2nd July Beside the railway line on the way to school this morning I was alarmed to see segmenting fruits taking shape on the bramble. It made me want to put a halt to the year's progress. April and May were a stasis in which everything could be savoured, but now not only the economy … Continue reading July: Our Local Acre →

This post was originally published in October 2019 in issue #2 of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England's West Yorkshire branch Ways of Seeing magazine. In the decade that I have lived here, I have become increasingly immersed in the story of the upper reaches of West Yorkshire’s Calder Valley. The narrative of … Continue reading Weaving Through the Calder Valley →

1st June We have an auspicious first visitor into the garden on the morning the lockdown rules are relaxed; Steve has come to ring the blue tit chicks in the nest box that he made for us last month. He stuffs a duster into the entrance hole so that the parents do not come in … Continue reading June: The Greening Aftermath →

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 →

27th March As March ages and lockdown begins, the land hardens; the fields are finally drying after the wettest February since records began in 1862. Now that the tractors can venture out without damaging the grass crop they come to fertilise, the greening pastures turn temporarily brown as the farms of Edge End, Horsehold 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 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 had … Continue reading August, Church Fenton →