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Where's your natural haven?
Do you have a special place? A natural wonder? One where a meaningful event took place? Simon Barnes, one of Britain's best nature writers, shares his 'Sacred Combe' - his most special place - and what it means to him.
We also have five copies of his new book The Sacred Combe to give away to those who post on the thread.
What's your Sacred Combe?
What's yours? Because we've all got one. A secret, special place, one packed with meaning, easy to love but hard to share, except perhaps with our nearest.
It's wild, enclosed and full of life. The birds seem more trusting, the colours seem deeper, and it's full of plants you don't find any old where. It's homely and exotic at the same time. Sometimes it's a place of the imagination, like Narnia or Shangri-La. Sometimes it comes from a childhood memory, or from a single happy day in a delicious doomed love affair. Sometimes it's a real place that you daren't go back to, for fear that it has changed. Or you have.
For me the most important of all such places is uncompromisingly real. I realised that it was going to be forever special, in a deeply personal way, the first night I was there and awoke in the middle of the night to find that someone was eating my hut.
I looked out into the dark to see half-a-dozen still darker shapes, moving on vast bedroom-slippered feet and feeding on generous trunkfulls of thatch from my roof. I awoke again the following morning to realise that this wasn't a dream at all, for the ground outside was covered in fallen grass and littered with the vast damp loaves of elephant. Since that night I have pursued a double fascination, a double-enchantment. The first is with the Laungwa Valley in Zambia, to which I have returned many times and seen the place in all its moods and its seasons. The second is with the idea of the Sacred Combe: the secret places of the soul, humanity's heartland.
Sometimes it's a place of the imagination, like Narnia or Shangri-La. Sometimes it comes from a childhood memory, or from a single happy day in a delicious doomed love affair. Sometimes it's a real place that you daren't go back to, for fear that it has changed.
I write these words from another such place: from my writing-hut that overlooks our scant few acres of Norfolk marsh, which we manage for wildlife. Since that last full-stop I have – no shred of exaggeration – turned my head to watch a marsh harrier sweeping across the vast sky: a fabulous bid of prey that was once down to a single breeding pair in this country. Yesterday a barn owl stopped 15 yards from my desk to see if the fence-post worked as a hunting-perch.
In short, it's a great tribute to my strength of character that I ever get anything written.
So I ask again: what's yours?
Obviously you're entitled to more than one: you can make your own rules and then break them at will. But a good part of the point is that a Sacred Combe puts you in touch with the wild world: with the world beyond humanity. It's only in such places that we are fully human, for the wild world completes us.
A park where you feed the ducks; a seldom-visited cove you go to on holiday; the place where you always stop on a favourite walk – sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits - or a place where the blackbirds sing in April or the place where you once saw a hedgehog. All these places count and so do many more. They are all deeply personal, and they are all filled with the richness of non-human life. And that's a Sacred Combe for you.
So, what is yours?
Simon's new book The Sacred Combe: A Search for Humanity's Heartland is published by Bloomsbury and available from Amazon.
By Simon Barnes
Twitter: @simonbarneswild
Lovely article [GNHQ please correct a typo: "bid of prey"] 
My heartland is where "there be dragons" - the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa. We were hiking in them once and came across a baboon and an Eland antelope deep in conversation (I swear). It's a magical place.
Bosahan Cove, Helford River, Cornwall, a beautiful secluded spot surrounded by woodland, not too far from my hometown, looking forward to returning (several times) later this year. 
I'm feeling a little sad not to have A Special Place! I do love that morethan2 prizes her local patch above the more exotic places she's been. I feel inspired to be more aware of 'place' in the future, and to be on the lookout for potential even in everyday spots.
Dhanakosa, Buddhist Retreat Centre on the shore of Loch Voil, near Balquhidder. An oasis of peace and tranquillity, a place to take time out, reflect or simply be.
We have a fisherman's hut at a rather quirky place called Paddy's Hole at the South Gare in Cleveland. There we read, drink tea and watch the ships coming into Teesport. It has a little wood burning stove so we hunt for driftwood on the beach and also collect sea glass and razor shells. Nothing to worry about. Time to stand and stare and just be. Sheer bliss.
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