I’m back in Devon so I took my bike up East Hill on the other side of Ottery. It is an unusually-unnaturally- warm October evening. The softening sun lit up little puffs of clouds that were spread evenly over the sky all around me. It looked so intentional, like they had been dolloped in rows. Then again, it is strange to view patterns as human work, and nature as arbitrary. Surely the reverse is true.

I crossed the river Otter and the valley of oak and ash, big trees anchored deep in the clay. They are scattered now between farms and jumbled back yards. As I rose onto East hill, the lowland giants were replaced by Beech, the queen of the high ground, rooting into the stony hills that drain away into the valley.

Thick, old woodland remains on the hilltops around here, although it has been cleared in the fertile valleys for centuries. Beech rise high and upright either side of me, clutching the churt banks with mossy roots. Birch, maple and pine grow in pockets of light in the understory, and some old oak grow stout and gnarled on the lighter margins, where the field meets the hilltop forest.

The huge beech cast me into premature darkness, the canopy still bristling with leaves in early autumn. This gloom seems strange. I have seen the sun shine straight through a lone beech; delicate oval leaves glow translucent, where an oak’s are more opaque and leathery. But banded together in a wood, they create an unbroken cover of little tessellating beads, soaking up the sun layer by layer, leaving little for the ground dwellers.

The smooth, skin-like bark gives the big trunks a muscular appearance, like a huge arm bursting from the ground, tendons straining for the sky. You want to touch them and push them to feel that strength.

Out the other side of the woods I came out onto the scrubby plateau, confronted by the main road. The sky was wide and seeping colour. I hurtled back down into dark wood and farms and home.