There is a stripe of mysticism in me. No matter how much I argue with it, fascination with the esoteric, with things unexplained, remains. My explorations of such subjects are cautious and cynical, refusing to believe in or subscribe to anything in particular. Yet still, there is something and I remain unsure as to what exactly […]
Northumberland rolls and undulates as you speak the word, mirroring the landscape it names. To drive the arrow-straight Roman roads up here, the wildest, emptiest and remotest county of England, is to feel like you are sailing above some terrestrial ocean of expanse. Ochre and umber fields roll away either side, rising and falling, until […]
An April weekend, longing for adventure and difference I packed up my wee Renault Clio and drove north. I had figured out that with careful rearrangement of seats I could, if I lay at a sharp angle, sleep just about horizontally and comfortably in this tiny space, thus somewhat recapturing the freedom of having my […]
I have a list, created some time back, long before I thought of coming to Durham, entitled ‘Places I would like to see one day’. Escomb Church is the first place I put on it. Thus it was the first eager destination in my explorations of Co. Durham. It is Saxon you see and an […]
My heart was set on Cross Fell, ‘Fiends Fell’ they call it. The highest point in the Pennines. Reputed to be the home of demons and evil, a reputation probably gained from the shrieking Helm Wind that blows across its slopes. It has been calling me for a while and is first on my list […]
A powerful place. The North Pennine AONB is a landscape of scarred, runneled, barren moorland. The hills are long, wide and flat, not particularly tall but they emanate a sense of empty, eerie grandness. The valleys – ‘dales’ as dey called up norf – are populated, by very pleasant villages actually, but in between them […]
The Moor is an occult place in all senses of the word. Mostly bypassed, hidden in plain sight, it dominates the landscape yet it is diminutive in the scale of most uplands. It is a world given to juxtaposition. Alien and natural, wild yet tamed, secretive yet exposed, wandering up here is to be amongst […]
If you’re going to write about home then perhaps the best time to do this is after a prolonged absence. This will likely be the last year I spend any real time here. The squat little whitewashed 1920’s bungalow perched on the hill that I grew up in is being sold and my parents are […]
I’m home. A year and half has passed. Going from winter to summer in 24 hours landed me in the humid air of Heathrow. Body clock shot, seasonally confused. I had forgotten the feel of England in summer and I have spent the subsequent week revelling in it. Lush and verdant. Despite the depressive homogeneity […]
The South Island is diffferent. Apparent from the moment the large, comfortable Interislander ferry, escaping the rolling oceanic swells of the Cook Straits, glided into Marlborough Sounds at dusk. A world away from the busy industry of the Wellington ports and the relative bustle of the North. It is immediately quieter, calmer but wilder and […]
