Sylvia Plath’s ‘daffodil days’ in Devon

My horse was more of a pony: narrow and small with a jerky stride and an inclination to veer off the track into the heather. I was on Dartmoor, Devon, hacking out with a riding stables as part of my research on the American poet Sylvia Plath. I had not been on a horse for at least 20 years and I didn’t remember it being quite so uncomfortable. We jolted in the direction of Yes Tor. 

Sixty years earlier, Plath wrote her poem Ariel on 27 October…