1st May It seems like a different era, but it was only a few weeks ago that we stood in a cold February dusk, watching hundreds of jackdaws return to their winter roost in the beech plantation of Common Bank Wood. It is now mottled with splashes of green, blooming and bleeding into its dark … Continue reading May: The Brief Banishing of Shadows →

19th February Every footstep is a splash and squelch in the sodden fields. Hares kick up showers of spay as they sprint away from their forms in the rushes, and even the newly-arrived lapwings, who like their fields wet, seemed nonplussed as they bank away into the icy showers. 27th March As March ages and … Continue reading April: Spring Solace →

My six-year-old son and I step outside into the last of the chill twilight. With the road and railway silenced in recent days, the rush of the clough streams breathes into the aural space of the valley they tumble into, and the dusk chorus of blackbirds, robins and a male tawny owl from Callis Wood … Continue reading Spring Nature Diary →

I was reminded recently by a friend who shares my interest in the history of farming in the Calder Valley that I have yet to explore the area of long-abandoned farmsteads in Withens Clough. Using the National Library of Scotland's extraordinary online map resources, I carry out some research. The earliest Ordnance Survey map, from … Continue reading Pasture Top →

Michael and I step out into the warm equinoctial sunshine and take the track up through Knott Wood. The ascent out of the narrow and steep-sided valley bottom of Calderdale is always something of an ordeal, but catching up with a friend I haven’t seen for some time proves a perfect way of mitigating it, … Continue reading September, Blackshaw Parish →

The dry stone walls that guide the wide, unmade Bands Lane up onto the outstretched paw of Dodd Fell were undoubtedly once upright and true, but now list and sag under their weight of winters and winds, as slumped as their makers must have been after a lifetime of walling. But for all the tilt … Continue reading Bands Lane, Wensleydale →

The carriage doors wheeze open and I wheel my bike down onto the platform with one hand. In the other I clasp the hand of Bertie, my two-year-old son, as he leaps off the train, smartly bending his knees on landing. The train lumbers away, leaving Church Fenton railway station deserted except for us. I … Continue reading August, Church Fenton →