Van Life in England's Forgotten Rainforests

It is a quiet morning on the sunny day in early May and the birds are singing their most beautiful song from the towering trees here on the edge of Dartmoor. This land is usually shrouded in clouds and mystery, a place known for its wild weather, sudden mists and ancient folklore. But for the past week we've been blessed with a gentle and rare warmth here in our home on wheels. The trees are bursting into leaf, the undergrowth is thick with ferns and flowers and everything feels alive as though the land is breathing again. It is the time of Beltane, the ancient Celtic festival that marks the coming of summer and here in the dappled sunlight beneath these ancient oaks it's easy to feel that old magic stirring. If you're new here, hi I'm Jessica and I live in my wooden camper van Bilbo with my puppy Heidi and my partner Rissi. Two years ago we decided to leave everything behind and poured all of our savings into a second-hand van which we converted using reclaimed wood and natural materials. Since then we've been traveling full-time around Europe in the slow lane to reconnect with nature and grow roots in the wild. This week we've returned to a place that feels like an old friend, a quiet corner of Dartmoor we tend to come back to every year. This forest feels alive not just with birdsong and the rushing of rivers but something older and deeper. The moors are said to be home to pixies, shapeshifters and many other supernatural creatures and people here have told stories of spirits leading travelers astray, of ghostly hounds and ancient spirits hidden in the land and if you listen closely you can almost hear another world humming beneath the surface. Hi friends, we've been back in the UK for a couple of weeks now and right now we're in one of our favorite places in the whole country which is Dartmoor. Yeah I mean this particular park up is really one of the things that makes it for us isn't it? Yeah. One of the nicest parks that we've stayed at in England and it's just so beautiful. I mean there's a lovely long walk, there's beautiful birdsong, it's pretty quiet. Yeah it's right on the edge of a forest on the edge of Dartmoor so it's comparatively really quiet compared to the rest of England. So the thing we love the most about this area is the temperate rainforests. Most people don't really associate England with rainforests but the entire west side of the UK used to be all rainforest. All along the sort of Atlantic coast. Yeah unfortunately a lot of it is degraded and doesn't exist anymore but there's still little fragments here and there especially in Devon, Cornwall, there's some in Wales and Scotland as well. So those forests just feel like straight out of middle earth. They're so so magical and although England is not our favorite place for van life, it's actually quite tricky for van life, we do keep coming back here just to see the temperate rainforests because they're some of our favorite landscapes in the whole world. Yeah I mean they are just let's say fairy tale like aren't they? There's just something really really magical about them and it is such a shame that they're not more expansive but it is nice to enjoy what there is. Yeah so this will actually be our last vlog for a little while because we're going to be working on the big secret project we've been hinting at for a little while and that's going to keep us busy. So today we'll go on a waterfall walk which is one of the most beautiful places we've ever seen and it has some cool folklore attached to it as well and tomorrow we'll go see one of the most famous fragments of temperate rainforests in England. So yeah we're looking forward to sharing it with you. Many people don't realize that this landscape of damp tangled woodland is what remains of a once vast temperate rainforest that once wrapped around much of England's western coast. Today only fragments remain as an echo of ancient wells. It's easy to walk through one of these places and think you've stepped into a fairy tale but in reality it's a forgotten part of our natural heritage. One that's quietly hanging on against all odds and every time we linger in a particularly beautiful corner standing under living giants I can't help but wonder what this land would have looked like before the clearances, before the enclosures and before we forgot that we relied on these words. At the southern end of Lytford Gorge lies the White Lady Waterfall, a tall cascade dropping nearly a hundred feet in a veil of white water. According to legend this place is named after a ghostly woman in a white gown who haunts the base of these falls. Travelers have occasionally reported a pale figure drifting through the mist at the foot of the waterfall dressed in white as if in a bridal shroud. Some say that this White Lady is the benevolent spirit of a woman who met a tragic end in the gorge and that she saves those drowning in the river. And over the centuries several visitors who had slipped on the slick rocks and fallen into the water reported seeing the White Lady but locals warn that not all of them made it out alive and that the ghost's embrace can be deadly as well as protective. After visiting the White Lady we stopped at the second-hand bookshop by the trail and a cafe for lunch which had the most delicious plant-based pasties and also vegan cream tea which was a really lovely treat. What a fine Englishman. And afterwards we ventured further down the river into the gorge towards a spot shrouded in mystery and the further we walked the more we felt like Merrion Pippin lost in Fangorn Forest with crooked trees darkening the woods and moss dripping from the rocks. At this end of Lydford Gorge the river Lyd plunges into a churning pothole known as the Devil's Cauldron. It's natural whirlpool which earned its name from its appearance. A huge boiling basin of water that foams as if stirred by the devil's own hand. And when the river is in flood the water roars into the cavern with such force that the sound is absolutely deafening. Villagers would speak in hushed tones of the cauldron boiling during storms imagining Lucifer brewing mischief in its depths. After getting lost in the woods for quite a few hours we returned to our park up for dinner. We recently got a second power station as a backup because sunny weeks like this one are actually quite rare in England and a nice side effect of this is that we can cook outside on a picnic bench which is just such a nice treat. But as the evening progressed this park up did fill with quite a few more campers so we decided to move on to a secret place that we knew we would probably have all to ourselves for a while. We woke up to the sound of water tumbling through the forest right outside our door. The air was cool and still and the first light of morning spilled through the leaves like gold. This is probably one of the most magical places we've ever wild camped with the scent of moss and damp filling the air and ferns lining the trails. And in fact this was the very first place we ever camped in Bilbo while we were still converting him so it was a really lovely trip down memory lane. This is our last day in Dartmoor so we're off to what might be the most mystical place in the whole area. Deep in Dartmoor's heart lies Whistman's Wood, an ancient grove of stunted and twisted oaks draped in moss. The name Whistman is thought to derive from the old Devon word wished meaning haunted or pixieland. By day Whistman's Wood is a fairy tale of emerald coloured moss, lichen and granite boulders but by night it transforms into one of Dartmoor's most haunted places. Legends say that Whistman's Wood is the kennel of the wished hounds, a phantom pack of enormous black hounds with glowing red eyes and long sharp fangs. After dark this devilish pack is unleashed to hunt across the moors in the wild hunt and some storytellers claim that the hounds are led by the devil himself chasing souls into the night. On many a misty evening travellers have sworn they heard eerie howls carried on the wind and countless folk tales speak of lonely moorland wanderers who vanished after the howling was heard. Locals avoid Whistman's Wood after dusk believing that when night falls ghosts and other uncanny creatures walk between its twisted oaks. If you enjoyed this video make sure to leave it a thumbs up and if you haven't yet do subscribe for more van life adventures, slow living on the road and the folklore we encounter on our travels. We hope you have a lovely rest of the week and we'll see you next time until then take good care, bye.