One of the most beautiful spots I know in Britain is a steep-sided gorge in Devon where the River Dart carves through the Dartmoor rock on its way to the sea. The trees on either side are small, twisted and covered in ferns, mosses and lichens, so that even on a dull day the colours, shapes and textures are vibrant and dynamic. It was here that I took my wife shortly before she gave birth to our daughter. Nowhere I have been is more utterly beautiful and alive.
This extraordinary place is a fragment of temperate rainforest: a rich assemblage of life made possible by ample rainfall, mild winters and damp summers. Globally, temperate rainforests are rarer than their more famous tropical cousins and are found on the northwest coast of the US and Canada, southern Chile, Tasmania, northwest Europe and a few other places. The western fringes of Britain offer ideal conditions for them to flourish, but today they cover well under one per cent of the island – a tiny part of their historical range.
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