Wildlife secrets are waiting to be revealed in this meadow gateway. It was built many years ago for the convenience of the farmer, but was it?
REad moreWildlife Secrets of the Meadow Gateway
Category: The English Countryside
Celebrating the British Landscape
In this brief review of Anna Pavord’s book about celebrating the British landscape we look through the eyes of painters, ploughmen and rural writers at how we have viewed our countryside over the centuries and the importance of our own Local Place.
Continue reading “Celebrating the British Landscape”‘Rural Rides’ with William Cobbett.
When William Cobbett made his historic ‘Rural Rides’ in the early 19th century around southern England it was the time of the infamous Corn Laws. The age of the Enclosures and the Tolpuddle martyrs was still a fresh memory. Farming life was hard for rural folk then.
Continue reading “‘Rural Rides’ with William Cobbett.”The Call of the Running Tide
A small boat floats lost on an immensity of ocean while the moon’s mass looming large is tugging at the sea. This is the dance of the sea with her partners the earth, the moon and the sun giving us the tides. Powerful forces are at work here.
Continue reading “The Call of the Running Tide”Re-visiting the Wye with Wordsworth
With Wordsworth we re-visit the beautiful Wye valley near Tintern Abbey to re-discover the source of one of his most famous pieces of poetry.
Continue reading “Re-visiting the Wye with Wordsworth”The New Forest
This is an ancient place, a remnant of old England, where ponies stop the traffic and donkeys look into shop windows, while pigs rummage in the woods in the acorn season. Things are different here! Past traditions still flourish, ‘commoners’ graze their animals overseen by a court of ‘verderers’ assisted by ‘agisters’! After 900 years, though still owned by the Crown, it’s now an open National Park.
Continue reading “The New Forest”A Night with Nightingales
On a still, clear May evening in a wood in East Sussex the fire crackles as a group of people, including my daughter and son-in-law, chat together. Why have they come to this secret location at this time of night? Even more strange is that some of them have brought some musical instruments with them? What’s going on?
Continue reading “A Night with Nightingales”