Lake DistrictA friend told me his first impression of visiting Cockley Beck Farm recently was one of sheer desolation as he approached its lonely crossroads. “It was the kind of scene,” he said, “you might see on a television programme about penguins. Spindrift hissing across the ice. Bleak!”Spare a thought, then, for the family who [...]
BedfordshireA stray from summer has come into our living room again. She rose from the lampshade when the light switched on and as she flew a halo around my head, gave an off-key whine that spoke of sweltering nights in June. She touched down on the wall and began dashing her proboscis from side to [...]
Shetland IslesIt’s another cold day and in the wind are occasional icy drops of rain. I’d planned a long-overdue walk around the headland, but decided instead on a car tour of the local lochs, which are usually bustling with life at this time of the year. But not today. There doesn’t seem to be anything [...]
Nairn harbourThere was more than enough to satisfy my mind and my eyes as I looked out from the harbour wall. The sea was calm with an almost oily appearance and it seemed to reflect, in some unknown way, the snow-capped distant hills. There was some movement as the making tide played with white foam–topped [...]
Wenlock EdgeThe whiteness of the snow changed everything: it covered the ground, dressed trees and hills, brought a silent music and made the familiar strange. When the thaw came it was as if the doors of a great cabinet had swung open and we could see the magician’s glamorous assistant. She had stepped into the [...]
DorsetWe live on the edge of Blackmore Vale, which was once a dangerous and marshy forest. Some of the roads still flood, but in modern times the vale has been good dairy country, modest in scale, with little streams, small fields, and narrow lanes between ancient hedgerows. When you cross from Somerset into Dorset, going [...]
Claxton, NorfolkThe tiny gestures of spring are building incrementally in our parish. The first was the wheezing two-note song of great tit, like a seesaw pivoting on its unoiled fulcrum. Then dunnock added a thin, pleasing tinkle to the grey dawn, and this week I heard the unmistakable drumming of a great spotted woodpecker. How [...]
AberystwythThe thaw when it came to our village, Comins Coch, was swift. The overnight rain and the warm south-westerly wind soon drove the fields clear of snow, leaving only the hardened toboggan runs and the thick ice of the sunken lane as evidence of the big freeze. Looking east, towards the higher ground of Trefeurig, [...]
NorthumberlandI walk on our sandy beaches and on the dunes on our north-east coast frequently, even in winter, and have occasionally seen a seal bobbing up and down in the sea. Recently, on the shoreline at Whitley Bay a young grey seal became stranded high on the beach and had to be lifted back to [...]
County DurhamFor a week, as the snow piled higher, we were forced to confine our expeditions to our home patch. Each day we slipped and slid along more or less the same route, around silent, traffic-free lanes. On day one, while the snow was still only ankle-deep, we had a close encounter with a weasel, [...]