Walks
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’ […]
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 […]
Highgate Cemetery – the creative choice for a burial
Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At last — far off — at last, to all, And every winter change to spring Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’, at the entrance to one of the tombs in the Circle of Lebanon ‘Better a spectacular failure, than a benign success’ […]
Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire: TS Eliot
The inspiration for this trip: ‘The Four Quartets’ TS Eliot seemed the most iconic of poets when I was at school. I saved up for the Faber Complete Poems & Plays, whilst my parents splashed out on this very grand Folio Society edition. I recall we got a Folio Society book every three months or […]
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