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
It is the early afternoon, and I have not stepped outside since returning from a decidedly chilly early morning cycle along the Rochdale Canal's towpath to take my son to nursery. The view from my study window while working had done nothing to reassure me that the day had marshalled any warmth, with the trees … Continue reading July, Cruttonstall
I can reach the gate in eight minutes from my back door. It was the view from the gate that convinced us to to live here, a decade ago now. It is from here that I observe - attend to, regard, witness - this landscape. Nestled in a confluence of cloughs, swaddled in valley … Continue reading Views from the Gate
It is ten o’clock in the morning and Clare, my wife, and Bertie, my two and a half year old son, are walking along Kilnshaw Lane amongst the high pastures of the parish of Erringden. The misted air is cool, but the sun is issuing a promise to break through before we reach our destination, … Continue reading June, Erringden
