Recently I posted this on instagram.

Today I decided to go in search of that tree. My worry was that it would be in the middle of farmland, inaccessible. I don't have a map of the area, other than the crude sat nav in my car, so I would have to try to home in on it. Karen agreed to come along and help me find it.

I thought I'd glimpsed the distinctive rapeseed field from a particular road so we headed off in the general direction. We lost the view for ages, but eventually emerged from the outskirts into the hills to the west of Exeter and arrived at this point. We were getting closer.

There are few roads in this area, but we found one that we hoped was heading into roughly the right area. We turned onto a tiny lane that seemed to wind its way through those woods we had seen, close to the tree. We came out into open country, crested a hill and saw this.

I cannot tell you how excited I was. Not only was it not across some farmer's field, miles from anywhere, it was right on the edge of the road! We stopped to take this picture. In the background the expanse of the Exe estuary. But there, unmistakably, was my tree!

We drove down past it, found a spot to park, and walked back up towards the tree.

We passed a lovely barn.

And here is my beautiful tree!

First contact

It's a glorious beech. I'm sure some of you could probably tell from the shape of it in my very first photos.

Life's a beech.

This place has magical things. A view of the Haldon Belvedere. A nearby trig point. A hedge with a big rock in it.

It has a skylark to sing to you.

It has carvings in its trunk. I like to think that's because others have spotted this lone tree on the skyline, made a pilgrimage to find it, and marked their journey.

It even has a smeuse, in the hedge right opposite it.

And if, as Karen did, you poke your head through the smeuse, you can see the city of Exeter in the distance.

And there, on top of the old city wall, sits our house. And maybe one of our children is standing in our bedroom staring out across the houses and shops, up past the bright yellow of the rapeseed field, to the lone tree on the hillside.

As a number of people have asked me, here’s a map showing the location of the tree (marked with a red dot)

I’m really delighted to find that this is an iconic tree for lots of people and that there is a history of films, theatre and art centred on it.