Exmoor: A Winter’s Tale, by Neville Stanikk, published by Halsgrove, £14.99.

IT was just a winter’s tale – but not any old tale, this is the story of Exmoor in that harshest of seasons.

‘Exmoor A Winter’s Tale’ is the latest pictorial offering from Barnstaple photographer Neville Stanikk, a collection of stunning landscape photographs covering the period from the end of autumn to the start of spring.

It portrays the moor in many different moods and also tells the story of the local people, the traditional events that run through their lives and helped “give Christmas a meaning that has been lost to many”.

The Christmas period sees Exmoor’s towns and villages at their prettiest, with street performer and adorned with colourful lights in Lynton, the Christmas tree festival in Minehead, and of course the Dunster by Candlelight two day event that attracts thousands of visitors.

But the book is much more than that – there are stunning scenes of wind- and snow-swept hills and moorland, dark leaden skies, hardy sheep on Brendon Common, trees plastered down one side by driving snowfall that gives them a ghostly outline.

Hedges create a patchwork of lines through the pure white of the snowfall, and at Nutcombe Hill performs a puffball effect on silage bags. Another shot shows a deserted Lynmouth street, because of the difficulty of getting to the village caused by the two hilly approaches.

Snowdrifts at Winsford Hill cause crazy twirls of icing sugar and bare trees on a hillside at Southern Wood, near County Gate, create a mystical scene.

The photographer also uses his skills for close-ups of frost on stones, on a clump of grass at Dunkery Beacon creating an undersea look, hailstones on Brendon Common, water seeping out of the frozen ground in a sea of icy patterns, orange and blue reflections on the River Barle – and even frost on the Exmoor ponies on Molland Common.

At the start of the book there are colourful woodland scenes at the end of autumn, sunlight creating shafts through the trees, and the books ends with the dawn of spring, snowdrops on Wheddon Cross, spring lambs in their protective plastic macs and the first daffodils helping to create a chocolate box scene at Selworthy.

Stanikk says that at the heart of the book is the Christmas he accidentally discovered, epitomised by the two days of Dunster by Candlelight, catching a scene with an uncanny parallel with a Nativity scene.

“I inadvertently made my Christmas out of all the events I visited in the course of photographing this book, instead of just trudging around overheated shops and spending money. I had no idea how Christmas had slipped out of my hand - in fact out of all our hands.

“I would urge anyone to go out on to Exmoor in the winter, get cold, get warm again and visit the events I visited and finish the season with a whole different perspective on winter and Christmas.”

You can enjoy it in the comfort of your own homes if you like with this wonderful collection of 140 outstanding colour photographs, portraying a beauty entirely different from the popular vision of the area in sunnier times.