Posted inWords
Pears and heirs
There is a gothic beauty to Gregg’s Pit orchard in early April. Filigree branches, pregnant with buds, are etched against a bruised sky. Perry pear trees tower over their cider…
Posted inWords
A Dark and Stormy Night
Nightfall on the last day of January 1938. A heavy Atlantic swell rolls in from the northwest. The steamship Alba, carrying coal to Mussolini’s factories in Italy and a crew…
Posted inWords
Mackerel Fishing on the Lillie May
It was a pin-sharp sunny day: warm, but with enough of a breeze to stop it from being overbearing. I tore down towards the water’s edge, ahead of the others,…
Posted inBooks
Modern British Nature Writing, 1789-2020 Landlines By Will Abberley, Christina Alt, David Higgins, Graham Huggan and Pippa Marland.
This is a beautifully produced and fascinating study of nature writing from Gilbert White to the present. Being a book aimed at the academic market it is very expensive and…
Posted inWords
FAMILIAR SHORES: How South Africa taught me to love the coast
I had always known my mum wanted to move away. Whenever we would take childhood trips through the Lego-model villages and sweeping valleys of the Dales or the Lake District…
Posted inBooks
The Past is a Dangerous Driver by Neal Mason
Neal Mason is a mature poet who has been publishing collections of his work since the early 1990s and has appeared in many poetry magazines. I had not previously come…
Posted inWords
Coed Felenrhyd
My first visit to the temperate rainforest of Coed Felenrhyd in North Wales was in early autumn. Entering the ancient site was to walk into a cathedral, a multi-layered, multi-faceted…
Posted inBooks
An Open Door: New Travel Writing for a Precarious Century Edited by Steven Lovatt
I hardly know Wales at all. There was that one of our irregular summer childhood holidays when we exchanged the constant drizzle of Frinton for the interminable downpours of Aberdaron…
Posted inBooks
A River Runs Through Me by Andrew Douglas-Home
A clever title by a man with a name incredibly familiar to those of us of a certain age. In A River Runs Through Me, Andrew Douglas-Home gets the details…