Joyce Herbeck of Montana State University's Children's and Young Adult Literature Course got in touch a few months back to say that she was bringing some students on a field trip to England, and ask if we could meet up. Well of course we could: I dare say Philip Pullman and chaps like that get sick and tired of having coach loads of readers turning up to quiz them about their books, but it's never happened to me before, so the more the merrier, I say. Joyce's group have a packed schedule - since arriving last week they've been to the Lake District, Bath and Tintagel among other places, and today they were heading from Cornwall to London via Stonehenge, with a brief stop on Dartmoor. It would have been nice to have lead them out into the wilds, but there simply wasn't time, so instead I took them to the most Dartmoor-y place I could think of that's within easy walking distance of a proper road; the old oaks of Wistman's Wood, beneath whose gnarled roots the Devil (or Dewer, to give him his Dartmoor name) is supposed to kennel his spectral Wish Hounds.
