County champions

Devon is a natural beauty but it doesn’t hurt to use a few reinforcements now and then. CHRISSY HARRIS talks to two tour guides about why they just love showing off our county

- CHRISSY HARRIS

There comes a point in Tich Scott’s guided tour of Dartmoor when the silver cups come out and are carefully placed on his Land Rover’s bonnet. It can mean only one thing – it’s time for a tipple of some proper Devon farm cider.

“I always take a little bottle out,” says Tich, stressing that the refreshment break is for his guests only, not the designated driver, of course. “It’s just a little thing I like to do for people.”

Retired farmer Tich is exactly the sort of person you’d want to show you around Dartmoor. His family has been working the land here for more than 50 years and Tich knows pretty much every contour. He’s is also on first name terms with most of the moor’s residents.

“The Americans are always amazed,” he says, in his wonderfully soft Devon accent (Tich is also an award-winning dialect speaker). “I’ll be taking them on tour and we go down these by-roads – we don’t do the main roads – and everyone who passes will be someone I know. We could be 25 mile (sic) out from where we started and they’ll still be people we pass that wave!”

Tich was born in Drewsteington in 1957 and moved to the farm where he still lives in Fairhaven, Whiddon Down in 1958.

He worked there from the age of 16 until he set up his own agricultural fencing business in 1991.

“I enjoyed it but in the end the work was getting to my bones – not getting the better of me, though!” says Tich, describing the time he knew he had to start winding down that chapter in his life.

“I’d been dreaming of doing these tours for 20 or 30 years but you gotta wait for the situation to get just right first.”