Nobody Inn - Wistman’s Wood Dartmoor
Just returned back from a night at the Nobody Inn and restaurant in Doddiscombsleigh on the edge of Dartmoor, which is set between the Haldon Hills and the Teign Valley and about six miles to the south‑west of Exeter. This has got to be one of the best eating and drinking establishments in the area.
The Nobody Inn in Doddiscombsleigh is still very much alive and operating and is thriving. An online search we did, confirms it as an active inn, bar, and pub restaurant which has excellent reviews - 4.7 from 769 reviews.
This Killing Thing (Live) and the ecological context of Wistman’s Wood
This Killing Thing (Live) can be read productively alongside the environmental and cultural significance of Wistman’s Wood, one of the most important surviving fragments of Britain’s Atlantic temperate rainforest system. Although small in extent, the wood represents a rare continuity of pre‑Neolithic forest ecology and provides a useful framework for understanding the track’s atmosphere, instability, and sense of unresolved tension.
Where pitted stone becomes knotted oak...
This Killing Thing (Live) captures This Window at their most unfiltered: a moment where chaos isn’t just present, it’s the entire accidental aesthetic. The mix is still being wrangled, the sound engineer is fighting a losing battle, and just as the levels begin to settle… the cassette player recording the gig stops, collapsing into its own ending - the fade out is post production.What you hear is a rare fragment of a This Window gig — and “rare” isn’t marketing language. Live appearances are few few and far between, almost nothing from that era survives in any usable form. This recording, taken at a private event in 1990, is one of the very few documents of the band in a room, in real time, with all the glorious instability that implies.
It’s raw, abrupt, imperfect, and absolutely true to what a This Window performance was: tension, noise, improvisation, and the sense that the whole thing might fall apart at any second. That volatility is the point. This is the sound of a band that never polished the edges, because the edges were the art.Wistman’s Wood as a temperate ancient rainforest
Ecologically, Wistman’s Wood meets the criteria for a temperate rainforest:
- high annual rainfall driven by Atlantic weather systems,
- consistently cool, humid conditions,
- dominance of ancient, stunted Quercus robur (pedunculate oak),
- exceptionally rich bryophyte and lichen communities.
The site is particularly notable for its assemblage of oceanic lichens, including Bryoria smithii, recorded at only two locations in Britain. The woodland’s survival is largely due to its steep, boulder‑strewn terrain, which prevented historical clearance and allowed a continuous ecological lineage extending back several millennia. It is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for its unique Atlantic rainforest characteristics.
Atmosphere, instability, and the track
The live recording of This Killing Thing is marked by instability: an unsettled mix, abrupt dynamics, and the sense of a performance captured mid‑flux. When placed in dialogue with Wistman’s Wood, this instability becomes thematically resonant. The forest’s microclimate is characterised by rapid shifts in humidity, light, and acoustic behaviour; sound is absorbed by moss‑laden surfaces, and movement is constrained by the granite boulder field.
Both the track and the woodland embody:
- fragmentation — a brief, unresolved performance; a remnant of a once‑continuous forest,
- environmental pressure — the track’s unstable sonic environment; the wood’s vulnerability to trampling and climate change,
- liminality — a performance on the edge of collapse; a forest existing at the threshold between myth, ecology, and isolation.
Dartmoor is known for its tors — hills topped with outcrops of bedrock, which in granite country such as this are usually rounded boulder‑like formations. More than 160 of the hills of Dartmoor have the word tor in their name but quite a number do not. However this does not appear to relate to whether or not there is an outcrop of rock on their summit. The tors are the focus of an annual event known as the Ten Tors Challenge, when around 2400 people aged between 14 and 19 walk for distances of 56, 72 or 88 km (35, 45 or 55 mi) between ten tors on many differing routes.
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