Whenever Mike Stannard’s friends or family come to visit him in Thorverton, Devon, he takes them to see his favourite tree, a slanted Scots pine on top of Raddon Hill. “We sit with our backs to the tree and admire the view,” he says. “I think about all the people I have been there with over the years. My daughter, who lives in Italy, and my son who lives in the US, know this tree well. I think about them when I am up there.”
The retired paediatric radiologist, originally from Exeter, worked in the US for three decades before returning in 2002. He came across the tree on a walk. “When my wife and I first saw this idiosyncratic pine from a distance, almost 20 years ago, I mistook its unusual slant for some kind of radar array,” he says.
Mike, 78, and his wife left the village in 2004 to return to the US to care for his mother-in-law. But they came back to Thorverton every year to visit friends and the tree, known locally as the Lone Pine. “It is the only survivor of a clump of pines on Raddon Top, an imposing site of bronze age and Neolithic remains,” he says. “An annual pilgrimage to this hogback hill and to this pine was an essential part of those visits – to touch its bark and to whisper a few words to ask it to hold on until we returned.”
Mike was reunited with the pine in 2011 when the couple moved back to the village. He now often climbs up the hill to spend time looking at the landscape of the Exe Valley from the tree, with only the occasional sheep for company. His daughter trained as a photographer and took a picture of him standing by the pine for her portfolio.
The tree has also inspired Mike to unleash his own creativity. He made a Lone Pine Christmas card in 2018, which featured tractors in place of the wise men’s camels. “Our Thorverton neighbours seemed very amused by it, and we have received no notice of excommunication to date,” he jokes. Last year, his wife made him a Lone Pine Valentine’s Day card, with illustrated hearts hanging from the tree’s canopy.
Each time he visits the pine, it brings back fond memories. “I see it from across the fields. I go up to the tree often and pat its scaly bark. The bark has been worn by animals rubbing against it over the years and there are spikes of former branches, but it has mostly remained the same.”
Mike hopes the tree will be around for many years to come: “A grove has been planted next to the tree by locals so one day, in the course of time, there will be successors to the Lone Pine, but in the meanwhile I’m very glad it’s still here.”
