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Out and about – the Fragility of Certainty

Posted in Anglezarke, countryside, lancashire, moorland, out and about, outdoors, the writing life, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged dreams, hiking, lancashire, meditation, nature, observation, outdoors, rivington, travel, walking, West Pennine Moors, writing on March 19, 2026| 2 Comments »

The first warm spring day, I think. We choose Rivington and find it full. It’s always full. Still, I am puzzled by it, also short of a plan B. But then, by some small divine intervention, we find what must be the last parking spot and slip the little blue car into place. We are, in fact, where we would least expect to find welcome – by the Hall Barn, a venue for functions and weddings.

To prove the point, there are four coaches on the main car park, delivering old folks to some sort of shindig involving food and music. But there are many others milling about who look to be of working, even college age. Have I miscalculated the date of Easter? Is the world on holiday? No – once again I realise the world has always been like this. When I was nose to the grindstone all those years, I had simply not known the secret. I had to wait until retirement to find it out. But anyway, I am glad to be in the air, and the sunshine at last.

There are daffodils and cherry blossom this morning, mostly bare trees, still, but some of them budding, tempted out by this sudden warmth. We travelled over with the top down and, as we fasten it back up now, we contemplate the deep creases and tears in it, wondering how much longer we can put off a replacement. But we’ve been doing that for years, and it still keeps the water out. Old things that still work are worth more, in terms of character, than new things – at least that was always my mantra. But a new top will cost roughly what this old car is worth. At what point does one call a day on the Romantic? I’m not sure – just not yet.

And speaking of cars, I noticed on the drive over fuel prices have now begun to move: around five percent on petrol, but more significantly the reports are of twenty-five percent on gas, this after an apocalyptic escalation in the Middle East. On a not unrelated subject I have a poem nagging me to come through, about mad kings – about how courtiers wash them sane, and the commentariat approach it all as if it were business as usual. I may have a go, but add it to my private collection. I am not of the commentariat who feel obliged to make sense of senselessness. Rather I am increasingly of the opinion the incoherence itself, the senselessness is the story of our times.

The trail is busy, but there is no point grumbling. Had I been able to get out of bed a little earlier, I might have driven further out, somewhere quieter. Rivington has always been a honeypot. So we strike a steady pace and zigzag our way up through the terraced gardens, to the Pike. There must be a hundred people on top. The Pike bristles with them, like a porcupine. It does not tempt, so we swerve it and strike out along the muddy moorland way instead, towards Noon Hill. Here, the crowds fall away at once, and at last we have the day to ourselves.

I have had this dream about a ship – an old British coaster, like something out of a Masefield poem. I was approaching it as a potential passenger, not sure if I should board. But then a bosun called my name, as if they were waiting for me specifically, before they could depart. The suggestion is of a circumnavigation, always world-facing, or at least keeping the shore in view. But I am not a passenger – no more than any of us are in the journey of life. I am to be a chronicler of days. But the writing of such a journey must mark passage in a way I have yet to find a voice for.

A poem about the journey (like my last piece) – essentially an inner one – is never sufficient in itself, being just one more new-agey excursion into the mystical and the esoteric. It has to take account of one’s place in the world, as well as the world itself – deal with it, if not kindly, then at least with some degree of compassion and an attempt at understanding. So perhaps poems about mad kings are not the thing either.

We extend the walking pole to its limit and probe the ground ahead. The moor is wetter than I expected, but we make our way reasonably well, to the saucer grave that is the summit, where we settle for lunch. There is a beautiful clarity to the day, and far-reaching views of the West Pennines – a feeling we could walk forever: across Spitler’s and Redmond’s Edge, all the way to Great Hill, then circle back via White Coppice and the reservoirs.

Except the legs are less ambitious.

So we descend to the old coach road and make our way on firmer ground to Horden Stoops and the source of the Yarrow. From here we pick our way through the ever-widening quagmire around Hempshaws, calling briefly at the ruins to rest, and to see if the coin we secreted last year is still there. It is not particularly well hidden – the stone under which it lies being a fairly obvious one, at least to my eye. But it is still there. It’s a bit of whimsy, a touch of the Romantic again, an anchoring back to former times but, like all times, somewhat fragile in its certainty.

I notice, far out on the track to Lead Mine’s Clough, a figure standing stock still. A quick squint through the binoculars reveals a man with a camera on a tripod pointing in our direction. I am perhaps spoiling his shot. Did he see me looking under that stone? Have I given the game away? No – it does not look to be a long lens. He’s taking an age over that one shot, too. Either that or he’s waiting for me to clear off. I tend to shoot from the hip, but then half of my shots are blurred. I trust his will be pin sharp for all the trouble he’s taking, though it does not always follow. And anyway I have often stood where he is standing and saw nothing worth such trouble as he is taking.

We move on now, following the fledgling Yarrow to its junction with Green Withins, then come up to Morris’s. This should be the least boggy route, but the meadows near Wilcocks are occupied by horses, who have reduced the ground around the crossing points – the gates, the stiles – to deep mud. There are electric fences here too, and horses on the right of way. I trust horses less than cattle.

We pass without incident and press on via Dean Wood, to Rivington, picking up the crowds once more by the village green. Here we chance a brew in the tea-room, where an elderly gent slips into the queue ahead of us and proceeds to order a large meal for four while I stand quietly sweating, head to foot, from my walk. He even has the nerve to brush me aside while he admires the cakes and makes a leisurely choice. Another gent comes in behind and stands too close, while coughing. Peripheral awareness is not a strong point for many of my fellows – while for me, it is perhaps too acute.

Finally, I am seated out in the sunshine with tea and Kit-Kat, most of my fellows’ heads bent over their devices. I resist the urge to update myself. The forecourt prices on the drive home will tell us everything we need to know.

About seven miles round, a thousand feet of ascent.

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A Counter-cultural ramble around Rivington

Posted in countryside, lancashire, moorland, out and about, outdoors, philosophical, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged counterculture, festival, hiking, hippy, lancashire, nature, photography, resistance, rivington, travel, walking, winter on December 5, 2025| 5 Comments »

A cold but clear forecast tempts us outdoors but, arriving at Rivington, we find it overcast. Then, as we zig-zag up through the Terraced Gardens, we enter an eerie drifting murk, interspersed with cold showers. Hawthorn berries stand out, bright spots of red on bare trees, the berries themselves hanging with silver beads of dew. And birch saplings, the only boldness on days like this, copper leaves aflame against dark mossy backgrounds, light the way.

I suppose I must have shot the equivalent of a roll of Ilford HP5. And most of it wasted – expensive stuff, too. Except it was nothing of the sort, being purely digital, so nothing actually lost. There are photographers who still use film, of course – and monochrome at that. It has a counter-cultural feel to it – defiantly analogue in an era of digital. I’m sometimes tempted back there myself.

Not a lot of light today, so we click the dial up to 400 ASA, keep the aperture around F5.6. But do we really need any more pictures of the Terraced Gardens, the Pigeon Tower and Rivington Pike? Have we not done it all to death a million times over? I don’t know – there’s always something a bit different – weather, light, mood, then maybe a chance encounter sending your thoughts spinning off in fresh directions. And I just like being out with the camera.

Were it a clearer day, you’d see the Middlebrook retail park down in Horwich, from here. Further out, through binoculars, you might pick out the Trafford Centre, car parks all rammed. That’s the culture we’re living, I suppose. But there’s nothing to say you have to join in with it. The little blue car delivered me here, after all. Not there.

The summer houses, the bridges, the pergolas, all emerge from the mist like remnants of a lost citadel. There aren’t many people about but, as I’m making my way, I’m asked directions by a couple of old guys wanting to get to the Italian Lake. Their eyes are full of nostalgia. They speak about hippy festivals here in the ’70s, reminding me that, yes, Rivington had its own kind of Woodstock, towards the tail end of the counter-culture.

I was too young at the time – just leaving school – for all that free-love and psychedelia, not that I would have known what to do with it. But where did it all go, I wonder. All that energy. Oh, I remember they had the pearl-clutchers fainting, and the red-tops in a fit – but nothing new there. And then it all just disappeared.

I suppose they were rebelling against a post-war world that many of them saw as increasingly inhuman. They were looking to become free souls, rather than cogs in a machine, and they wanted an education aimed at cultural awakening rather than just more conformity. It didn’t work, but at least they had a go. The ’80s were just around the corner, the machine grew as if on steroids, and we all fell headlong into it.

Of course, the things the hippies railed against are just the same now, with some others thrown in, things we could never have dreamed of back then. But the main difference, I suppose, is one of intensity. Back then it came at us through the television in the evenings, the tea time news, the papers. The rest of the time, you were more or less left alone to be yourself. Now it comes at us constantly, so there seems hardly any time even to think about escaping it. Stick your head above the parapet, protest too loudly, and it’ll find a way to assimilate you, monetise you, market you, and generally absorb you back into homogeneity.

We’re plugged into it – not just exposed to its outputs, but feeding it our selves all the while. The old culture – the one the hippies despised – was still something you could step away from, drive into a field, attend a festival, or join a commune to at least find solidarity with others who felt the same way. This one follows us around, learns our behaviour, and adjusts itself so well, we don’t even know it’s there.

Trees are different in the mist. They emerge from it, isolated from their more distant fellows. Trees you’ve walked past a hundred times and paid no heed to suddenly seem dramatic in their expression. Why don’t we see things like that all the time? All that’s changed is a bit of light and shade, a bit of weather. But then we’re all vulnerable to the environment, the way it colours our mood. It does us good to step out of it as often as we can, see what thoughts emerge, what shy poetry.

Perhaps that’s the only way it can be now. There are no barricades to mount any more. No free love to be had among the bushes here on summer solstice nights. Resistance is barely perceptible, and much lonelier. We quit Amazon, cancel all our streaming services, buy local. But all the goods on display are shipped halfway round the world anyway, because that’s just the way it is. And the phone in our pocket still tracks our every move, having long ago persuaded us we’d feel vulnerable if we left it behind. We try to just skim the headlines, resist drowning in them, let the world run at its own pace. I write poetry, fiction, essays but publish it online, where the machine scrapes it for its own unpoetic purposes. Small acts of rebellion for sure, and seeming futile, but there’s still a dignity in them.

The terraces are slippery in the wet. The hill must have been locked in mist and cloud like this for days. And the chill is finding its way through the seams of my jacket. We’ll take a few last shots for what they’re worth, and call it a day, grab a brew down at the tea-room. So we circle round to the Italian Lake, and here we meet up with our old hippy friends again. In this light, they have the mythic bearing of grizzled warriors from another era. They give me the thumbs up – found their way all right.

Most of us do, one way or another.

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The Dream of Autumn

Posted in countryside, existential, journal, lancashire, out and about, philosophical, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged autumn, dreaming, dreams, fall, hiking, nature, poetry, rivington, terraced gardens, walking on November 6, 2025| 10 Comments »

A little sunshine illuminates autumn, renders its colours luminous, dazzling, magical. Such days are to be treasured, of course, but there are also days like these: you crack open the car door and the first thing that hits you is the scent of leaf mould and damp earth. It’s mushroomy and moist, and the autumn gold resists a kicking by clinging heavy to the ways. To put it mildly, we’ve had a lot of rain this week, and the sky looks like we’re not done yet. The brooks are running, and the falls are falling. But it’s still beautiful. Dream-like.

The little blue car delivers us to Hall Avenue at Rivington. It’s a busy midweek. I count three coaches parked up awkwardly. I’m wondering if we’re now included on the “See Britain in a Week” package tours: next stop, thirty seconds in Grasmere. But then I hear the euphoric sounds of schoolkids set free, excited voices muffled by the woodland. It’s amazing how many people a forest can absorb and still afford each of us a sense of privacy.

The light is poor, of course, so we’ll have to see how it goes with the camera. We’ve picked rather a slow lens for the day, but if we click the ISO up a notch we should be okay. The yellows and golds, of course, eclipse the dull skies.

No new ground today – just a familiar walk, a zigzagging meander up through the terraced gardens. I’m still not firing on all cylinders. Never am at this time of year. Some walkers are born Range Rovers, effortless cruising to the top. I’m more your Morris Minor (Cabriolet version) – chugging along in a cloud of exhaust smoke, and hitting bottom gear early on. We don’t always get to the top either, but when we bail out we like to think we do it with a kind of antique stylishness.

Anyway, we’ll not be pushing our luck too much – just three or four miles on autopilot, an eye for the colours, take some pictures, meander back down to the Barn for a coffee, then home. Coming up on five years retired now (have I mentioned that before?) and things still aren’t wearing thin. Familiar ground, yes, and walked a hundred times, but like this, on a whim, midweek, mid-morning — may I never take it for granted.

Still dreaming of work, though I usually take it as a proxy for something else now — the characters standing in as symbols for the particular emotions they aroused back then: frustration, despair, intimidation, anger, loathing. Some of the more tyrannical and driven characters I can remember have been turning up in Hawaiian shirts, full volume, dancing like they’re trying to make up for lost time. Some are dead now. Work and tyranny were all they knew. I hope they found peace, though I doubt they would know what to do with it. God bless them.

Mushrooms, fallen trees slowly rotting back to atoms. A light wind sends cascades of gold through the forest’s gloom. The dream of autumn recurs and we welcome it with open arms. Full moon tonight (at time of writing) – halfway through the lunation – lunation 319, if you’re counting by Meeus, or 1272 if you prefer to go by Brown – and yes I know most of us don’t do either, and it is a little eccentric. But dreams can overwhelm once you get into the habit, so I hold them in chapters and title them by the moons. And the dreams respond, loosely – there’s never a precision with the dreaming. But if anything, it disproves the old rationalist misconception that dreams are just unprocessed garbage. There is an intelligence behind them, a depth to the soul. At the minute it’s been telling me not to hold myself too much to the old standards of rationalist doubt, that at my time of life it doesn’t matter what others think. That it’s a time for deepening rather than seeking the social safety of conformity.

Slippery underfoot — wet leaves, wet gritstone pavings. Puddled ways, the sound of falling water from the ravine. As always, there is the feel of a lost citadel about the terraced gardens — a lost era certainly, but much of what we see is not much more than a hundred years old. It’s had a chequered history since it passed out of the hands of Viscount Leverhulme, fallen into ruin several times. But since the Terraced Gardens Trust took it over with a huge grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, there has been a transformation — so many of the old structures, once dangerous, are now restored, and the vast area of hillside and zig-zaggy terracing maintained by an army of enthusiastic volunteers. In otherwise dark times, when all the pointers are pointing down, it’s done me good over the years to come up here and see what can happen when things are pointing the other way.

We reach the Japanese Lake – always a pleasant pot, especially when the falls are running. Here we settle a while, break out a nutty bar. A rambler’s group emerges from the woodland and spreads out to take in the air of repose. They remind me of the group I invented in my angry novel “Winter on the Hill”, and called themselves the “Autumn Tints”. The memory links back to earlier writings, essays and poems all inspired by this area.

We wind up in the autumn of 2003:

There’s little left but ruins now,
Of glory days gone by,
And images in sepia,
Of gardens in the sky.

Paved walkways and pagodas,
And a house upon a hill,
A place to gather up one’s thoughts,
And measure out one’s fill,

Of dreams and schemes and visions bold,
To change the lives of men,
Improving what had gone before,
With the flourish of a pen.

But what a man can render up,
In mortar and in stone,
Does not always last for ever,
Once the visionary’s gone.

Sometimes a dream is just too big,
For other men to grasp,
So all we’re left is ruins,
Of a dream that didn’t last.

I’m not sure about it now. There’s been a lot of water over these cascades since then. The original vision of Leverhulme, his grand northern retreat, and these gardens by Thomas Mawson had an all too brief yet rather magical flourishing. But the material world is ever ephemeral. Like the years, things come to harvest, and settle back once more to autumn. But autumn brings the dream time, and if you’re settled and in the right frame of mind, the dream of this place goes on.

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Out and about: A sprig of lilac – around the Yarrow Reservoir and Rivington.

Posted in countryside, journal, lancashire, Metaphysical, out and about, outdoors, philosophical, photography, West Pennine Moors, tagged autumn, countryside, hiking, lancashire, nature, photography, poetry, rivington, transcendentalism, transhumanism, travel, UK, walking, walt whitman on September 10, 2025| 5 Comments »

We’re still a bit under the weather from this cold, but we’ve driven out to the Yarrow Reservoir anyway, thinking a bit of fresh air will do us good. A recent wash and brush up reveals the little Blue Car is showing signs of tin worm again, this time around the bottom of the front wings. It raises thoughts once more of the impermanence of things. 23 years old now, but still a good runner, and worth the ongoing restoration. I just need to find someone who’s not a cowboy, and will appreciate what she means to me. We keep going as long as we can. Until we can’t.

Stepping out on the Parson’s Bullough road, we’re not sure we’re up to much, actually. It’s a beautiful day for sure and a wonderfully dynamic sky, but my head feels like it’s having an out-of-body experience – not altogether unpleasant, but we’d better go easy. My ramblings here may be a little more surreal than usual. A couple of butties, a waterproof just in case, and the camera. Temperatures, are a little on the fresh side, the many oaks along the wayside here crisping back, and the reservoir is vanishingly low. I note the contractors are still working in the valve house, so maybe they’ve run a lot of water off, that it’s a maintenance thing, and nothing to do with climate change at all.

So, we’ll take our time, treat ourselves to a brew at the Rivington tearoom, then circle back, about three miles round, all in familiar territory. It’s the walk I settle on when I’m not sure I’m up to walking much. This September light is such a joy, low and bright but, unlike its Spring counterpart, the contrasts tend to be warm and rich. The lush pastures over Jepson’s way have a glow about them, and the sky is magnificent.

After the short sharp pull up the brow by Morrises, we enter the meadows above the reservoir and, though we must have walked this way a thousand times, we discover a new tree. Well, it’s always been there – it’s just that it was shy, and today the light has picked it out. A brief detour has us weighing it up. An oak, nicely shaped. Looks good against the sky and with the hills as backdrop. We hazard a few shots. Relax then into the sun, and the scent of the earth.

We have some thistle still in flower, but most of the flora is turning to sleep now. The willowherb is fluffing up in profusion, only the occasional pockets of invasive balsam still looking blousy. There is no sense of an end in nature – just this visible cycle of setting seed for its eternal return. From a certain perspective it can seem pointless, this relentless round of flourish, then dying back, and we can carry the metaphor on to ourselves and our own short time to bear it all witness. It is both the blessing and the curse of our self-awareness. But as we age it seems more that such thoughts are the result of keeping too narrow a view.

Moving on, and pondering a not unrelated topic, I’ve been reading about the ambitions of the so-called transhumanists – also writing about it in that other place here. This is a very particular breed of tech-utopians who truly believe we can transcend our bodies and our minds, by uploading them into a computer. Thus we ensure our immortality – I presume, so long as we keep up with the payments. This seems absurd to my more poetic sensibilities, but I can understand it, when the minds conceiving it are themselves locked in a prison of their own reductionism. Sure, it must seem the only way out, but I prefer my reality the way it is.

We sit down for lunch in the meadows a little further along, by the Turner Embankment. Dramatic contrasts here between a blue-grey cloudy sky and sunlit green. The camera doesn’t appear to be working properly, but this isn’t the camera’s fault. My head is too full of cotton wool to remember the buttons. It’s only by the good graces of the camera fairy we get any pictures at all. We set it aside and take in the view. Tired and aching now, and barely more than a mile gone. But there are butterflies, and the promise of chestnuts along the avenue by Dean Wood. Do children still collect them, I wonder? I remember the conker season at school was always a thrill, brightening up the tedium of the dull place it was my misfortune to attend.

Yes, we find a few chestnuts along the way. It’s squirrels I think, these days, who are my main competitors, but they have left me a couple of fine, fresh specimens among the aromatic leaf mould. But more unexpected, I discover a fuscia bush, flowering in the hedgerow, dainty flowers suspended midair like ballet-dancers. It is another discovery along the way of what I thought familiar, a gift of nature, a friendship made, to be looked up now and then in future seasons.

We climb the steps to Church Meadows and a little way then up the moor road to the tearoom, behind the chapel. It’s busy with pensioners (like me). Always a cheerful, friendly place. I ask for a pot of tea, and the lady tempts me to the sole remaining slice of vanilla cheesecake. It was always going to be an easy seduction. Large notices also urge me to “book now” for my Christmas Lunch. Ah yes, it’s that season where we attempt to shunt the carriages of Christmas-is- a-coming through the inconveniently placed hump of All Hallows.

Outside in the sunshine, we take our time, savouring our cheesecake, only occasionally eavesdropping on our fellows. A table of ladies of a certain age are celebrating a giddy reunion, while on another a pair of armoured mountain bikers swap stories of arduous routes, each trying to outdo the other with their heroics. Meanwhile, in the chapel yard, beneath the Yew, bathed in dappled sunlight, a more contemplative Walt Whitman whispers:

“I give you my sprig of lilac”

It’s a line from his epic “Leaves of Grass”, this bit written in response to the assassination of President Lincoln. It’s an odd connection, a little corner of rural Lancashire and a momentous event in American history. I talk more about Whitman and Rivington here. Early flowering, for him the lilac was a symbol of renewal, a link between the mortal world and the promise of the eternal in nature. I think back to those earlier ruminations on the tech-utopians who would banish the inconvenience of our (or perhaps only their) mortality, and I suspect they might disagree with Walt. For them our mortality is a technical problem, one to be solved by code, while for the poet it is a sacred aspect of the cycle of the natural world.

Suitably refreshed, we retrace our steps a little, then pick up the track around the western shore of the reservoir, deep in the shadow of the Turner Embankment, now. About half way, we come to the face in the wall. Or rather, it is a replica of the original, which was vandalised and disappeared some 40 years ago – though I recently learned the broken original is in a safe place. This one is a fine replacement, and long may he last. Get the full story here. A strange effigy though, and not exactly in celebration, more mockery of an unloved foreman who supervised the construction of the reservoir. He does have a devilish look about him, and is perhaps a reminder of all the unsavoury characters we’ve laboured under ourselves from time to time. Perhaps this isn’t the best note on which to end the walk, so I hand over to Whitman again, who reminds us:

“I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself”

Or, roughly translated, forgive and forget.

Early autumn, North of England – no hurry to transcend this particular reality, and when the time comes, sure… I’ll accept my sprig of lilac, and thanks, Walt. But for now the little blue car awaits. You know, I think it’s warm enough to drop the top for the drive home. And yes, I’m feeling much better for the air.

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Out and about – Rivers of Ice

Posted in Anglezarke, countryside, journal, lancashire, moorland, out and about, outdoors, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged hiking, nature, rivington, snglezarke, snow, travel, walking, winter on January 11, 2025| 19 Comments »

It was minus seven this morning, as we defrosted the car. There was a pinkish glow to the sky as the sun came up, with a forecast of clear. The side roads have been slick with ice since New Year, but the main road through the village is gritted. We’re heading over to Rivington for a walk in the snow. It being a popular destination, I’m guessing the roads out that way are also gritted, and this indeed turns out to be the case.

We’re pulling up on the Hall Avenue, just as the sun is clearing the trees – skeletal silhouettes with a background of white hills. It’s another day for breaking out the old instep crampons, and trying to remember how they fasten. These are the last things I remember buying from “Cave and Crag” at Settle. I’ve also found my snow mittens, the last piece of kit I own that came from the venerable “Rivington Camping” at Horwich. So many years now, with a gaze turned to the hills, looking for something I once glimpsed, something magical and fey. Both those establishments are long gone. The world has changed, but the hills remain the same.

We head up to the Terraced Gardens, taking the more gentle incline to the Japanese Lake. But it’s a tricky route today, resembling more a swollen river of ice, and the lake is white-over with a dusting of snow. Bright sunlight now and long shadows. I have the Lumix with me today, and I’m snapping away with it, but very little comes out that does justice to the day. My apologies, we have a terrific walk ahead of us, but mostly only word pictures to show for it.

The Pike is snowbound, and the main route to the summit is glazed with several inches of glistening ice. We’d probably be all right with the spikes, but traverse round a little anyway, and ascend by kicking steps into firm snow. Gradually, then, we rise into a raw wind that’s coming over Rivington Moor to the east. It is a vast expanse of snow, textured with straw-coloured speckles, where the wind has cleared the grasses. West, the land falls away, across the sparkling, and only half frozen reservoirs, out to a mostly snowbound plain to the bright line of the sea. There’s a faint mistiness rising over it all, which suggests we can probably expect a thickening inversion layer as evening comes on.

The way to Noon Hill is best travelled in the summer, after a period of dry, or on days like this when the bog is frozen, though there’s always a risk of bursting through the ice. The last thing you want is a wet foot, when the temperatures aren’t forecast to rise above freezing. We make steady progress, testing the ground ahead with the poles, overtaken now and then by cheery hill runners who seem to hop and dance their way out of trouble. A smile and a wave, and they’re gone, dressed in only thin layers, while I’m togged up for the Arctic. Several times here, we have to stop to knock the ice balls from out of the insteps, a few taps with the walking poles does it, then we squint out across the white for a moment, catch the breath, and on we go.

From the summit of Noon Hill, a path runs roughly north to meet the old turnpike of Belmont Road. There is no trace of it this morning, all snowed over, but we have a rough idea of its course, and begin our descent. There are sculpted drifts of several feet deep here, hiding the hollows of the land. Once or twice we find ourselves up to our waist in it, but the feeling is one of exhilaration, just to be out on such a day – bright and crisp, the snow brushing off in dry sparkles. We muddle our way down to the stile, and join the old turnpike road. This is a rough old track, thick with more ice, knobbly and glassy, and driven through with more long, lazy drifts.

Once off the hill, our way becomes less arduous, as we follow the track down to Sheephouse Lane. This is barely passable for cars today, but a few are making a cautious passage to and from Belmont. Then it’s on to the source of the River Yarrow at Horden Stoops, where a couple of guys are eagerly fastening on skis. They wave a cheery greeting. Everyone I’ve met is enthused by the day. Grand Morning! Good Day for it! Indeed, days like this are a gift, sent to ease us through the winter with memories other than those of rain, and endless grey.

Down to the ruins of Hempshaws, now, and the main track over the moor to Lead Mines Clough, the way blanketed and smoothed out by snow. It’s another long river of ice underfoot, but the spikes keep us upright. I’m still snapping away at the breathtaking winter scenery, none of which will come out the way I’m seeing it.

So, we’re down to Lead Mine’s Clough now, where there’s an impressive curtain of icicles overhanging the brook, two and three feet long, all glistening in the sun. Late sun now, the day turning with a first hint of amber. Then we’re up Hodge Brow and across the meadows, above the Yarrow Reservoir, crunching over deep snow. It has a frozen crust, sufficient to take our weight, so we make way with speed. But we’re nearing Rivington now, aware the walk is coming to an end and, though we’re nearing eight miles and the body is ready for a sit down, there’s also a reluctance to let the day go. Oh, not yet, we say. Don’t let it be over yet!

We call at the tearooms, spend awhile in the warm fug of it, warming our hands around a mug of coffee, while we reflect on the journey. The light is definitely going now, sunset at four thirty, but it’s a clear sky, and we should be okay driving against that usual blinding tide of super-brights. Yes, the days are still short, but even at this early point in the year, we already have half an hour more of daylight than we did at the solstice.

I’ve not been out in the countryside for so many weeks now, and it’s showing in the sheer easy pleasure I’m feeling at the closing of this perfect day, out and about, among the snowy hills of the West Pennines. We’ll be lucky if we get another one like this, this year. As the first entry into my walking journal for 2025, it’s a hard one to beat.

Just over seven miles, about eight hundred and twenty feet.

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Out and about – Ice on the Pike.

Posted in existential, journal, lancashire, moorland, out and about, outdoors, philosophical, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged AI, artificial, artificial intelligence, ice, intelligence, pike, rivington, technology, walking, winter on November 21, 2024| 6 Comments »

There looks to be insufficient ice for the spikes. I’m travelling light this morning – just the pockets of an old jacket to carry my stuff. The spikes are still mucky from their last outing, and I don’t fancy them sharing space with my Tunnocks bar, so I leave them behind. But a couple of hundred feet up and the ground is hard. A couple of hundred feet further up and there’s ice, under a light dusting of snow. Nimble souls are managing well enough, some of them even wearing the audacity of sneakers. Me? I am decently booted, but the legs are braced for catastrophe, so progress is geriatric. This is either a case of ignorance being bliss on the part of the sneaker folk, or proof that lacking confidence shall always lose the day. Still, our easier pace means we have plenty of puff, and I should take note of that.

Fresh notices, erected by the Bolton Mountain Rescue Team, urge caution and proper equipment. I second that, even though I am ignoring it today. What can I say? Familiarity with the ground breeds indifference, then embarrassment when we’re caught out. That said, most of us don’t even read the notices, let alone appreciate the difference between summer and winter, on the hill.

We avoid the flagstone terraces of the gardens today – reasoning they’ll be slick with black ice, especially with the hill still being in the pre-noon shade. So we keep to the gravel tracks, which are mostly clear, and bring us eventually, delightfully and circuitously, to the foot of the Pike.

The Pike is more of a challenge, picking one’s way over the ice-free bits, keeping to the scrunchy stuff, when we can’t. We must avoid the broad sheets of glassy stuff at all costs, even though it disappears when wearing polarising shades, against the low sun’s dazzle. The direct way is up the steps on the west face, but these have become an ice-filled gulley. Judging by the antics of those going before us, they are best avoided. Instead, we take the track that spirals more gently around the back – still tricky where we hit shade – but with a bit of care, we are delivered, dignity intact, to the bricked up hunting lodge on the summit.

Here, there’s a young man playing with a buzzy drone. I suppose then my creeping caution is depicted, if only in passing, on a YouTube channel somewhere. And fair enough, for can anything be said to exist, or any event to have taken place, unless it has been filmed? But then there are deepfakes nowadays that are very convincing of the unreality of things. So, who know? Maybe I was there, maybe I was not, whatever my memory says of the matter.

I don’t linger. Too cold for that. Others are wandering up more casually, some of them dragged by hounds. Plenty more hounds are bounding free, untroubled by ice and cold. We humans, by comparison, are ill-equipped for anything but a narrow window of conditions, without all our tooling. Rather, we have rendered ourselves vulnerable, a sort of backwards evolution, to a state of dependence upon our technologies, which have rendered artificial even the concept of intelligence, and eventually, I suppose consciousness itself. Except no. That is one thing I do not suppose. I think, therefore,… well, you know the rest. And computers do not think. They merely compute, though admittedly much faster than we can think.

Interesting, that word, “artificial”, as if some sort of miracle is achieved, forgetting all the while that what is artificial is a dead thing. It looks like the original, but possesses no life, no soul, is inauthentic. The poets say – or at least some of them – that it is through us the Universe seeks awareness of itself. Is the Universe, then, also daft enough to seek awareness of itself through a dead machine? Or is there something else within us, a seed from the same Universe that seeks to thwart its own ambition, its own soulless negation? To stretch the metaphor to breaking point, does the Universe play chess with itself, and across both sides of the board?

Heavens, where did that one come from? We make our descent, with equal caution.

It’s early for a cold snap. November is more familiar, in my region at least, as a season of interminable wet. The dehumidifiers in my house mostly struggle to keep the place below 70%. I think it was built in a puddle. But suddenly, we have gone to highs of two or three degrees by day. There was a brief flurry of overnight snow, then a period of cold sunshine, and dry. The dehumidifiers are, for once, stunned into silence.

Why risk a broken leg in a fall on ice? Does the thought of endless hours in the war zone of A+E not make us more risk-averse, always supposing we could be brought off the hill before the eternal sleep of hypothermia sets in? I exaggerate, of course. This is Rivington Pike, not one of the remoter Bens. And it’s a beautiful morning, bright sun, trees dripping as the frost melts, still the occasional flurry of autumn leaves. And there are plenty of people around, all wishing one another good morning.

As for why we risk it, I suppose it’s simply that a few hours of focusing on one’s footsteps, easing ourselves up a hill is a wonderful reset, a back to basics sort of thing. No keyboard. No phone screen. I carry the camera as usual, but I’m not using it much.

That said, we’d be lost without our technologies. Lunch was purchased on the drive here, a quick pit-stop at the Home Bargains store in Chorley. We do not see the technology, nor the miracle of computerised distribution that ensures my Cajun Chicken sandwich is there on the shelf, always the same, reliable as clockwork. In a bit, we’ll pick up a coffee to go, from the Barn, pay for it with a debit card. Contactless. Beep.

Numbers come by aether, and go the same way. Cash is disappearing by stealth. Is that a good thing? Many would say not. It robs us of independence, renders us vulnerable to computer error, or State malfeasance, I suppose. And this is where we are, we vulnerable, tool dependent beings, caught between the rock of our materiality, and the squishiness we suspect defines us the more. Or at least it is the place we retreat to, like running home when we have suffered a defeat in the world. This squishiness of being, I mean.

Losing altitude, we regain the softer ground, and the scent of leaf-mould, decorative flakes of bronze along the snowy waysides. Coffee from the Barn, we settle in the sun-warmed car for our sandwich, reach for the phone, as if by some long embedded reflex. The finger hovers over the buttons to current affairs. But we pass, set the thing aside. The details differ day to day, but it’s essentially the same old noise it has been since smartphones were invented. And today is for forgetting all of that. Today is for celebrating the squishiness of being.

It would have been steadier with the spikes, but we managed all right without them – just a question of taking your time.

Thanks for listening.

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Out and about – Around Rivington and Anglezarke, again

Posted in Anglezarke, blogging, countryside, health, journal, lancashire, My Notes, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged Anglezarke, autumn, countryside, hiking, nature, out and about, rivington, travel, UK, walking, West Pennine Moors on October 28, 2024| 19 Comments »

I managed to put my back out making the bed. Not the first time. The usual drill is to rest it for a couple of days, do some gentle stretching, and then try to get out for a walk. A walk will usually loosen things off, and we can get back to normal in a week or so. We need a flatish route, not too far, and of course, somewhere nice.

We arrive to find Rivington bursting with half-termers. There are rumours the woodlands around here are to be invaded by glamping pods. Also, the plentiful, free, informal parking is to be tidied up with pay and display. The residents and near-locals are cross about it. I suspect the glamping will happen. Those pod things are popping up like mushrooms everywhere, and Rivington is far too attractive and popular a place to be wasted on those of us who pay nothing for the pleasure of it. However, I predict the pay and display will prove to be an aspiration too far. The machines won’t last five minutes.

We park along the Hall Avenue, among the plentiful bags of discarded dog poo. The weather is a bit odd, as it seems to have been all year, more days of torrential rain, the blustery tail-end of Atlantic storms, followed by calm sunshine. Autumn is coming on nicely. Last week’s weather stripped all the leaves from the acers in my garden, but the grand old oaks and the beech trees here are holding on, and colouring beautifully. We head across the green, and pick up the path through Church Meadows. The ancient stone wall has collapsed here, or been pushed over, blocking the kissing gate, so getting through is a bit awkward.

There’s a nice old oak here, and I often neglect it in passing. Today, we pause a while and make a fuss of it with the camera. Then we’re off along the brook, towards Dean Wood. The avenue here is famous for its chestnuts, and I still enjoy a rummage among the leaf litter at this time of year. There’s something wonderful about the feel of a handful of shiny conkers in your pocket, but we’re out of luck today. The kids and the squirrels have made off with the lot, which is as it should be.

Out of puff, and the back is grumbling as we cross the stile, into the meadow by Dean Wood House. There’s a cloud bank forming, and shadows are running, creating layers of light and shade upon the landscape. We pause a while, settle on a handy rock for lunch. Cajun Chicken butty from Home Bargains, today, and a bottle of tap water. That’s a tenner saved on lunch at the Barn. We’ll buy something nice with it later.

There’s copper and gold in the trees, a pale luminous green in the distant meadows, almost yellow, with the sun upon it, darker layers in the shade, and a deep blue in the sky over the moor. Coming up on four years retired now, and I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be engaging a little more with the world again, I mean as myself, rather than anonymously, and indirectly, as a pseudonym through the writing. I’ve read this is a phase in retirement, where many feel the need to take up voluntary work. I recall it was the plan, early on, that I was going to walk out of paid-work and volunteer in a charity bookshop in town – my dream job. So I went to check it out, but the bookshop had closed. I took it as a sign.

The writing and the photography are something I’ve always wanted to do, but never figured out a way of making a living at it, and now I don’t need to, but still – am I being useful? That’s interesting, that feeling. Unexpected too. I began working at sixteen, finished at sixty. Surely that’s plenty of time, early morning alarm clock time, making myself useful. So just relax. Enjoy the photography. Enjoy the writing. Working – even volunteering – you’d have to commute somewhere again, and deal with people, and people can be difficult, and strange – even stranger than you. Okay. So, glad we’ve sorted that one out. Writer, blogger and photographer I shall remain, salary paid by the pension administrator.

Lunch done, we walk the meadow way, above the Yarrow Reservoir, always an attractive bit of the route. It’s a little squelchy after the rains, but not bad going. There’s a bit where we pass through some trees to a stile that always has me reaching for the camera. There’s something here, a bit of magic, that’s wanting me to bring the best of it out. These things are subjective, I know, but strange how some scenes can trigger you that way, while others leave you cold.

Then we’re off to Morris’s, the derelict old barn that became a bunk house for a time, then a gentrification project that stalled and is slowly returning to a state of dereliction. Then we’re down Hodge Brow to Alance bridge, and along Parson’s Bullough. (Then, then, then) The sun has quite a sparkle to it here, and there’s a pool of it reflecting on the smooth indigo of the reservoir. We pick the details out as we go along, and it’s a day for details, if not many photographs. We’re becoming selective, looking for the standout moments.

We circle around the Yarrow, and take the path down by the spillway. A friend of mine used to get an uneasy, back of the neck feeling here. Deeply superstitious, he was certain something bad had happened once, and left behind a lingering impression in the aether. In folklore, it’s what you’d call a ghoul, which is distinct from a ghost. But I’ve never felt it, so I guess that’s subjective as well. I’ve felt ghouls in other places, other circumstances. Living the modern hi-tech, Outlook Scheduled, Zoomer life, we learn to dismiss these things, but superstitions are tenacious, lie waiting in the depths of our nature, just waiting for the slower life, so they can catch up with us again.

We cross the causeway between the Anglezarke and the Upper Rivington Reservoirs, take the driveway by the big old house they call The Street. I think I may have overdone it. The back is definitely tender now, and grumbling at the undulations along the way. Need to reconnect with Tai Chi practice. Never had back trouble when I was doing Tai Chi. Our pace slows. Maybe these boots aren’t helping. They’re tough old army boots, but heavier than the ones I usually wear. Then I come upon a smiley old timer, looks to be in his nineties, bent literally at right angles, propped on a walking stick, shuffling along. That’s what you call a back problem! He’s taking it slow and steady, a sparkly, cheerful look about him.

Most strangers will exchange a greeting when we pass in the countryside, while in town we don’t. Sometimes neutral, polite, other times a real blast of bonhomie. This old guy may be struggling, but he’s gamely with it and generous with his energy. So,… details, details,… lone trees, autumn sunshine, passing scenes, and the occasional energising encounter with strangers, all add up to score a walk, and we’re doing well on this one.

We’re not far now, along the causeway between the Upper and Lower Rivington reservoirs, then it’s up by the school, and along the track, back to Hall Avenue.

We’re glad to see the car, take our time easing off the boots. As we do so, next door, so to speak, a woman is unselfconsciously tearing a strip off her daughter for getting muddy. Now she has to clean both the dog, and the child, before either is allowed back into the Range Rover. Mud doesn’t bother kids, dogs revel in it. I wonder at what age we begin to change, and fear more that it sticks and besmirches other things. The little blue car’s looking her best just now, managed to give her a rare wash and shine before snagging my back. That vinyl top’s not going to last much longer, but I’ve been saying that for years. Maybe it’s time to start carrying a roll of Duct tape, just in case. Been saying that for years as well. Service, and MOT coming up. Better get her booked in.

About four and a half miles round, five hundred feet or so of gentle up and down.

GPX here.

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Into four dimensional space

Posted in countryside, existential, health, journal, lancashire, moorland, outdoors, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, 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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Fifty shades of grey – on Rivington Pike

Posted in countryside, current affairs, journal, lancashire, moorland, outdoors, philosophical, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged book-review, book-reviews, books, dream, fiction, life, pike, retrocausation, rivington on December 16, 2023| 12 Comments »

Apologies for the click baity title (I did say I was going to do it). But the shades of grey we’re talking about here are those mid-December greys, and the venue is the familiar trail up through Rivington’s terraced gardens, to the Pike. The shades are both visual, and metaphorical. There is a flat light, and the colours of winter are desaturated, like an old photograph slowly fading away, leaving only the outlines of things. Then there are a mixture of thoughts and aspirations in a similar state of play. I’ll be sixty-three at the solstice. It doesn’t seem possible. The last time I checked, I was forty.

Another grey is my grey car which languishes on the driveway at home with a flat tyre, and no spare – as is the way with modern vehicles. It’s actually silver, but looks several shades of grey right now. I wouldn’t normally press the little blue one into service when there’s a risk of winter salt or rain, but we have no choice today, and she seems to relish the opportunity. Her battery was starting to run low, so the outing has done her good. I suspect the silver-gray is going to be one of those cars that’s unlucky for punctures, so I’d better invest in a slim-jim for it.

We park on the Hall Avenue, as usual, and set off, heading up the Ravine. I’m wearing a pair of old army boots I bought a couple of years ago, and despaired of ever breaking in, but they seem suddenly to have submitted and become a reliable pair of go-to’s, at least for days like this. It sounds like I’ve not much of interest to talk about, blathering on about boots now, like we’re waffling to fill the space, and then those shades of grey do little to inspire the imagination into areas of a warmer tone. It all has the feel of a Christina Rossetti poem about it.

I’m actually pondering a book on retrocausation and precognitive dreaming, which is interesting enough, if you’re into that sort of thing, which I am. I’m pondering whether to move beyond the downloaded teaser sample and purchase the full book. I’m erring on the side of no. It’s ground I’ve explored at some length, but my interest was renewed when, the last time I came this way, a few weeks ago, I bumped into a guy I’ve not seen for years. It wouldn’t be much of a conversation piece except, he’d made a brief appearance in a dream a few days before, and such a thing gets you thinking. Yes, coincidence, and all that stuff, and in a materialist, reductionist universe, travelling a one way line through time, it’s delusional to think otherwise and any other explanation, no matter how convoluted is the more reasonable. But I don’t see the universe like that these days, and I have my reasons.

As for “Retrocausation”, it’s a technical, modern word for what the writer, J.B. Priestley, called in earlier times “future influencing past”, which I admit doesn’t sound much better. But if you dream of a thing that happens, then the future has influenced the past, except you don’t realise it until the future event breaks your dream, so to speak. It’s not a topic many want to get into, and most people don’t believe in it anyway, and why should you? But if you’re in the habit of recalling your dreams, it’s a phenomenon you’re going to encounter, and be curious about. My own feeling is that everything that can be said about the subject has already been said, and all other books are simply derivative of past thinkers like Dunne and Priestley. They come with more sensational titles, but they’re really just selling books on the promise of something new, which turns out to be the flimsiest of premise.

Anyone has as much idea as the next person, who is even remotely interested in the subject. In short, beyond being open to the fact that it happens, I don’t know why it happens, and I suspect we never will. It’s another grey area, multifaceted and unknowable, though that` doesn’t stop people writings books about it and giving them click-baity titles. Anyway, I don’t bump into the guy today. That was clearly a one-off. I also dreamed I’d been called back to work after three years of retirement, but that’s definitely not happening, if I’ve seen it in my future or not.

For all the rain we’ve had, there’s not much water coming down the ravine, not many people on the trail either, though the café at Rivington Barn was abuzz with them. By contrast, the little coffee venue they set up in the former lavatories at the bottom of the Pike, is empty and looking somewhat forlorn. There is also the peculiar juxtaposition of a gorgeous scent of coffee intermingling with the unwholesome stench of diesel from the off-grid generator.

Like the little blue car’s battery, we have low energy today, also a heavy limbed breathlessness as we take the path up the Pike. We branch off half way, traverse round, and come at the top from the south. Clarity is impressive with Horwich laid out below us, then Bolton and Manchester beyond, a vast conurbation, all merged into one, and the Derbyshire Dales beyond that. It is the cradle of the first industrial revolution, now largely gone for warehousing and cookie cutter houses, all washed up against the dour Victorian terraces, and the vulnerable bits of green that remain.

It’s cold on top, with a biting wind. We do not linger, but head down for coffee and a bacon barm in the warm fug of the barn. We have a quick flick through current affairs while we wait for it to be delivered. The war in Ukraine looks like it’s ground to a grim stalemate. The Middle East is afire and getting worse. Energy bills are bankrupting the nation, so many now who cannot pay there is to be a levy on those who can in order to cover the debt. There is plenty to be glum about, but I note “the market” has been on the up for weeks now. And so it goes.

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Walt Whitman and the West Pennine Moors

Posted in countryside, lancashire, moorland, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged adlington, bolton, eagle street college, rivington, walt whitman, whitmanites on September 4, 2023| 9 Comments »

In the grounds of the Unitarian Chapel at Rivington, on the edge of the West Pennine Moors, there is a plaque, dedicated to the American poet Walt Whitman. The connection between Whitman and Rivington is an intriguing one, and sheds light not only upon the work of the poet himself, but also on a political, social and philosophical movement that blossomed in the latter part of the nineteenth century, namely Ethical Socialism.

Born in 1819, into poor circumstances, Whitman earned a living by turns as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. He also served as a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War, an experience that had a profound effect on him. His collection, “Leaves of Grass” was self-published in 1855, and remains, arguably, his greatest work. It was, in a sense, a continual work in progress, being edited, added to, and re-published throughout his life.

Leaves of Grass is written in Whitman’s characteristic “modern” style, being composed entirely in free verse. The form is mainstream now; but in Whitman’s day it was considered edgy, attracting both scorn and praise. Although he did not identify as a “socialist”, he struck many notes that were in sympathy with it, in particular the idea of equality, that every person, regardless of their social status, race, or background, had intrinsic value. He was also critical of the excesses of materialism. This all chimes with early British socialism, and explains his adoption as one of its cultural icons.

Leaves of Grass was considered ahead of its time in other ways too. Its original version was criticised as being obscene, for its day. He came to the attention of the British public through the efforts of the English writer and critic William Rossetti, brother of Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. These latter two were leading lights of the then avant guard arts movement, the Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood. The Pre Raphelites were quite racy themselves, but even they thought Whitman’s poetry too explicit for delicate Victorian sensibilities, and insisted it was toned down for British publication, much to Whitman’s dismay.

British Socialism was a movement born out of a reaction to materialism and a dehumanising capitalism, a movement that attracted both the despairing working and middle classes, but also the philanthropic gentry to its cause. We think of it today as a purely political movement, and one much sidelined, but it was also envisaged as a practical philosophy, emphasising the need for kindness and brotherhood. It brought people together in all manner of informal ways to create societies and clubs. It is wrong to think that working men have no interest in poetry, or art, that only beer and horse racing will do. Nor do the wealthy have a monopoly on intelligence, or the appreciation of culture. What sets them apart is their monopoly of education, and access to the arts.

It was in part to combat this imbalance, many of the industrial towns built municipal galleries to house great works of art, and which the public might view for free. The idea is that any man, born to high or low station, can be elevated through contact with cultural works, that are in turn inspired by something transcendent, or God-like.

One of the Ethical Socialist clubs in my locale was Bolton’s Eagle Street College. This was formed in 1885, at the home of James William Wallace, with the aim of discussing literary works, including the poems of Whitman. Wallace visited Whitman in America and struck up a friendly correspondence with him, one that lasted until Whitman’s death. As the society grew and their connection with the poet deepened, its members became known as Whitmanites.

In 1891, Wallace moved from his home in Bolton, to a modest house on Babylon Lane, Adlington, on the edge of the West Pennine Moors. This is just a short walk over from Rivington village, a popular gateway to the hills, and from where the Whitmanite celebrations, would take place – this being on May 31st, Whitman’s birthday. On these occasions, members would wear a sprig of lilac in their hats and on their lapels. They would walk the moors, read poetry, and drink claret from a loving cup, a gift from Whitman.

The heyday of Ethical Socialism ended with the first world war, and the loss of many of its most ardent activists. By the 1950’s the Whitmanite meetings and birthday walks had also fizzled out, and much of the knowledge and history of those days had become vague. Then, research in the 1980’s unearthed much of what is now known about the link between Whitman and the Eagle Street College. The Whitman Day celebrations were revived by the Bolton Socialist Club in 1983, and continues to this day.

I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself -1855

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