Juniper Hill, North Oxfordshire: Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford
‘Mere seeing from a distance did not satisfy her; she longed to go alone far into the fields and hear the birds singing, the brooks tinkling, and the wind rustling through the corn, as she had when a child. To smell things and touch things, warm earth and flowers and grasses, and to stand and […]
Malham Cove, North Yorkshire: Anita Sethi
‘If you feel stuck in the clouds in your life and can’t see beyond a certain point, just wait and the clouds will clear.’ ‘Belonging is a need like water, air and food.’ ‘It was walking through nature that made me feel a sense of belonging and did wonders for my well-being’. ‘I longed for […]
Orford Ness, Suffolk: Robert MacFarlane
‘Nowhere has drawn me back more often’ ‘It has become a sort of Tintern Abbey for the contemporary’ ‘A metonym for a state we are now in, a clash and crisis and juxtaposition’ The Inspiration for this walk: ‘Ness’ 2018 It was Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Mountains of the Mind’ that first grabbed my imagination, but there […]
Inspiring Places: Glasgow, Scotland; Glasgow’s modernist writers
‘Glasgow is a magnificent city,’ said McAlpin. ‘Why do we hardly ever notice that?’ ‘Morgan saw Glasgow. A city with a great big heart; a city of opposites.’ The Inspiration for this walk: Edwin Morgan’s Glasgow Sonnets (1972) To be completely honest I knew none of the Glasgow writers until I started planning a trip […]
River Dart, Devon, source to sea: Alice Oswald
‘All voices should be read as the river’s mutterings’ The Inspiration for this walk: ‘Dart’ We have holidayed in Salcombe in South Devon pretty much every year for the last twenty. And bit by bit, as the boys have got older and stronger (and before I get older and weaker), we have walked further and […]
Brick Lane, East End, London: Monica Ali
‘See what I can do! The Inspiration for this walk: ’Brick Lane’ I read this book when it first came out in paperback in 2004, I remember at the time that everyone was talking about it. And Brick Lane itself was starting to become a ‘go to’ street. Now some say the book has not […]
Cairngorms: Nan Shepherd
Cairngorms: Nan Shepherd ‘I have walked out of the body and into the mountain’ The Inspiration for this walk…The Living Mountain I must confess I only bought my copy of the Living Mountain in 2022. Like so many, I have come to it late, alerted to it thanks to Robert MacFarlane in his book ‘Landmarks’ […]
A SENSE OF PLACE
What is meant by ‘Genius Loci’, ‘spirit of a place’? In classical Roman religion, a ‘genius loci’ was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding attributes such as a cornucopia, patera (libation bowl) or snake. Many Roman altars found throughout the Western Roman Empire were […]
WALKING, FREEDOM AND CREATIVITY
These are notes, very much work in progress, hopefully, you will find some interesting stuff in here… Walking is what makes us human Bipedalism is unique to man, it is a complex skill given to all through months of crawling and exploring. ‘It is, when you come to think of it, a remarkable achievement. On […]
Stonehenge, Wiltshire: are you a romantic or a rationalist?
‘Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves – or desires’ WHAT WE KNOW This is what we know for sure about Stonehenge: it was constructed over a very long period between 3,000 BC to 2,000 BC; it was, amongst other things, a burial ground; much of the stone was hauled from Wales; the keystones are […]
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