Michelle Werrett is honouring her “Auntie Audrey” by organising a walk along Darky Lane in Kingsbridge on Sunday, alongside Gordon Waterhouse.

The walk, held at 10.30 for 11am until 1pm on Sunday, October 22, as part of Devon Hedge Week, will see Michelle lead a group along Darky Lane to see how much has changed since Audrey did a study of the flora and fauna that lived there.

Michelle said: “Between 1944 and 1946 Audrey Lethbridge wrote a ‘Special Study of a Hedgerow’ about a hedge along a country lane near Kingsbridge, describing all that grew and lived there.

“Auntie Audrey, as I knew her, died when I was only a very young child. I can just remember a tall, angular woman with curly, ginger-grey hair always accompanied by a Pekinese terrier called Bugs. I knew little about her but that she was a teacher at Kingsbridge and played the piano.

“Audrey’s work includes drawings and photographs, pressed flowers and leaves and detailed records of the wildlife of the hedge.

“This fascinating study inspired me to see if I could find the same hedge, to look at how it had changed in the intervening years and whether any of it might be the same.”

Michelle set off to try and find the same hedgerow, but was relying on just Audrey’s hand-drawn maps as a guide, and Kingsbridge has changed a lot since the 1940s so she was “surprised and delighted” when she found Darky Lane and the hedge.

Gordon Waterhouse, locally-famous naturalist, will be talking about the wildlife they find along the way, and the walk will compare the Darky Lane of today to ‘Aunt Audrey’s’ account of what was there seventy years before.

It might be wet and muddy, and the lane is rough underfoot, so wear appropriate boots and coats to suit the weather.

Meet at Combe Royal Farm for coffee, (From Leigh Cross, on the A381, take the narrow road towards Kingsbridge and, after just around 100m, Combe Royal Farm is the first lane on the left) by kind permission of Jim and Carol White.

£5 per family to cover refreshments and printing. It will help for catering if you could book, please, at [email protected], but is not essential.