Country diary: Even in a heatwave, signs of last winter storms still linger

The sunset is ‘like a painting. Smoke particles from Canadian wildfires, thousands of miles away, scatter the light’s blue wavelengths to show us a halogen-hot red sun.’ Photograph: Nicola Chester

The West Country unrolls down the M4, then M5, under the kind of vintage-yellow hue produced by 35mm camera film where the light’s leaked in. Many fields have been harvested as early as we’ve ever witnessed on this deeply familiar route. Burnt black patches remind us just how flammable the countryside is.

We are exploring places we’ve only passed through before, via a farm-stay in a shepherd’s hut at West Town Farm, Ide. Our parking instructions urge us to allow the farmer to pass in her tractor. The gender reveal is so refreshing I want to cheer. Tenant Kate Sharp farms Hereford-cross beef cattle, Devon closewool and Exmoor horn sheep, as well as some lively Oxford sandy and black pigs, red as the Devon soil itself.