Skeins of pink-footed geese trumpet over, their arrows made up of anything between 30 and 300 bugling birds. In six weeks, their regular passages over the valley’s airspace to find feeding in flatter fields of winter crops will end, as they migrate back to their summer breeding grounds in Greenland and Iceland. And this is … Continue reading Gift
The rain is incessant, washing over the Pennines in band after band. At Mytholm, the black-tea Colden meets the milky-coffee Calder in a headlong, frothing rush, both far above their standard levels, putting the newly-repaired river wall just downstream through its first proper test. Old field drains in the high pastures are overwhelmed, spilling a … Continue reading Palimpsest
The Hebden Water whirls into the River Calder at the Black Pit, having dropped 1400 feet from the moor after an eight-mile journey through reservoir, ravine, wood and town. At the second dawn of the year, bright and clear after endless rain, a song thrush strikes up its first verses since last summer, and the … Continue reading Beginnings
Landscape Story 