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Out and about – checking on Bevis

Posted in countryside, journal, lancashire, Metaphysical, philosophical, photography, walking, writing, tagged bevis, birckacre, books, chorley, coppull, drybones, nature, travel, walking, wildlife on April 17, 2024| 5 Comments »

I thought we’d check on Bevis today. Bevis is a dog. He died in 1842 and rests in Duxbury woods, south of Chorley. Given all the rain we’ve had, I thought it was prudent to set out wearing Wellington boots. I have my own story about Bevis, which I’ve written about elsewhere. He’s far enough away in time to be recruited as myth, and I’m sure he won’t mind. He’s a playful creature, loyal beyond the grave. And we all need someone or something to watch our backs

We begin with lunch at the Treeface café, at Birkacre – a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich. The forecast is fair, which seems unlikely, I mean following on from yesterday’s gales, and torrential rain, but then this is a notoriously unsettled season. While we wait for our bacon sandwich to arrive, we amuse ourselves with the Merlin app. We have warm sunshine, and it’s pleasant sitting out. In just a few minutes the app has picked up the songs of great tit, blue tit, thrush, wren, blackbird and chiffchaff. They are going mad for spring.

I’m still a little stiff after my trip to the lakes last week, and a good soaking up Sallows. The hiking boots are still drying out at home, and it’s as well because I suspect they’d be useless where we’re going today. In the deep of the wood, beyond Drybones dam, we discover the bluebells, the anemones and the wild garlic are all in bloom, but subdued somehow. Perhaps a week or so of sun will bring them on, but it’s getting late for anemones, which look to be enjoying their last gasp. As we make way, the weather changes suddenly, the sky darkens and there is a rush of hail.

We lean into a tree, and wait it out. There is the sound of construction, coming from beyond Lowes Tenement, and the vast housing estate that is ripping up pristine meadows, to the west of the Yarrow. I’m told the local council did not want or need it, but were vetoed by central government. Thankfully, it is not visible from this section of the walk. I wrote about this last time I came. You’ll understand therefore why I cannot swing my route through those fields of destruction any more, that in part what we’re doing today is looking to heal the wound to memory by finding another way through this home patch, by lopping off the limb that has gone bad, and pretending it is no longer there. So, we’ll be heading deep into Duxbury wood instead, swinging a loop, then retracing our steps back to Treeface.

While we walk, we’re musing that much of what we believe to be true about our selves and the world, is actually just a story we tell. Much of what we believe ourselves to be is either memory or aspiration, in other words, just something in our heads that we’re forever casting back, into the past or forwards, into the future. Neither exist beyond the notion of being either a memory or an idea.

We talk of living in the present moment, but what is that? How big a slice of time is the gap between the past and the future? Is it a minute? Is it a second? Is it the so-called Planck second, which is zero point, then forty-three zeros and one, of a regular second. This is supposedly the shortest meaningful time period that can be measured. But the present moment is shorter even than that. The present moment is a singularity. It seems, therefore, we exist entirely in our own imaginations, forever travelling this line in time from past to future without ever setting down to rest anywhere.

There’s a crack of thunder and the hail sweeps over us with a soft hiss that finally recedes. We move on, past the lone tree that fell, in my novel of the same name, and was still standing when I wrote Durleston wood. We enter the domain of the old Duxbury estate, now. In places, I measure the mud here at eight inches deep, by the tide-line on the Wellingtons. There is no way around it, heavy going, yes, but at least we’re not concerned the boots will leak, and we’ll clean them up by a quick paddle in the river. Bevis can be hard to locate, but if you stick to the river, refuse to be intimidated by the mud, teased away by dryer looking pathways, you’ll find him.

He looks to be doing okay.

I presume the grave-site is the original one, chosen by the Standishes of Duxbury Hall. The statue is not the original – the original falling foul of vandalism some time in the early twentieth century. The commemorative stone is the original, erected in 1870, the year after a fire that burned half the hall down, and whose inhabitants were saved, according to the reports, by the manic barking of Bevis.

All ye who wander thro these peaceful glades,
Listning the flow of Yarrows rippling waves,
Pause and bestow a tributary tear,
The bones of faithful ‘Bevis’ slumber here,

1842

This remembrance erected by
Susan Mrs. Standish

1870

Remember, the dog died in 1842, which gives us a neat little mystery we could hang a hundred stories from.

As we get older, it’s harder to maintain the integrity of the story, the myth, we think we’re living. The pristine meadows we knew as children are suddenly housing estates. The world we thought we knew suffers the inevitable changes wrought by the passage of time, and means nothing to others who did not know it the way we did. By the time we’ve more time behind us than ahead, we utter that time-worn lament of the old: “I remember when all this was fields.” And it hurts, because we feel our lives are/were special, so many little victories hard won along the way, and yet here we are, our story being erased line by line, meadow by meadow, ferny dell by ferny dell.

What do you say, Bevis old boy?

Bevis says the myth must be renewed, if we are to go on living without regret. He is, after all, named after a mythical character from Britain’s middle-ages. And have I not attempted my own reimagining of his myth? But the founding myths of our lives are laid down in childhood, and come with the magical charge that only childhood can bestow. The world of the adult is less charmed. All the magic has been beaten out of us by the paradigm in which we live. Still, we do the best we can.

Another hail storm sweeps the wood. Fierce one this, and a sudden drop in temperature, too. We lean into another tree, melt into the lee of it, seek its protection a while. The storm passes. We move on. Marsh marigold, anemone, wild garlic, bluebell, chickweed, lesser celandine. All look tired, except for the marsh marigold, which is everywhere perky, as the bogs widen.

Scent of old woodland after rain, now. A few old trees have gone over, tearing craters in the ground, scent of earth, scent of the peaty Yarrow. The river is eating at the bends, undermining paths. Just here, the winter storms have also washed out bits of pottery from a Victorian tip, tumbled them down a stream and in to the river, always worth a look. We fish out several shards, patterned, some with bits of writing – “Made In Engl,…” we invent stories for them, old farmhouse kitchens, cups of tea, Sunday lunches long ago.

We make it back to Treeface, another story there, for what is Treeface if not the mythical green man? I call my sister, who lives nearby. Drive round for a brew and a chat, swap stories. I am no longer a child. No longer an engineer. Those are old stories, no longer serving a purpose. I am a writer of sorts now, and a photographer, marking the changes, while also seeking the unchanging in landscape, and finding a way through it all. That’s fine, it’ll work, so long as I don’t try to big it up too much.

Sure, that’s my story. How about yours?

About four miles, flatish.

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Out and about – the dog days

Posted in Anglezarke, countryside, journal, lancashire, moorland, outdoors, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged animals, deer, nature, optician, roe deer, walking, wildlife, woodland on March 28, 2024| 16 Comments »

The best day of the week, weatherwise, coincides with an appointment at the opticians, as we knew it would. This leaves only the afternoon to catch up with lunch, and a bit of a walk. The eyes are good, says the optician. Apart from a couple of posterior vitriol detachments, the early stages of cataract, a mess of floaty things, and being very, very short-sighted. Still, the prescription is stable she says, and our spectacles still provide a good correction. Her optimism is infectious.

It must be how we spotted it, with that good correction. But for a time, we’re not sure what it is exactly we’ve spotted. We’re looking for early spring photographs now, and have wandered into the woodland above the Bullough Reservoir, at Anglezarke, when we see what looks like a very tall, white chested bird with a small head, and long, stout, hairy legs. It’s some distance away, but the whiteness stands out. Puzzled, we settle in and stare at it. What the hell? It’s moving. We’re so confused by now, the hair stands up on our neck, thinking we’ve perhaps discovered a freaky new avian species. But then we realise it’s a rump, that the small head is actually a stumpy tail, and there’s a whole roe deer attached to it.

It’s well camouflaged, invisible almost, except for that rump, which is luminous. It’s a proud young stag, sporting a fine pair of antlers. Then I see another deer off to the right, a female. We squat down by the trunk of a tree, lean into it, make ourselves small, and watch as these beautiful creatures pick their way through the woodland. They are like ghosts, making not a sound.

We have a robin, a great tit and a chiffchaff for a soundtrack, and the lightest breath of wind. The wind is carrying our scent uphill, so they know we’re here. Their sense of smell is keener than a dog’s and would be supernatural if it wasn’t – well – natural. They seem intelligent enough to realise we’re not a threat, too far away, and way downhill from them. We manage a single, grainy shot with the camera, and without spooking them.

It is a magical moment, but we’re close to the main track around the reservoir here. Dog walkers abound, and while they can be almost symbiotically and most touchingly linked to their domestic companions, many are ignorant of the vulnerabilities of wild creatures. To lose a domestic dog to accident is a family tragedy. But to lose a wild deer to a severe mauling, is just one of those things. We have lost our empathy for mother earth, seemingly divorced from her a long time ago. We have seen deer running for their lives here, and sweet, jolly fido – wouldn’t harm a fly – transformed by instinct into a single-minded killer.

Anyway, they’ve had enough of my lurking presence now, and are moving on up the hill. We let them be, move off quietly, and go in search of lone trees. I’m better at photographing trees. They let me get nearer to them, and they don’t move around so much. I’d not expected a lot from the afternoon – such a late start, being waylaid in town, but it always pays to turn out, even if you can only spare an hour or so.

They’re much more common than they were, but the sight of deer in our woodland is still a great pleasure. The gorse is out, the Anglezarke reservoir is sparkling. We stalk our trees, even find a few we’re not familiar with, and play around finding a picturesque perspective on them. A pair of Oyster Catchers fly overhead, piping shrill, and settle in the bright meadows below Siddow Fold. The moon was recently full, the cherries are in blossom. There is a real sense of something moving now, the year swelling into being.

It’s later when we hear the commotion. It’s a dog barking, giving chase, blinded to all reason by what must be, for it, the intoxicating scent of deer. It goes on for ages, crashing through what was earlier the golden silence of the Upper Bullough. We make our way back, encounter the owner standing on the path, nonplussed, calling to fido in vain, unable to imagine what’s got into him.

It’ll be the same on the moors, where the curlew are nesting, struggling to hang on against this overwhelming onslaught of humanity. So many dogs now, post COVID. We do not teach this stuff. I mean the preciousness of a glimpse of wild England, in what few remaining pockets of resistance there are left. It’s as if we cannot trust nature to be left to its own devices, in case it sneaks up on us unawares. It must be controlled, corralled, beaten, hunted or poisoned to death.

Oh, I know, in olden times, deer were vulnerable to wolves, and thereby met many a bloody end, as they do now to domestic dogs. Nature is red in tooth and claw. So who is the more deluded? Is it me for romanticising nature, or the careless dog-owner for being entirely ignorant of it? I suppose the difference lies in recognising the preciousness of wild habitat, for it being so rare, now, on an overcrowded island like ours. All I know for sure is settling for a moment to observe those deer, the largest of our wild creatures, in their natural habitat, was a privilege. More, it was a moment that recharged the sprit, when so much else about our human affairs drains it.

There are still those who do their best to preserve what bits of wild England remain. But, on balance, I’m not optimistic. The great nature writers of the past paint a very different picture of wild England. It was threatened, yes, but still much more expansive and diverse in its flora and fauna. I don’t compare myself with them. My knowledge is minuscule, and such as I am, I get the feeling I’m only recording the dog days. We shall soon be concreted from sea to sea, and the only bits of nature left will be those preserved as curiosities, under bell-jars.

Our deer got away, and Fido got a telling off.

I know a song about that. The dog days, I mean.

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Out and about – a short circuit of Darwen Moor

Posted in countryside, journal, lancashire, Metaphysical, moorland, Mysticism, novel, outdoors, photography, Smashwords, walking, West Pennine Moors, writing, tagged countryside, darwen moor, hiking, jubilee tower, ryal fold, walking, walks on March 18, 2024| 15 Comments »

You catch up with me today on the moors above Darwen. We’ve left the car down at Ryal Fold, and come up the track by Lyon’s Den. There’s a brief window between rains and, after being confined indoors all last week, we’re keen to take advantage of it. At twelve degrees, we can also, finally, shed a layer or two.

I’m in a bit of a funny mood, possibly the result of all that confinement. Or it could be the result of re-reading the Lavender and the Rose, and not recognising the guy who wrote it. Or it could be the number of outdoor jobs accumulating around chez nous, and not two dry days together to make a start on them. I’ve got fence panels missing from the storms in January, and I’m waiting for the mad March wind to add to that particular tally before doing anything about it, but the wind is late in getting up. And I’ve just noticed the garage roof is leaking. Again. Single days of dry are all we’re getting at the moment, if we get ant at all, and they’re obviously prioritised for walking.

As we come up to the little bench on the moor top, overlooking Lyon’s Den, we note someone has planted a clutch of miniature daffodils. They’re a hardy plant for sure if they can survive up here, and they look to be doing better even than the ones in my garden. I’m not sure what I think about this, though. It’s an alien species, as far as our Lancashire uplands go, but there were cottages on the moors once, going back centuries, and they’ll have had ornamental planting, none of which has survived – just piles of mossy rubble. Still, it’s a lone splash of colour amid the moor’s straw-coloured expanse, and momentarily cheering. Here, we pause for lunch.

We’re sticking to the main tracks today, which is why we’re over on this side of the moor. Even in the thickest of wet, they’re mostly easy going. It’s familiar ground, hills of home and all that, even if it’s a half hour drive for me these days. A so-called fitness walk, the plan is to keep things moving, then we can still do other stuff in places further abroad, once the season perks up. I fluffed the usual photograph down by the little waterfall on Stepback Brook, sunlight flaring over the lip of it and filling the camera with sparkles. Here’s one I took earlier:

My thanks to Bowland Climber for pointing us in the direction of the Merlin app, which allows one’s phone to recognise birdsong. Birds are more often heard than seen when we’re out and about, and I’m mostly unable to recognise their song, but today I discover we’ve already had the company of coal tit, great tit, grey wagtail, skylark, house sparrow, ring necked pheasant, and blackbird.

Lots of people about today. Mostly older, doggie people, some joggers, a few small walking groups, all friendly in passing. Grand day. Ow do, and all that. This, and the air, and the movement work its magic and the mood begins to lift.

I’d forgotten how old the Lavender and the Rose is. It saw its first airing on Lulu.com in 2007, with my last read of it being 2013, when I moved it to Smashwords. My problem with it is I wouldn’t try to write a book like that now. It’s an impossible mix of things, a psychological mystery, a lot of Jungian development stuff, metaphysical speculation, and rather long-winded. It’s also more frequently erotic than I recall, and some of the scenes embarrass the self that is now fifteen years older than the self who wrote it. If anyone out there has read it, and survived to tell the tale, I’d appreciate your advice on whether I should leave it up, or pull it to spare my blushes.

Damn that garage roof! I’m up there every spring with felt and bitumen and I never find the spot where the water’s getting in, but then we are getting rather a lot more water than we used to do. Speaking of which, we have more rain forecast for tonight, some of it heavy, but just now the sky is breaking up nicely into puffy white on blue. We grab a passing shot of the tower, then begin our descent towards Sunnyhurst.

Dance like no one’s watching, sing like no one’s listening. Write like,… well. I suppose that’s the thing, isn’t it? If we start self censoring for fear of opinion, there goes half our creativity – and even if it’s no good, I’m not the best judge of that, and the Lavender and the Rose was at least a sincere attempt to get at something different. My stuff’s not widely read anyway, so what am I bothered about? Let Beatrice and Matthew and Charlotte and Min, and Ghita have their fun. They were good company, and taught me much, and in some sense helped shape the self I am now from the raw material of those earlier times. There would be no honour in disowning them now, even though some of their carryings on leave my mind truly boggled.

We cut left through meadows here, before reaching Sunnyhurst, and find ourselves channelled between a long funnel of wire, the path churned to slime for being so tightly confined. I’ve noticed this happening more and more in the countryside, the landed taking exception to the ancient public ways that run like an unwanted rash across their holdings, so they’re going to damn well make sure we keep to the straight and narrow of it. No appreciating the openness of my land. A path is a path and be done with it. You’ve no business enjoying my pleasant aspect, and in order to protect it from you, I have destroyed it.

I’ve not used this path before and won’t be using it again as it’s a bit of an assault course. Slithering and sliding, we are grateful to make it to the water board track. Then it’s the private road to the farm of Higher Wenshead. This is another cunning trick deployed against the rambler – unofficial “private road” signs. Without local knowledge or an OS map, you could easily take that to mean you’re not allowed to pass. But you are, at least on foot. So on we pass.

Now we’re just a short walk back to the car at Ryal Fold. A brew and a Kitkat at the café, and we’re good to go. It feels warm in these brief periods of sun, almost warm enough to,… what do you think? We unclip the soft top on the little blue car, and test it for folding. It’s a bit fragile these days and cold weather risks splitting it when the vinyl is stiff, but it’s fine. We’re above the magic temperature, and it folds back willingly. Mid-March and the top is down already! We’ll take the long way home, Belmont over the tops to Rivington.

Keep your peckers up, we’re getting there.

About four and a half miles round, eight hundred and seventy feet of up and down.

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Out and about – around Sedbergh

Posted in blogging, countryside, current affairs, journal, Metaphysical, outdoors, photography, political, Short Fiction, walking, writing, tagged books, election, government, news, politics, sedbergh on March 11, 2024| 29 Comments »

There’s such a beautiful light around Sedbergh today. The nearby Howgills appear almost transparent, and lit from within. Though officially residing in the county of Cumbria, it is a place that is definitely “Yorkshire” in character, falling within the boundaries of the Yorkshire Dales national park. It’s such a long time since I was here – twenty years or more – and feeling like only yesterday, of course. But today we’re not heading up into the hills. Today is not for Arrant Haw, or Winder, or the Calf, nor is it for the long, roaring fall of Cautley Spout. Instead, we pick up the River Rawthey at New Bridge, and walk downstream. We pass its confluence with the Dee, then wander over to the Lune, the River of the Moon, and walk upstream as far as the viaduct. Then we circle back across the undulating meadows to homely Sedbergh, with its bookshops and teashops, and its feel of a time stood still.

Birks House, along the Rawthey, Sedbergh

It’s a cold day, and the breeze has ice in it, but the light holds the promise of spring, and for which we have high hopes. Unlike the sodden meadows of a few weeks ago, the ground here is already firm and pleasant underfoot. The land is rolling, and the river is a rush of gin-clear water, sharp, with dramatic limestone outcroppings from which the little dippers, white bibbed, bob and dive. But for all this surrounding beauty, the moon has gone into the dark, and I am trying not to let it take my mood with it.

I am moderating even more my diet of current affairs, to the extent of actually deleting the Guardian App. I have cancelled my subscription, and am instead reading the Reuters dispatches. These are crisp, and to the point, not spun to pander either to the left or the right. That said, it’s hard to ignore the fact we have had our annual hoo-hah over the government budget. The red box has been photographed outside Number 11. Its contents have yielded nought but record levels of taxation, yet public services are the worst they have ever been. Neither political party offers a solution.

I am moving away from partisanship. This is partly since no party now represents my aspirations, or my outlook. Also, in this election year, I do not want the Rivendale Review to become a place of rant, but having said that, it seems uncontroversial to say the governing party is on its uppers. Dare I even venture so far as to add it is out of ideas, and out of touch? Will you further allow that its intellect is either spent or ejected, its big beasts long gone. Meanwhile, the siren voices of the trickster right dictate a shift into pandering to populist wedgery, and a drift into incoherent blather.

Then there is this ever firming consensus the opposition party, under the leadership of Sir Kier Starmer, will take over some time this year. The governing party seems resigned to this, while the exiled and compassionate left, far from celebrating, predict a parliament of disappointment, of continuing “fiscal restraint”, of the ever euphemistic “difficult decisions”, and still falling living standards. They predict this will let in a more dangerous populist figure of the trickster right, towards the end of the decade.

All of this is ugly and unseemly, so unlike the Rawthey today, which is sweetly musical, and beautiful. Such a wonderful landscape as this deserves better from we who walk upon it.

Speaking of musical, I have taken up the guitar again, after a lull of decades. And I have written a short story about it called Andantino, which I have submitted to Spillwords Press. Sorry, WordPress, but Spillwords can get me around a hundred clicks, as opposed to twenty, on here. If Spillwords take it, I’ll post it to the blog in the fullness of time, or post a link, or something. But on a day like this, none of that matters much.

Nor does it matter I’m experimenting putting the earlier novels up on Google Play Books. This is an exercise for our endless rainy days, but one that has thus far yielded nought, at least so far as downloads go. On the upside, my re-reads have yielded further typos that have eluded me for decades. The project has hit the buffers with a bang, though, with the Lavender and the Rose.

I have got as far as a fresh cover art, which is the easy bit, but I am resisting delving into the text. I know there’s a lot of sex in it, which I’m sure I felt was necessary at the time, but will no doubt turn me cold now. There is also the birthing of a metaphysical divergence from mainstream thinking, and the groping towards new directions. It’s all stuff that was important at the time of writing, but I was younger then, and both I and the world have moved on. I suppose I fear appearing naive, yet ignoring the chance to review it seems like dishonouring a younger self.

Anyway,… we walk on.

I would happily ignore the fact the world is falling, take refuge in the pension, and the freedom of days like this in the hills, take refuge in my stories. But I have sons of fighting age, and we have already had that broadside of conscription, mooted by the armchair generals, also the flag sha&&ing presses, just one more scatter gun across this bewildering morass that is our informational landscape. I find myself praying I do not join the anxieties of my grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, as they gave their own boys up to that infernal tide of war.

We take leave of the company of rivers at the stupendous Lune Viaduct, near Low Branthwaite. Then we trace the footpath network back to Sedbergh, across bright meadows. There is apple and cherry blossom, and the hawthorns are budding. It won’t be long now before we can cast a layer or two, and get back onto the high, peaty ways without fear of morass. It’s late afternoon when we come back down into town. The teashops and the bookshops are closing, so it’s a quick brew in The Black Bull to warm our bones. There is a gently prosperous air about this place, and I am tempted to take refuge in it. There are even a few tourists, trailing suit-cases, which puts me in a mind to book some travel.

About eight and a half miles round, eight hundred feet of miscellaneous up and down.

Thanks for listening.

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Into four dimensional space

Posted in countryside, existential, health, journal, lancashire, moorland, outdoors, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, writing, tagged enchantment, explore, lancashire, rivington, UK on March 4, 2024| 23 Comments »

A clear, blustery day brings us to our regular haunt, Rivington, for a circuit of the terraced gardens. We take in the Pike while we’re here, then settle back down in the warm fug of the barn for a late lunch. It’s busy, and we’re lucky to get a table. The girls are rushed off their feet. Sometimes it feels like the whole world has been retired forever, and I’m only now catching up with it. I’m sure I’ve said this before.

At the table opposite, a couple are chatting over coffee. Their little dog sits quiet under the table, bothering no one. I have my mug of tea, even though I ordered a pot, but I’m not going to make a fuss. Food might take a while. I’m a bit jiggered, actually, and happy to sit here catching up with myself. Some days we can take the Pike in our stride, other days the circuit leaves us feeling drained. I took it at too stiff a lick. We’ll say that’s the reason anyway.

I’ve read retirement comes in three stages, some say five, but we’re not about to write a PhD on it, so we’ll go with three. Stage one, you feel like you’re on holiday. The stress of the job soaks out of you, you take pleasure lying in of a morning. The luxury of time stretches out in front of you. You can indulge your hobbies, crack on with all those DIY jobs you never got around to, do whatever you want. There are no more Monday mornings calling you to back to heel. The only downside is the loss of that Friday feeling, which I recall used to make me feel giddy with excitement.

This state of bliss can last a couple of years, say those who know. The downside, I’m told, is it’s followed by stage two, which is disenchantment. You’re bored, you’re feeling your life has no purpose, no direction. This stage lasts as long as you let it, and you either go back to work, or find some meaning outside of it. You try monetising your hobbies, or take up some kind of voluntary work. Stage three depends on how well you negotiate stage two. You either find your feet, or you grow old and grumpy and die before your time.

It no longer feels like I’m on holiday. I know this is it, now, but I seem to have skipped stage two. I have no clear direction, but I don’t fancy voluntary work. It’s hard enough for an introvert to deal with people, and get paid for it. Dealing with others for free would take the biscuit. I recognise that reflects badly on me, but ten percent of the population are introverts, and ten percent of introverts are like me. I’m at peace with that, now, no longer having to pretend I’m something I’m not, in order to fit in with that embarrassing teamy vibe they inflict on you in the workplace. So, that’s a stage three thing, being comfortable. What happened to my stage two? Disenchantment.

How many times have we been up the Pike now, this past half century? How many times wandering through the terraced gardens with a camera? Hundreds and hundreds, and still something new, or something different in the familiar. Still lining up the shots, hunting the perspectives, the light, the shadow, hunting down the sublime in the everyday. And we do find it, though I agree that could just be in the eye of the beholder. But wherever it is, it’s stopped me pining after a return to work or volunteering at the charity shop. It has kept me enchanted, which puts me back in stage one. Not yet disenchanted.

Hmm.

The elderly couple are finishing up their coffees now, and my food arrives. Egg and bacon barm. Not especially healthy but nice, now and then. The little packet of brown sauce is resisting my attempts at tearing it open. Judging by appearances, others have already had several attempts at it. Swiss Army knife to the rescue. The girl is cleaning up the table in front of me, another couple already hovering to take possession of it. Then she gives a start, is looking at me, and is asking if this is my dog?

A small brown dog is looking up at me with big, sad eyes. The previous couple have wandered off without it. Not my dog, sorry. The girl is burdened with a tray of cups, saucers, cleaning stuff, and now a small brown dog, as she goes in search of someone who looks like they’ve lost it. Just your normal Monday afternoon at Rivington Barn.

We attack the egg and bacon barm too soon, and the egg’s still runny so we lose half of it to the plate, and begin nibbling on the rest. We try to imagine the elderly couple, wondering how far they’ve managed to get. Where’s the dog? I thought you had it? No, I thought you had it. I imagine it’s easily done, less so with a big barky thing. But in that brief moment, the little brown dog and I shared a look of recognition. Both introverts, both passing through the world unseen. We are easily overlooked in this mad scramble for loot, and no more complaint between us than a wry old smile.

So then it’s home, and a leisurely look at what we’ve managed to capture with the camera – get it up on the big screen, run it through the software. We delete most of what we took. Out of focus, camera shake, or just plain old uninteresting. Only three make the cut, and manage to convey something other than I think was physically there.

Perhaps that’s it, then. Enchantment is something we have to be actively looking for, or we lose touch with it. On the one hand, it sounds like going to sleep, doesn’t it? To become enchanted. But maybe it’s the other way round. Without that enchantment to keep us awake, we fall asleep to the beauty that’s all around us. Then all we see are the surfaces that imprison us in our three-dimensional world. All we can think is if we serve no purpose, that if we’re making no money, for ourselves or others, there is no point to us. But through a process of enchantment, we move into four dimensional space, which is where we belong, and where we truly find ourselves.

Thanks for listening

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The last Friday of February, Glasson ’24

Posted in countryside, journal, lancashire, outdoors, photography, walking, tagged cockerham, exploring, Glasson, hiking, nature, photography, travel, walking on February 24, 2024| 20 Comments »

Late February teases with hints of spring. Wayside daffodils dance. But the rain was hammering against the window last night, so we’re not fooled. Winter isn’t done yet. Not many hours ago, I was snug in bed, first press of light at the curtains, reluctant to leave the warmth of the duvet. Now I’m sipping coffee from a flask on the bench at Bank End farm. It’s an hour’s drive, and then an hour’s walk away from home. I am looking out over the marsh at Cockerham, and there are birds. More to the point there are curlews, more than I can count, and the air is filled with their warbling, looping song.

There are other birds, of course. I see plover, and oystercatcher, and so many others I will have to look up when I get home. They huddle in groups of a few hundred, strictly demarcated by breed. They look to be waiting on the tide, which is rushing in just now, with a stiff breeze at its back. Sunlight sparkles from the jolly wave crests. More birds swoop, noisy squadrons of them, formations of geese honk, high overhead. The atmosphere is exhilarating.

But it’s the curlews I love most for their song. There is something ancient in it. There is something that connects us, I fancy, not only with the birds, but with past generations of countrymen for whom that song was also familiar, and is stirring to the spirit. Inland, they’re struggling with loss of habitat. I was lucky to see the occasional lone bird during my rambles over moors last year, where they nest. But here I sit, amazed. If they are struggling, they are making a defiant show of hanging on, as they come down to feed.

The run to Glasson was harder than in previous years. The M6 is pitted and crumbling in so many places now, as is the A6 through Barton and Garstang. There are deep, axle shattering holes which we try to weave around, none of which makes for a relaxing drive. Then the walk to Cockerham, from Glasson, down to the marsh, was harder too. There’s such a lot of water in the meadows, it was touch and go if I’d have to turn around, boots overtopped, and sucked deep in mud. I’ve never seen them like this before. There’ll be more of those to negotiate on our way back. But for now, this moment in the sun, with the curlews, is what I’ll take home with me from the day.

I’ve been coming here every year now, on the last Friday of February, for ten years – missing only the Covid years. I don’t know how it evolved into such a ritual. Given this drift to heavy rains, however, I would probably be better off finding some firmer ground in future. It’s enough of an adventure at this time of year to break the spell of winter, let it know we have not succumbed to the old man inside of us. So the little blue car turns out, catches on the last dregs of battery, and off we go, like we mean business. We are both of us dusty, hung with cobwebs, from the sleep of winter. And this trip to the coast, to Glasson, and the marshes, blows it all away.

Reluctant, we drain the coffee and press on around the coast, by the ruins of the abbey, and Plover Scar. There’s a lot of energy in the sky today, a steady drift of dramatic cloud, interspersed with long periods of clear blue. The tide is a worry. It’s due to peak as we’ll be coming up to the narrow creek of Jansen Pool. Spring tides will overtop the path here and make for a long backtrack. The meadows there by Glasson Marsh, beyond the farm, are also heavy going at the best of times. So today we try a diversion, turn down the lane by the old Lighthouse Cottage. Here the meadows are vast lakes, the ditches full, all glistening, a world of sky and light.

I don’t know this route. It’ll lead us through some farms, which I always hate. I anticipate aggressive dogs, and disappearing footpath markers. Hopes are raised by the council’s footpath sign, which turns me down what looks like a decent track. But, sure enough, I hit my first obstacle right away, this being a six berth caravan plonked squat on the path, and in which a dog is going berserk at the window. The route from here is uncertain. There is the tiniest chip of footpath marker clinging to a post. But there’s not enough of it left to tell me which way the path goes around the caravan, and the dog, though I trust is locked inside, does not encourage one to ponder long and look for clues. I pick the wrong way and end up in the farm-yard from where there is no escape.

I have never understood this quirk. If we are not wanted near properties, then the best way is to speed us through with clear markers. Instead, we are left bamboozled and poking around for a way out.

We try another way and, yes, this time we make it to a hidden, waymarked gate, which lets on to a wide open meadow. But the meadow is awash, a vast pool around the stile at least six inches deep in water and with a crust of something unwholesome and farm-yardy afloat on top of it. The heart sinks. We are six miles out now and another two to go. There is no going back. We find bits of water only four inches deep and splash our way onto firmer ground. But “firmer” is still glutinous, heavy going, and the boots have had enough. They give way and the water finally seeps in. Eventually, we pick up the Tarmac of a long, narrow lane which brings us round by Old Glasson, then back down to where the little blue car is waiting.

We celebrate on the dockside with a hot pie, and a brew for lunch. It’s good to be back in Glasson, but we’re drifting out of season now for this particular route. We need a few weeks of dry at least before we dare venture this way again.

About seven and a half miles round, dead flat and tough going over boggy fields.

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Out and about – Great Hill, and Orwell’s boots

Posted in Anglezarke, countryside, current affairs, existential, journal, lancashire, Metaphysical, moorland, outdoors, philosophical, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged brinscall, great hill, hiking, travel, walking, while coppice on February 19, 2024| 12 Comments »

Such a lot of rain! The moors glisten. The tracks are pooled and glutinous. The trodden ways fan out from their mapped course, which has become an epicentre of bog. It’s as if the moor senses the coming of the spring drought and is drinking up as much as it can, while the going is good. But the walker measures good going in other ways, and it’s for this reason, the little blue car sneaks early into Brinscall’s Lodge Bank Terrace. From here, it’s a short walk to the Wheelton plantation, where the route up to Well Lane is firm.

February has stripped the trees to a skeletal blackness. There are just the copper beech saplings, rising like firecrackers to light the gloom. Some trees have fallen to winter gales and lie across the path. The mossy outlines of the vanished farms, appear as the remnants of a lost civilisation. There are few signs of spring here, but then they say it’s always winter in Brinscall.

Well Lane becomes Edge Gate Lane, the steep little road now a river, as the moor shakes down last night’s downpour, and Hatch Brook overtops itself in an excitement of foaming brown water. The lane brings us to the gate at the edge of the moor, to the mossy ruins of Whittles farm, and its fine old sentinel tree.

Then we’re onto the moor, the long track pooled in places, but the going still easy, as far as Drinkwaters. Thereafter, delicate footwork brings us along the squishy path to the summit of Great Hill. Meanwhile, all around is the sound of water making its way down to Dean Brook, by whatever means it can improvise, a busy rushing and gurgling.

Altogether, then, it’s a very dreich sort of day. But there are plenty of souls about, this also being a Sunday, and all of us bound for the cross shelter atop the hill. At 1252 feet, Great Hill is an impressive viewpoint, providing a decent reward for the effort. But today we have to imagine the scene from memory, as all is lost to a swirling clag.

At the cross shelter, we try to pick the quadrant that provides most protection from the wind, but find the best spot to be already occupied by a plump bag of dog doings. We’re trying to be consciously more magnanimous these days – a kind of inverse reaction in defiance of the hate that pours out of our devices. I thought we’d been doing well, all things considered, but the pain-body knows our triggers and these little bags of doings are one. It is then only a short chain of associations before we’re once more benighted by the Hadean shades that perpetually engulf current affairs.

Sigh.

Here’s a picture of the top on a better day:

We choose another quadrant, in the teeth of the weather, so to speak, and break out the flask. We have the luxury of ground coffee today, and a half spoonful of honey. We have also hauled up a china mug in the backpack just for fancy. It may be the surroundings, the scent of the moor, the bite of the wind, but that coffee has never tasted so good.

Of the other routes up the hill, I’m thinking only the paved way across Spitlers Edge will be firm today. White Coppice and Piccadilly are the other starting points, but they’ll be messy. We definitely made the right choice, least ruinous to our trousers. Souls appear out of the mist, nod their acquaintance. The world below turns, wobbling on its axis, teetering, and tottering, always giving us the impression it is about to fall. I am reminded again of Rabbi Steinsaltz, who tells us: it is the worst of all possible worlds, yet where there is still hope.

I suppose what he means is a world any worse would extinguish hope altogether, then our souls would be crushed under the uncompromising bleakness of it. There would be nothing to learn from it, and therefore no point our hanging around. And if it were more peaceful our souls would most likely dissipate in an ocean of untroubled joy, which sounds wonderful, but again not much of a learning experience. I wonder, though, if there is more simply something in us, a reptilian instinct that grants us the mindless will to carry on, no matter how bad it gets. How bad can it get? I mean, what kind of future are we heading towards, given our current trajectory? We recall Orwell’s most sobering line from 1984: ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.’

Hmm.

As we ruminate, the clouds begin to tear, and pale patches of light drift by, as if considering sharing with us the fruits of their illumination, but they change their minds and envelop us once more in mist. More souls come by, escapees from the madness, flushed of face, happy to have reached sanctuary – excepting that quadrant occupied by the metaphor of ignorance, and the uniquely human penchant for fouling our own nests.

Drinkwaters, on the way back from Great Hill

We return the way we came. On a drier day, it makes for a more varied and satisfying round to descend by way of Coppice Stile, then back to Brinscall along the valley of the Goit. But today the route looks a mess, and walkers ascending that way are having a hard time of it. We stick to the higher ground and the track around Brown Hill, back to the gate on the moor’s edge. As we walk, the sky widens, peels open, streaked of a sudden with blue, and the distance clears at last. The world returns, focuses sharp, from the blur of mist and imagination, everything once more in its place.

I like to think Steinsaltz is right about the world. There is a bleak kind of comfort in it, provided it is not your face being stamped on by Orwell’s boot. And it’s always easier to catch glimpses of the hope he’s talking about from the top of a hill, even one locked in mist. As for down there, in the thick of the world right now, all we hear about are those boots, stomp, stomp, stomping.

So you’ll forgive me for anticipating the warmer weather and the longer days, when we can get the top down on the little blue car again, and imagine a more peaceful world, one where there is no need for hope, and let ourselves dissipate, into the sheer sweet fancy of it.

Just over five miles, eight hundred feet or so of ascent.

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Where woman never smiled or wept?

Posted in Anglezarke, countryside, existential, health, journal, lancashire, moorland, motoring, on my bookshelf, philosophical, photography, political, walking, West Pennine Moors, writing, tagged dentist, fantasy, fiction, life, nature on February 8, 2024| 12 Comments »

We’re on the Parson’s Bullough road, up by the Anglezarke reservoir again. It looks like being the best day of the week, weather wise, but we’ve managed only a short trip out, on account of a dental appointment this morning, and then an unscheduled diversion into town. It’s a mild spell, wedged between wild winds and forecasts of more winds and snow. But for now, there’s this soft sunlight reflected off the reservoir, and tobacco coloured clouds, trees etched in monochrome, mossy walls, scent of earth and a blessed stillness.

We take the obligatory photograph, from the corner of Alance Bridge, out towards the promontory where the trees spill gracefully down to the water’s edge. I take this one whenever I’m passing, always something different depending on season and light. I’m not feeling it today though, my head is elsewhere, something hanging over from that trip to the dentist.

Even at my age, the thought of a trip to the dentist can put my pipe out. Cleaning is not my favourite experience. Still, I count myself lucky the practice I’m with is keeping on its NHS patients. Many of them are dropping you from their lists on the slightest pretext, the number of NHS patients they’ll serve being strictly rationed, and there aren’t enough dentists to go round. The result is the occasional panic, such as what happened in Bristol recently.

But the abiding memory of this morning was a bewildered chap at the reception desk. He’d been landed with an eye watering bill for treatment he wasn’t expecting, and hadn’t the funds to pay. He wasn’t protesting, or refusing to pay, he was just,… I don’t know,… bewildered by it. It left a bad feeling, one that refuses to be shaken off. I wonder what he’s doing, how he’s feeling now. We do our best to pretend things are normal, then something happens, and you remember they’re not.

After the dentist, I noticed my spectacles were coming apart, which meant a diversion to Spec Savers (other opticians are available). They’ll fix your specs for nothing, if you bought them from there, which I did. I note they’ve branched out into hearing aids too, which I’m sure I’ll be needing eventually. While I was in town, I called into the charity shop to browse the books, picking up a title by Daphne du Maurier called “I’ll never be young again”, which raised a smile. The universe is not without a sense of humour!

So, finally, spectacles repaired, teeth cleaned, and another novel added to the “to be read” list, we finally make it up the Parson’s Bullough road, to the Yarrow Reservoir. The approach is deteriorating badly now for lack of maintenance. It’s also one of the those narrow twisty lanes the kids drive like loons, late at night. Thus, the winter usually sees the centuries old drystone walls demolished on the bends. There are long stretches of freshly demolished walls this afternoon, leaving the waters of the Yarrow exposed.

We grab our photograph from the bridge, and set off up Hodge Brow. Then, as if on cue, a convoy of blacked out, beat up beamers comes rushing by, thump whack music cranked up, trailing a scent of burning oil and weed. This puts me in mind of a post Apocalyptic novel by Nevil Shute, called On the Beach. There’s been a nuclear war that’s turned the northern-hemisphere to ash, and a radio-active cloud is slowly working its way south, towards Australia. The reaction of Australians, as their days grow numbered, is a mixture of eerie normality, and devil may care recklessness.

I feel echoes of that here as crisis after crisis looms, and we lose all expectation things will improve. Like that radio active cloud, there is no solution. Still, there are no food riots, no civic unrest. People just want to “be”, the best way they can, whether their days are measured long or short, and much of that involves clinging to whatever is your personal version of “normality”. But you don’t have to look far to either side of that in order to see there’s a growing brittleness around the edges. What to do then? Keep looking straight ahead, or dwell in the margins?

We leave the road by the stile at the top of Hodge Brow, and make our way across meadows. It’s heavy going underfoot with the winter wet, though good to be out, that soft sunlight reflecting off the Yarrow, the feel of something spring-like stirring in the earth. I’m reminded of a fragment of a poem by John Clare:

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept

Although plenty have trodden here, and most of what I see, deliciously green though it is, is shaped by man, there is at least the illusion of a return to the innocence of the natural world that Clare dreamed of. There is beauty in the gaunt nobility of the trees as they reach, bare limbed into the sky, and something untouchably pure in the muted sunlight. The trees will soon be setting bud, and then the balmy nights will return. Maybe by late May I shall have cast my clout, and be sat out in the garden ’till gone ten pm.

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

We’re a strange species. Every crisis known to man is of our own making, but we can also throw up the occasional genius like Clare, lone souls of piercing insight, benighted amid crises of their own. But though, as individuals, we might think we have the solution to all our ills if only people had the sense to listen, they tend to be diametrically opposed to the solutions preferred by at least half our fellows, so things tend to stay the same as they are. It’s a state of affairs that has persisted since the earliest of our civilisations, at least if the chroniclers of the times are anything to go by. So, as a species, we stagnate into a permanent fractious bickering. It seems, then, only our technologies are fated to advanced apace, suggesting the future looks to be blind, toothless and entirely robotic.

I don’t know if I agree with Clare on this one. Certainly it would be an ideal world where women never wept, but not one I’d like to live in where they never smiled either. And it begs the question: is she not smiling because Utopia requires the absence of all emotion, or is it because she can’t afford a dentist and is ashamed of that gap in her teeth? A grim scenario either way. I think we’ll pick up a nice bottle of wine on the way home, hide our head in a book, look neither left nor right, just plod on.

A couple of miles round, three hundred feet of ascent.

Thanks for listening.

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Straight lines

Posted in blogging, countryside, journal, lancashire, outdoors, photography, walking, writing, tagged appley-bridge, canal, parbold, photography, travel, walking, west lancashire on January 27, 2024| 9 Comments »

A short run out today, to Appley Bridge, and the little car park down by the canal. A week of storms has finally blown itself out and the full moon has ushered in a period of calmer, brighter weather. The little blue car hasn’t been out for weeks, and she only just started, on the last dregs of the battery this morning. But she’s perky enough now, and enjoyed the familiar run along the twisty little lanes through Wrightington.

As we descend the long hill from Dangerous Corner, into the village, we pass Skull House Lane, and the old stories come back to me. There’s a coincidence here, too, since we were only talking about the Arthurian connection to the region in our last piece. As the name suggests, there is a house with a skull in it, and various stories attached. Some tell of the civil war, a time when priests were hunted down and killed, others go further back to the battles of King Arthur, which we Lancastrians insist were fought along the banks of the Douglas. As with most things of this sort, the truth is impossible to get at, meanwhile the skull becomes its own story. It’s called Charlie, by the way – even though modern analysis suggests it’s the skull of a woman.

I’ve not used this carpark before, and I’m partly checking it out before meeting a friend here for another adventure, in a few weeks time. It’s tucked away a bit, past the little cottages that make up the Canal Row, but it’s a decent spot for a rendezvous. The plan today is to walk the canal as far as Parbold, then return along Wood Lane, to the Fairy Glen. I used to live in Parbold, and would walk this route from the other end, so it’ll be interesting to see how much of it I remember, how much of it has changed.

The first thing that strikes me is that the towpath seems freshly laid with grit, and is in superb condition. The immediate environs aren’t the best, however, with the towering chemical tanks of the bituminous felt works peering ominously over the treetops, but we soon leave those behind. We talked about the soul of a landscape in the last piece, and I’m thinking about that again today, about what it is that makes a landscape special.

Appley Bridge has a long history of industry, some of it now derelict, and overgrown, some of it sparkling new. Its various encroaches into the countryside do rob the locale of a sense of escape into another dimension. But is the soul of a landscape purely about the absence of a human presence? I don’t think so. An unobtrusive cottage nestled, sympathetically, on a hillside can add something to a scene, even rescue it from desolation. But what is “unobtrusive”? What is “sympathetic”? And are these merely subjective notions?

This is one of the most attractive stretches of the Leeds Liverpool canal. But it’s at its best where the straight lines disappear, say where the waterway takes a bend or the lines sweep up over the beautifully constructed bridges. I dare-say we wouldn’t build bridges like that today. We’d just lay down some reinforced concrete in a single span, all straight lines and utility. But then I suppose the old navigators would have done the same, if they’d had access to the same technology.

There are several barges moored up, some of them little more than rusting hulks, sagging towards the stern as the murky brown water gets in. In the summer months, a houseboat might seem an attractive proposition, but seeing them in winter knocks the romance out of them for me.

Bridge number 40, Leeds and Liverpool Canal, Parbold

We walk as far as bridge number 39, at which point we leave the canal and head up the little Chapel Lane to Wood Lane. This much should be familiar to me, but it’s over thirty years since I walked it, and don’t remember it at all. At the junction with Wood Lane, we turn right and head back towards Appley Bridge. The lane is metalled some of the way, giving access to farms and remote residences.

Like the canal section, Wood Lane is very straight and, same as by the canal, we’ve had shouty signs wagging their judgmental fingers at us. Bright and rectangular. Straight lines and sharp corners. Thus far we’ve had: KEEP OUT/PRIVATE/CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG/DO NOT TAKE WOOD FROM THIS WOODLAND/ NO FOOTPATH/ NO RIGHT OF WAY.

The lane ends at the attractive dwelling of Gillibrand House, and continues as a green way. At first glimpse, it appears to have been claimed by a private, gated drive. Without our OS maps to confirm a right of way, this might prove discouraging of further exploration, and I admit to a moment of doubt here, but then the kissing gate reveals itself and on we go.

Logging and forestry is much in evidence from here on, with paths churned to bog by heavy vehicles. More notices shout at us, telling us to keep out, and not to climb on the log-piles. Then just as we are tiring of ever finding some soul, the way opens into meadows that have the looks of posh landscaping about them.

Here there’s a lone thorn tree worth a shot, but the upright post next to it speaks again of straight lines, and I feel the scene would be better without it. Would it be deceitful to clone it out, do you think? Then, up on the skyline, we have the back of Parbold Hall. In the 1790’s, this was home to Thomas Eccleston, the man who drained Martin Mere. More recently it was the home of Sir Peter Moores, son of the founder of Littlewoods Football Pools. It was a wreck when he took it on in the late 1950’s, and it owes much of its present glory to his care and investment. It went on sale in 2012 for around 9.5 million, and is currently home to local tycoon Martin Ainscough, former High Sheriff of Lancashire. It’s worth noting that the estates surrounding such big houses as these tend to have a rounded, curving quality about them. They are like nature, but more manicured.

So anyway, now we’re down to the Fairy Glen, a scrap of ancient woodland that follows the course of Sprodley Brook. It suffers somewhat from its own attractiveness, its proximity to suburbia, and a name that brings more than the usual problems for a natural habitat. There are reports of its informal Disneyfication with little fairy doors and glitter (as well as litter) being strewn about, all of which further add to the stresses of encroaching balsam, knot weed and giant hog weed the volunteer wardens have to deal with.

I used to know a song about straight lines. How did it go again:

Finally, the footpath picks up the backs of houses, and leads us down to the busy main road, opposite Skull House Lane. This returns us to the canal and the little blue car. I’m not sure if we solved anything with our ruminations on straight lines, but it was good to catch up with the area again. About four and a quarter miles round, six hundred or so feet of up and down, and mostly easy going.

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The seat of desolation

Posted in countryside, health, journal, lancashire, photography, walking, writing, tagged adventure, nature, travel, walking, writing on January 24, 2024| 13 Comments »

To the hill walker, the vast agricultural plains of Western Lancashire have, at first sight, an unremitting bleakness about them. Seest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wilde, The seat of desolation,… as Milton so eloquently put it. But my journal reminds me how, three years ago, in the month of January alone, I had walked fifty miles of their unimaginative, and geometrically regular ways. We were nudging a hundred thousand dead by then, losing thousands to COVID every day, and restrictions on movement were very tight. We were allowed outdoors only locally, for exercise. Thus, the plain, being where I’ve lived in exile for thirty-five years, was all I had, so what little of it there was, I was having it to the hilt.

In exploring its options over the years, I’ve discovered interest in isolated trees, in the occasional, seasonal lakes that form after heavy rains, and in the broad sky. But during COVID, it was the stump of a fallen tree with which I established a particular kinship, for no more reason than it invited a man to sit down and pass the time of day. It lay a few yards off the path, in the corner of a vast meadow, and was a good place to settle with a flask of tea. With miles of flat all around, it afforded a sense of escape from the daily doom-scroll.

We had no idea then which way the world was going to go. I had yet to be called for vaccination, and I feared for the adequacy of our desperately under-funded health services, which always seemed only a matter of days from collapse. I imagined those who were cooped up in cities must be going nuts, but the dreary plain and my new-found friend, this seat of desolation, granted some perspective, and even enabled one to see the upsides. After all, the hoarders of toilet rolls had been sated, the supermarkets had worked out how to keep us fed, we had established friendly relations with the local farm-shops, we were still permitted to buy wine, and we were saving a fortune on petrol!

But when things began to open up again, my old friend was forgotten. There were other places whose acquaintance I was anxious to renew, and it’s only recently I returned with a flask of tea for old time’s sake. But I discovered we were now separated by an electric fence. It was not, after all, a public stump. I had been trespassing. Our friendship had been illicit, and was now forbidden.

While I have never been particularly fond of this largely ruined landscape, even here, the openness, and the few corners of wild it offers, worked more magic throughout those pandemic years than might ever be contained in an entire blister-pack of Prozac. Open spaces and unfettered access to them are important to us, if we realise it or not. And we realise it most when they are suddenly denied us, by wire, by fence, by the threat of development, and when the meagre allotment of permitted ways become channelled along uninteresting ginnels, with vast tracts of private property on either side.

The nature of our relationship with a landscape, and our denial of access to it by the perversion of private ownership, has always been a personal bugbear. It started early, as a kid, when I was ejected from a meadow at the toe end of a farmer’s boot. I was doing no harm, but he was bigger than me, and had the terrifying demeanour of a raging bull. Others would have accepted their guilt at the trespass, and been sheepish about it, but I’ve always held that it was him who was on the wrong side of what was morally correct, that he only picked on me because he was bigger, and I was just this kid with no power, and no voice which, metaphorically speaking, is what enables all private ownership of what should be a collective landscape.

I trust the farmer, the landed mi’lord, or whatever, would at least spare me their boot nowadays. Instead, they resort to electric wires, they take down the footpath signs to sow confusion, and they threaten us with legal challenges we have not the pockets to outwit in the courts. The utilitarian use of land does not invite casual observation, and we who claim a Romantic or a mystical connection with nature, are often horrified by what we see being done to it under the stewardship of private money, but also by what we feel when we walk the land – or rather by the fact we feel nothing, because the soul of it has already been routed.

There were stories told, long ago, of how the Romano British warrior we know as Arthur, fought four of his twelve legendary battles against the Saxons, along the banks of the River Douglas, not far from here. There are legends too of Lancelot and Excalibur, of giants and mermaids and Merlin, and of the Faerie. But they’re gone now, flushed out to sea, pumped out when they pulled the plug on the old Martin Mere, drained the land and straightened the Dougie in the seventeenth century, all in the name of improvement. But improvement is a subjective term, and more often than not we end up paying a heavy price for it.

All of which is to say, if you’re blessed with a local footpath network, do get out there and walk it, because walking it puts the soul back in. And when the footpath signs disappear, report them, so others might come too and follow in your footsteps. There’s not much I can do about that electric wire for now, but I give thanks anyway to my old friend, and raise a cup of tea in its honour. They tend to rotate land use here, so I guess the wire will be gone next year, and then I’ll be able to resume my ramblings,… from the seat of desolation.

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