In Peterborough and Stamford

9 Mar

Our history lives on in our language. We have Saxon words for livestock, French ones for meat – cow-bœuf .. sheep-mouton .. pig-porc – because the conquered Saxons merely tended what their Norman overlords got to eat. Here in Peterborough Cathedral, … Read More »

British wildlife in May

24 May

I’m back from eight days rubber tramping Britain’s south coast, taking in the Somerset Levels, New Forest, South Downs, Dungeness and Thanet … gnocchi and pesto for supper at Pulborough Brooks Nature Reserve, West Sussex … having spent the beginning … Read More »

A rubber tramp in Cambridge

10 Feb

In the bleak mid-winter, frosty wind made moan/Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone – Christina Rossetti Friday, 07:30. Snug in down bag under heavy duvet, I peel back a corner of the nearest blind to take in the … Read More »

A rubber tramp in Hartlepool

5 Feb

Hartlepool, north of the Tees, is my kind of town. Time ravaged and forlorn, the striking and the truly banal rub shoulders as both stagger under the weight of histories ancient and modern. It’s a place of friendly folk whose … Read More »