The following article first appeared in the Devon Wildlife Trust's magazine, The Dipper, and has been reproduced by special request of our Tamar Branch.

Welcombe and Marsland is a stunning 522-acre site straddling the Devon/Cornwall border with a fantastic assortment of oakwoods, bracken slopes, traditional hay meadows and flower-rich pastures.

Childhood holidays in the valleys prompted international wildlife conservationist Christopher Cadbury, grandson of George Cadbury (a founder of the chocolate manufacturers) to dream of making the whole area into a nature reserve - well, standing at a high point overlooking the valley, who wouldn't? Armed with a map of the area which had every parcel of land outlined with a different coloured pencil, Christopher visited the landowners one by one and left each with one less cheque in his cheque book and one more piece of land to add to his nature reserve jigsaw puzzle.

But not only did Christopher realise his dream of acquiring the valleys as one vast nature reserve, he then donated it to the Royal Society for Nature Conservation (the parent body of The Wildlife Trusts), along with the island of Aride in the Seychelles and other nature reserves.

At a recent event, Sir David Attenborough visited Welcombe and Marsland to unveil a memorial in honour of Christopher Cadbury who died in 1995. For the Devon Wildlife Trust it was a particularly notable occasion as it also marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the site which has been passed to the joint management of both the Devon and Cornwall Wildlife Trusts, with DWT taking day-to-day responsibility for the reserve and CWT assisting in the administration.

Gary Pilkington has been the nature reserve manager for the past ten years and here gives his very first impressions of the site and the reason why he still finds it such an amazing place:

" My first visit to the Welcombe and Marsland Nature Reserve was during a very cold, wet and windy weekend in February 1988. I was checking out the place prior to my taking the post of Reserve Manager in April of that year. I remember walking down the footpath to the sea at Marsland Mouth with a typical Cornish mist blowing all around the treetops. The woodland seemed almost prehistoric and ancient with its lichen-dripped trees, dead fallen branches and small streams flowing effortlessly through the valley bottom and down to the sea. The only sound apart from the running water was an occasional call from an unseen buzzard high above the mist line. I was out for five hours in the woods and along the headland and saw no one. The desolation was absolute, almost frightening, but I knew that the reserve was something special even then.

"The sun came out on my way back and I was in a field above the tree line looking down and along the valley. It stretched as far as the eye could see with two or three smaller valleys adjacent to the main one. Another buzzard flew up out of the grass and soared high out of sight as three others joined in and ascended silently. I thought then that I had to take the job.

"My first summer on the reserve was spent getting to know the area and its wildlife and it felt immediately like paradise. The first thing which struck me during my initial stay was the wildness of the reserve; all its acres of unspoilt woodland, almost complete silence and vast array of all kinds of animals, birds, flowers and insects. The reserve list contains 34 species of butterfly (including 6 fritillaries), 17 species of dragonfly (including black darters and keeled skimmers) and a growing number of beetles, hover-flies and other insects. The moth list is very impressive and includes good numbers of rarities like scarce blackneck moths. The flora list is growing annually and includes wavy-leaved St John's-wort, Portland spurge and bastard balm. We have lesser whitethroats during the summer along with pied flycatchers and wood warblers. Dippers and grey wagtails are frequent on the streams and both breed here.

"The reserve itself is vast with over 522 acres of land to be responsible for. In those early days I found myself liaising with landowners and farmers and giving them information as to the work being carried out on the reserve and giving out advice on how to manage their own land. I was arranging grazing for the meadows and grasslands, checking over 22 miles of boundary line and fencing, maintaining a tractor, chainsaws and scrubcutters, giving talks and slide shows all over the area, managing the woods with coppice, thinning sycamore, cutting rides and glades, checking cattle and sheep, monitoring the wildlife and entering results onto computer (which now has over 11,500 records). The work seemed endless but with the help of a winter assistant and voluntary groups I began to get things into some sort of priority.

"Ten years on and I am still amazed and excited by the variety of wildlife and by the atmosphere surrounding the woods which seems to change almost every day with the seasons and the weather. The work here is still both gratifying and challenging and the results of management are always rewarding and sometimes very spectacular - be it the ever-increasing numbers of butterflies or watching new species arrive on the reserve. The variety of the work is an added bonus - one day spent counting butterflies and recording their numbers on a computer and another spent digging a small dragonfly pond or building an otter holt. During the summer months I may be making hay in the traditional hay meadows or recording and monitoring insects, and in winter coppicing alder on the valley bottom or checking on some grazing cattle on the coastal meadows.

"Some of my best wildlife days have been spent here at Marsland. I remember well seeing an otter eating a shore crab under the bridge at Gooseham. The record counts of marbled whites and small and pearl-bordered fritillaries will always be a highlight as will witnessing the annual increase in pied flycatcher numbers. The confirmation of breeding high-brown fritillaries and grizzled skippers on the meadows and coppice areas has also been a high point.

"There is still a lot of work to do - the potential for the reserve will not be reached for many more years. Hopefully the new partnership with the Devon and Cornwall Wildlife Trusts will help reach that potential sooner rather than later."

Group visits to the nature reserve and guided walks with the Warden can be organised by prior arrangement. Access to the nature reserve is presently by permit only. There are, however, plenty of paths and tracks through the valley that are open to the public.