It is half past seven in the evening as I open the back door, pull on my wellingtons and step out to work in the garden. I climb the steps up the terraces that ascend steeply from the back door up to the lawn, and go into the summerhouse to peruse the list of jobs … Continue reading April, Garden →

My wellington boots sink into the dark, wet earth in the bed of the gully as I heave on the handle of a log lifter, taking my share, with three other volunteers, of the weight of a ten-foot long, two-foot diameter section of Scots Pine trunk. We set it down, regroup, then lift again and … Continue reading Slowing the Flow →

I step off the 596 bus and into the sunshine at Slack Top, a small hamlet high on the crest of the ridge between two of the Upper Calder Valley’s deep and densely-wooded tributaries. To the south is the Colden Valley, but it is the valley to the north into which I will descend. The tributary it contains is the Hebden Water, which eventually … Continue reading March, Hardcastle Crags →

On Wednesday 20th March the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Land Lines project called for 150-word entries for their crowd-sourced Spring Nature Diary. Here is mine. My five-year-old son and I step out into the garden at the close of this first day of spring. ‘What can you hear of spring, my boy?’ ‘I can … Continue reading Spring Nature Diary →

I hail down the 595 bus to Crimsworth and am greeted by Anne – ‘Hello, my lovely’ – the friendliest of the generally very friendly drivers of the hilltop parish bus services around Hebden Bridge. She seems to know everyone; within a few yards of pulling away from the bus stop she has already stopped … Continue reading February, Limers Gate →

Akenfield, released in 1974 and directed by Peter Hall, tells the story of a Suffolk village across three generations of the 20th century. On the day of his grandfather’s funeral, young farm worker Tom Rouse tries to decide whether to accept the offer from the farmer who employs him to move into his grandfather’s tied … Continue reading Authentic Akenfield? Rural Realism in Peter Hall’s Suffolk →

I lock my bike to an oak tree just off the Pennine Way and leave the track, walking beside the wooden post and rail fence that will take me to Foster’s Stone. On the climb up here the sun has been dazzlingly bright in a sharp blue sky, but I know it will not last. … Continue reading January, Foster’s Stone →

Ever since the arrival of ash dieback in the UK in 2012 I had been dreading seeing the first signs of it around my home. In the four years it took to see an infected tree for the first time – on the Pen, the village green across the road from my house – I … Continue reading Ashes to Ash →

It is New Year’s Eve, twenty to eight in the morning. I am standing at the end of one of the seven wooden pontoons which project into the River Blackwater from its southern bank just upstream from the Maldon Hythe Quay. The masts of more than 150 yachts, barges, smacks and dinghies, which are moored … Continue reading December, River Blackwater →

I step out of the cottage just as the sun disappears behind Dodd Fell. I ascend quickly on footpaths through the sheep pastures, chasing the leading edge of Dodd Fell’s vast shadow up the flanks of its neighbour, Wether Fell, in an attempt to enjoy a few more moments of sun on what has been … Continue reading November, Wether Fell →