towards Dartmoor. Apparently there was a bench. Perhaps Mum was thinking of Keble's Seat (named after the 19th century poet and hymn writer) with a view to Newton Poppleford and beyond. But Mum's view proved elusive. Perhaps memory tricked us again and a wrong path was taken. Nonetheless, it was a lovely afternoon's walk, but strange how our minds, our memory, work. I shan't be waiting 28 years before my next visit and fingers crossed we'll find Mum's view

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