Pry | I retrace the woodland paths that my son and I have walked to school, but instead of dropping down the last slope to home, I am drawn upwards out of the shadowed, frost-gripped valley to the meet the day's dazzling brightness. The holly and hawthorns have both been extravagant in their berry production … Continue reading Field Studies #02 →

Horsehold Wood | In a still, shrouding vapour, birch flare and beech smoulder. Despite the lack of an early, colour-intensifying frost, the autumn colours have been spectacular. Among the dying flames, long-tailed tits swing and pivot on twig ends; a nuthatch assumes an uncharacteristically upright pose in a crook of limbs; on an altar of … Continue reading Field Studies #01 →

2nd March We make a rare foray into town for a homeschool history project on Lavena Saltonstall, a Hebden Bridge-born suffragette. We visit her birthplace at Rawholme on Midgehole Road, and later residences on Unity Street and the vanished terrace of Buttress Brink, as well as several mills where she might have worked as a … Continue reading March: Renewal →

1st February In the frigid evening air at the end of an intensely bright day, the lingering smell of sun-warmed soil kindles an almost painful hopefulness. Spring is a little way off yet, but today, for the first time, I allow myself to dream of its coming. 2nd February A fresh and heavy snowfall in … Continue reading February: These Shining Days →

1st January For our New Year's Day walk, my son and I choose a route up the first section of the valley of the Hebden Water, labelled on old maps as Hebden Dale, a name which seems to have fallen out of use. We pass through a rather strange atmosphere in the centre of town, … Continue reading January: Frozen Fields →

4th December What little light the day has mustered is ebbing away. The wet snow that has been falling intermittently all day has failed to illuminate the interior of the woods across the valley, which remain resolutely black. But I know it is likely to be a different story higher up. So I push my … Continue reading December: Near Horizons →

1st November On a sodden walk up the Pennine Way with our neighbours and their boys, the hillside rings with rushing water after a week and more of rain, new streams spilling from gritstone cracks onto the woodland floor. We slop through Scammerton Farm's saturated silage meadows and are drawn over Pry Hill by a … Continue reading November: The Failing Light →

2nd October I respond to the closing down of the days, the bearing down of the clouds, by breaking out of the territory I have circled for the past six months. Pre-lockdown, by the use of local bus services, the region of the upper Calder Valley watershed within which I would walk covers roughly forty-five … Continue reading October: Autumn Awakening →

1st September I balance unsteadily on a mound of Molinia grass that forms an island in the ditch, reach back across and haul my son over to the other side. I let him go ahead to have first shot at finding the geocache which, having given him a free choice, was his preferred mission for … Continue reading September: A Hush at Summer’s End →

1st August We labour up the narrow path between the nearly-spent foxgloves, each with the last of their purple flames at their very tips, like phosphoric candles that have burnt their wicks in reverse. We are meeting one of my son's classmates and her parents, who are camping at Old Chamber, for a walk around … Continue reading August: Hay Time →