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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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Out and about – Some Trees and a Tractor

Posted in countryside, current affairs, journal, lancashire, out and about, outdoors, photography, walking, tagged adventure, current affairs, hiking, hodder, hurst green, lancashire, nature, ribble, travel, UK, walking, writing on March 13, 2026| 5 Comments »

We’re a little further up the Ribble Valley today at Hurst Green. It’s a cloudy bright sort of day with a fresh wind, the meadows glowering darkly one moment and glowing a lush green the next. The hedgerows closer to home are already in leaf, but here, not an hour’s drive away, it’s still early in the season, trees bare and gaunt in silhouette from afar, and you have to get up close to see they’re budding. It’s the Tolkien Trail today, a loop of the rivers Hodder and Ribble amid some fine, rolling Lancashire scenery. It’s about a year since I last came this way, in tow with a whimsical Galadriel, as I recall. But she’s keeping a low profile today.

Speaking of Galadriel, I’m reminded how elves can at times be as warlike as humans, but their legends don’t depict them being anywhere near as stupid. As we walk we’re mindful the world is shaking to its foundations. The Strait of Hormuz is now closed, a predictable response to the bombing of Iran. As of this morning, UK fuel prices haven’t moved much, but they will, when strategic reserves run out. Then there’ll be panic-buying. All of that will come, but I’m conscious our inconvenience is insignificant, compared with the suffering of others who have munitions raining down upon their towns and cities. Of course, we’ve had Middle-Eastern conflicts before, but there seems a particularly unhinged madness about this one, and I have a bad feeling about it.

There’s a roaring in the trees as we come down to Over Hacking wood and approach the Hodder. Pines soar here, closely packed, and they clatter ominously above like bamboo chimes as we pass, the wind stirring them. Some are freshly fallen, bearing the bright scars of newly splintered wood, the soft earth cratered at their base.

It’s a route I’ve pretty much photographed to death. Still, find myself pausing at the same view-points, looking for something new in the details. Mostly the light isn’t promising, the sun slipping behind cloud at the wrong moments, then on we go. The triptych of trees here, seen from the track leading down from Hodder Place, I’ve not noticed before, so loiter awhile, waiting for light.

But as I wait, I find it hard to avoid the sense that it’s becoming more difficult to find beauty in the passing detail, in the small, like this, when there’s so much going on in the world now that is irredeemably, and profoundly ugly. We woke up this morning to images of burning tankers in the Persian Gulf, and here we are waiting for the light to shine on some trees. At what point does that become ridiculous? When is it less of a resistance to the Zeitgeist and more a refuge from things we cannot alter? Perhaps it’s both. Or perhaps such things become even more important, the uglier the world becomes.

It’s striking how commentators still assume there is a reason for it all, yet even the most informed appear to be struggling with this one. For myself, observing such things from afar, it seems that, once upon a time, terrible acts were undertaken for identifiable reasons, however cynical. Now it more often feels as if explanations have been dispensed with, and confusion itself has become the atmosphere, indeed the entire oeuvre of power. Thus have our leaders moved beyond explanation. They have nothing useful, nothing intelligible to say to us, inhabiting as they do their own world, as do we ours. What this means for our futures is unclear, but disturbing all the same – our certainties shrinking to a bubble no greater than might fit in the palm of your hand, or through the all too selective viewfinder of a camera.

Lunch is by the Hodder, a stretch of pebbled bank where one can get down to the waterside. We’ve had plentiful rains recently, including torrents overnight, so the river is high and deep voiced. There’s plenty of company here, with other walkers and dogs, and the usual detritus – bottles and beer cans and the almost obligatory bags of dog-dog muck. The Tolkien Trail is always well walked, even midweek. I would not think to attempt it at the weekends. The Hodder is reflecting sunlight here, an alluring sparkle to it as it slides by, and the trees on the opposite bank roar in the wind, a touch of March Madness about them.

I filled the car this morning, burned about a gallon on the way over here, another gallon by the time I get home. It used to be I’d be panicking about conserving fuel, needing it for the commute. There was no such thing as home working during previous fuel-shocks, and I recall a particularly inflexible attitude on behalf of employers, too. Unlike in past crises though we now have far more electric vehicles on the road. You can pick used ones up very cheaply, though their battery life is probably much reduced now, with uncertainty over longevity and the cost of replacement. Still, they’d be fine for knocking about locally. Were I in a bind, and still having to commute, I’d be considering an older model as a backup now, though as it is, I can probably ride out at least some of what is coming our way.

We don’t linger over lunch but press on, making our way by Cromwell’s Bridge, up the hill, cross the meadow to Winkley Hall and the Piggery. Here we pick up the broader sweep of the Ribble, the newly diverted path no longer taking us by the spectacular oak, but here it is, captured in other times. Instead, we have this old tractor by the wayside – always something Stoic about them, I think. It doesn’t look to be in working condition, but I’ve seen worse, and still running. How many seasons, I wonder, ploughing the earth? It speaks of continuity, of certainty, of return.

We have a clear path now back to Hurst Green, most of it in company with the run of the river. Up ahead there’s another walker, what looks like a tall young woman, long auburn hair and a Barbour jacket, nipped at the waist. She has a graceful, upright posture. I catch her up as we climb from the valley, to the Shireburn Arms, and exchange greetings in passing. She’s actually getting on in years, a lovely, mature face that smiles easily. We meet again in the coffee shop in Hurst Green, and we exchange a joke, then I’m carrying my coffee-to-go back to the little blue car. It’s looking a bit grey actually, ready for a wash and spruce up.

The woman was interesting – in other times a potential meet-cute of course – but for the writer, it feels more like an introduction to a character who simply has to be written about, after she’s spent some time developing in the imagination. With the world on fire these are such small things, but beautiful in themselves, and we mustn’t forget that.

Sometimes it’s the only thing we have to go on.

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Some thoughts sitting on a bench by a river

Posted in blogging, countryside, existential, journal, lancashire, Metaphysical, walking, tagged identity, meditation, mindfulness, philosophy, spirituality, spring, walking, writing on March 5, 2026| 4 Comments »

Early March, now, and the season of yellowing. Hazel and willow catkins hang from branches like exotic caterpillars, drying themselves. Clutches of daffodils nod in the breeze, and the starry heads of celandines brighten the first light-dappled greening of the woodland floor. It’s a cold sun, but our movement these last few miles grants us the impression of warmth. We find a bench by the murmuring river and sit down to rest.

We’re just a little upstream from Ribchester here, making way towards Dinkley, having in mind a short circuit of the Ribble Valley, and it’s proving to be far enough on wobbly legs. We’ve been out several days in a row now, and we’ve either tired ourselves out, or it’s the shingles jab we had that’s having unexpected side effects.

“You might feel like you’re coming down with something,” the nurse said.

Which would explain it. So, we’ll take our time. We’ll be fine.

It’s not an attractive bit, this stretch of the Ribble, and the lack of foliage reveals much we’d prefer remained hidden. The trees and bushes along the bank are hung with all the trash washed down, some of it from farms – plastic sacking and canisters of ominous and garish colouring. But it’s mostly the petty consumerist trash – the beer-cans, the bottles, the discarded wrappers, all of it heading out to sea, a long slow, infinite outpouring of human detritus. This is our gift to nature, product of a confused sense of who we are, of an imagined separateness, indeed an outright denial of the finiteness of the earth, and its capacity to forgive our childish ways.

We’re covering some old ground today, not just on foot but in our heads as well. From time to time long forgotten writings surface in the blog stats, and serve to remind us of forgotten byways. It’s surprising how we forget these things. I suppose we absorb the ideas, stripped of the detail, and simply move on, but I was once intensely preoccupied with the idea of identity, and it seems that’s what we’re thinking about again today.

Expressions of identity are all the rage of course, but we do far better if we can work out how to shed them. So, who am I? Right now I am just a guy sitting on a bench in the early spring sunshine, listening to the river. That’s all. Anything I add to that description is mere decoration. We used to equate the question of identity with what we did: plumber, poet, engineer. But the world is changing, and jobs are shrinking to a mere flotsam that seems unworthy of pinning something so precious as our identity upon it. We have AI stripping work away from us, or we may be entering retirement and looking for a new identity, or we may be clinging to an identity, courtesy of a former career and to which we no longer have any real connection. I write poetry, fiction, and I keep a blog now. Does that make me a writer and poet? I can call myself that if I want, but it never seems to sit right. No, I am just this guy sitting on a bench by the river.

We take a breath, let it out slow, extend our awareness into the body, open up a gap between the rush of thought, and the softer spaciousness of the inner self. It can be a tight squeeze, but if we can manage it we find in that gap there’s no past or future, no identity, no reputation to be protected. There’s just the river, this low, bright sunlight, and the movement of the breath. It’s not empty – quite the opposite. We sense a fullness and, sliding a hand into that gap, we peel the sides apart and, shedding all thoughts of who we think we are, we step inside.

There we find the presence behind the human, a presence in the world, rather than something pre-defined by culture, or by a label attached to us by ourselves or others. And through that presence we find we are not our thoughts or our feelings. We are more simply the awareness of those things, or every thing. Spiritual teachers will go further and tell us our awareness, the sense of self looking out at the world through our eyes, is the same awareness looking out through everyone else’s. But that’s not an easy thing to get across, or to accept, conditioned as we are, and increasingly so, into a sense of our own profound isolation.

Our times have seen a dramatic shedding of the old ways of belonging, making it all but impossible to find or even to take seriously the idea of meaning. Workplaces, faith-groups, pubs… all are in decline. Meanwhile, consumer culture promises fulfilment but, like all these bottles and cans down there on the riverbank, it delivers only an emptiness to be discarded, rather than something genuine to be adopted and worn for life. And then the rise of our identitarian culture offers so many off-the-peg identities, all of which might feel meaningful in the moment, though often built on nothing more than grievance, or victimhood. And of course, we have the ever present peddlers of “life-style”, false identities, like bubble gum, briefly consumed, soon to lose its flavour and discarded.

We are hungry for belonging, yet look for it in all the wrong places. There is no community, no identity in a mobile phone – absurd to think there might be – yet increasingly, we feel that’s our best shot. Imagine any crowded room of people at their ease, be they strangers, or even friends and family, most faces lit by the glow of screens, and the promise of diversion, of transportation from the here and now, to somewhere else – to a place of promise, a place of meaning. We scroll for connection, finding only fragmented shards, a thousand ways to perform an identity, to enter into community – likes, shares, comments – but no way to simply be. It is a mirrored labyrinth of algorithmic bait-and-switch, yet we keep scrolling, hoping the next post, the next notification, will tell us who we are.

We have forgotten. Who we are lies entirely in this gap of stillness, in this shedding of all decoration, of all identity. And the paradox? It’s just a breath away, the realisation we are at the same time nobody, going nowhere, yet also, and at all times, we are the world and all that’s in it. Of course the trick is to stay in that space, while we get up from this bench, and continue on our way along the river. But that’s not easy in a fractured world, where such teachings might be considered unhelpful anyway, a world where division and isolation serve a greater, if less wholesome purpose.

Thanks for listening

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The last Friday of February 2026

Posted in countryside, journal, lancashire, out and about, walking, tagged cockerham, Glasson, lancashire, meditation, time, walking, writing on March 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The little blue car is full of winter sleep and grime, as am I – sleep at least. There’s been heavy rain overnight, the morning sky is oppressive, and the roads are splashy. But once under way, and the car warms, we begin to feel more optimistic. Then there’s this age old “last Friday of February” thinking, that Glasson has yet to turn us away. Indeed, though the meadows have often been under flood, the sun usually shines against the odds. And so it proves again today, the inland gloom and intermittent drizzle peeling away miraculously as we come up to the harbour. And then a hazy sun breaks through.

Oh, but there was such an accumulation of doubt, diversion and discouragement this year, I wondered if it was not better to let day go. After all, I’ve been coming to Glasson now on this particular day for 12 years, and I don’t know why. It’s more than shaking off the winter, more than striking out again after a long confinement, trapped by weather and short days.

I could try arguing there’s something poetic about it, an alliteration of “Friday” and “February”, but then why not the “the First Friday of February”, which is even more alliterative? Sure, this hanging on is making less sense as the years pass, even without events conspiring against us. Perhaps it comes down most of all to a defence of eccentricity, for holding firmly to an idea without needing to know the reasons why. And it’s about not having to explain it to yourself, or anyone else.

Our determination today is rewarded by sight of the magnificent schooner “Helene” tied up, and now resident, at Glasson basin. Built in Sweden in 1916, she’s owned by the Mersey Trust, who have plans to refit her. A stately tall ship with beautiful lines, she commands tremendous presence.

The forecast for today wasn’t promising. Even less promising, the little blue car desperately needs a new battery, and is cranking very sluggishly. A tired battery puts out 12.4 volts. This one is down to 12.3, so I’ve taken a bit of a risk bringing her out, but I’ve promised her a new battery tomorrow if she sees us home all right.

I suppose another thing that brings me out this way is the stability of the landscape. Not much changes over time, so you have the feel of recreating the same day, and I like to compare my impressions over time. There are changes in Glasson of course, but they’re mixed and subtle. The Victoria Inn is still an abandoned shell, the Lockkeeper’s Rest is still serving tea and biker’s lunches, and the familiar boats come and go. And then there’s the walk, the same route down to Cockerham marsh, and back along the Lancashire Coastal Way. Tide in, tide out, wading birds of all variety, the constancy of nature.

There were shouty signs around the Thursland Hill fishery about keeping to the path, which is now fenced in. This is an increasingly popular trend among landowners, which soon renders the paths impassable due to concentrated footfall turning the ground to a deep slime. The meadows were indeed heavy going, but they’ve been worse, and the coastal path around by the abbey’s chapter house is seeing some devastating erosion. Finally, Jansen Pool in flood, even at low tide, required the usual ingenuity to cross. Then it’s back to Glasson for a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea at the Lockkeepers and, today, in the shadow of that beautiful old ship.

Back in the day when I used to mentor youth, I had the pleasure of working with a young woman who crewed tall ships for fun. I’m reminded of her as I gaze up in the rigging of this craft and feel myself going giddy at the thought of scrambling up there. Oh no, she assured me, that was the best bit. Although necessary, I suppose, in the sailing of tall ships, it seemed still a terrible risk. That she enjoyed it though needed no explanation, and I certainly didn’t ask for one.

Anyway, we seem to have gobbled up the walk at pace, amid a race of thoughts, some of which are catching up with us now as we enjoy our mug of tea. I realise for myself there’s something of a void opening up, a kind of creative exhaustion following the self publication of another novel. I’m not sure what’s been going on with the process recently. In the old days, I would live inside a novel for a year or more, but the last two have come with such an intensity – eighty thousand words, in a couple of months.

The poetry journals, too, are filling up faster than they used to do. I thought I was done, actually, but it seems we’re not. But like this day, the last Friday of February, and a mug of tea at the Lockkeepers, there’s something Quixotic about it. The work is the work, and I know some of you do read it, and I do appreciate that, but one cannot help butting up the rationalist question: whom does it serve?

The answer of course is not a rational one, so we may be up against one of those philosophical category errors, though the question: whom does it serve, reminds me of that question from the grail myth: Whom does the grail serve? It is the right question, says the myth, and the right answer is it serves the King. But who is the King?

Some versions say the King is you, but maybe a better answer is that the King is the ideal within yourself you serve. And what is the ideal? Is it merely fidelity to a craft that has chosen us? Is it that we feel our audience is not so much mortal but more related to soul and the deepening into a shape we have always been becoming? And then, I suppose, like the eccentricity of keeping to this last Friday of February, the answer’s not exactly clear, and needs no explanation anyway other than that the daemon keeps us at it. And that’s answer enough for me.

So, we peel off the boots, somewhat gingerly, them being coated in a great deal of mud, and we grab the last few shots of the lovely schooner, Helene, then settle in the little blue car and turn the key…

She’s painfully slow on the turnover, but the engine starts, and we make it home okay. And as promised, I go out and buy a new battery. We can both use the energy.

About 7 miles round. Dead flat, some seasonal heavy going through waterlogged meadows.

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Manual Focus

Posted in countryside, current affairs, existential, health, journal, lancashire, moorland, out and about, outdoors, philosophical, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged ;ancashire, countryside, hiking, meditation, nature, outdoors, photography, travel, UK, wain, walking, writing on February 7, 2026| 8 Comments »

Stepping out of the car, we’re met by a moderate rain. Mid-morning at Vaughn’s Café – again. This time, our plan is a circuit, taking in a slice of the Roddlesworth plantations, then up onto Darwen Moor. We have a new lens for the camera, which we were hoping to try out. It’s a super-wide format, the aim being to add a touch of drama to our lone trees and sky, but we’ve left the camera at home. The forecast just didn’t justify bringing it out.

The lens is an old one, and designed for use with my make of camera – though, it turns out, not my specific model. It still works as a lens, but it doesn’t automatically focus. Now, this should be no hardship since, once upon a time, all our focusing was done manually. We chose the subject, then turned the dial until it was sharp. I could have got the lens a lot cheaper from other sellers if I’d known. Anyway, that’s another story, but it has us thinking about focus and doing things automatically, in metaphorical ways, like sometimes how we roll from bed of a morning, draw back the curtains on yet another flake-white Lowry sky, before rolling automatically back in.

So, we click our imaginary lens from auto to manual, we pick our day, and just go for it. And here we are, the sky more the colour of lead than flake-white, cloud-base so low you can reach up and touch it, and then the rain. It’s never a good sign, having to pull on full waterproofs at the start of a walk, but may the rain wash us clean. I imagined I had found a way of stepping aside from the news cycle, of no longer being triggered by ‘events’, but the world has more recently caught onto me, changed tactics, and now I cannot look at it without feeling unclean.

The forest ways through Roddlesworth are heavy going, dark, and the trees dripping, the paths doubling as lively streams. The body warms quickly under several layers, though the fingers still ache from cold. I have a new waterproof outer which is performing well, the rain beading up and running off, at least for a time. But after a couple of hours, the fabric is starting to wet out and no longer breathable, so we begin to wet from the inside as condensation soaks back into the mid-layers.

We make our way over towards Darwen, through Sunnyhurst, then a brief rest and a stand-up lunch in the shelter of the lych gate, before tackling the climb onto the moor. There’s been no let-up in the rain, and a stiffening breeze now, as the landscape becomes more exposed. But the wind is to our backs, so it helps, rather than hinders. I’m still exercising the legs of a morning with a dumbbell – still not sure if it’s making a difference on the hill, but anything that gets the heart pumping is doing some good, so long as we’re not overdoing it.

There’s a forbidding bleakness to Darwen moor at the best of times, but on a day like this, it’s particularly challenging to the spirit. Interesting now, the proliferation of leaky dams and berms – the moor being engineered to hold water, of which there is plenty today. We make a somewhat bumbling return through the woods, past Sipper Lowe, back to Vaughn’s, slithering in mud as we go.

The car is a relief to see, though I’m almost too weary to pull the gear off. The waterproof trousers have leaked through the pocket slits leaving big cold patches on my thighs. And, as suspected, I’m wet down to the mid-layer from condensation. It was a longish walk, about eight miles at pace, not much by way of meditation, no messing about with photographs. I’m not sure if the day has washed me clean, but that cup of tea in Vaughn’s café was most welcome. We emerge from the steamy interior mid-afternoon to an already fading light, and the rain had stopped.

We’re feeling cold of a sudden, and in need of a hot bath. Back at the car, we set the heater on full and reach for the radio, then think better of it, and drive home in silence. It is plain now that, at a certain elevated – indeed stratospheric – level, the world has always been this dirty. Yet, I’m sure the majority of us bring our children up to believe in magic and kindness, and I still think that’s right. We imagine the damage comes only from the stranger, the predator, the one who lurks at the margins of society, yet some of them are also riding very high, indeed running and shaping the world in their own image.

Perhaps the rain did not wash us entirely clean then, but for a short time at least it has brought the world back into a cleaner focus. It’s shown us how it’s not always wise to go with what comes to us automatically, because it may not be trustworthy. And it reminds us that in order to see clearly, to choose what we look at, instead of having it chosen for us, we have to switch that imaginary lens back to manual. And if we can do that, then even splashing through the wet and the cold of a Lancashire upland in the depths of winter, carries its own form of innocent grace.

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Anglezarke, Rivington and the Lost Poem

Posted in Anglezarke, countryside, existential, journal, lancashire, moorland, out and about, outdoors, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged countryside, hiking, lancashire, meditation, poem, poems, poetry, travel, UK, walking on January 29, 2026| 2 Comments »

You catch up with me on the causeway between the Anglezarke and the Upper Rivington Reservoirs. It’s a clear day with an unblemished blue of sky, and a bright sun with no heat in it. It’s only my second outing this year, and January is all but done, now. I suppose that’s the problem when we can pick our days – we tend to hold out for the best of the forecast and save the inclement weather for indoor things: for housework, for writing, or just staying cosy in bed.

And then of course, with its storms, interspersed by interminable grey, the year seems to have kicked off with a mixture of rage and depression. The sparkle has been sadly lacking, but today looks like one of those days sent to rescue us all from oblivion. That said, the forecast was a bit hysterical last night with warnings about a hard frost and ice, neither of which transpired. It’s definitely cold though, as we step out to embrace the air and fasten on our boots.

The Anglezarke reservoir is still low, the last of the reservoirs to fill – the rest of them, from Roddlesworth to the Lower Rivington being now brim-top after all the rains. We take the path by the spillway, a shortcut up to the Yarrow, then loop round to the Parson’s Bullough road. If there was going to be ice anywhere this morning, it would be here, but the way is clear. The moor is shedding water, a bright new spring running down the path, and pooling by the corner of Allance bridge.

Here we take the steep meadow way, up to the finger post on the skyline, and catch our first views of the day – bare trees, and bright contrasts. Indeed, the sun is so bright here the highlights are burning out in the camera, and in my watery eyes too. I’ve been trying to keep the leg muscles in shape over winter by doing squats with one of the dumbbells the kids left behind. It doesn’t seem to have worked. By the time we reach the finger post we’re ready for a long pause and a fiddle with the camera.

The oak trees up Twitch Hills have survived the storms, and beg their photographs as I pass under their spreading branches. I wouldn’t like to lose these two. Always a tragedy when a grand old tree comes down, though it’s nature’s way, I suppose. We take a breather among the ruins of Peewit Hall – views out to the coast, across the gorgeous green of the hills by Jepson’s farm. They’re replacing a long run of wire here with a traditional hedgerow – looks like hawthorn. If anything can survive up here hawthorn can. This will be a boon for birds when it’s mature. Odd how one hand can be so protective of the environment, while the other is so destructive.

Lunch is a cheese and onion roll from the filling station we called at on the way over, and rendered all the more tasty for being eaten out of doors. All around us there’s the familiarity of long years, and an air of ease. Still no warmth in the sun, but it’s good to be out. I feel a whisper of poetry coming through, just a feeling and a rhythm… no words, yet, but it’s something about the importance of the familiar. Winter’s a hard time for getting out, for exploring further afield, but what we’re looking for in nature can be found anywhere, and no more deeply engaged with than here, amid the familiar. What it triggers is a mysterious blend of comfort and a longing.

While we eat, we set the camera on our bag, along with the binoculars, breathe deep of the air. So far, I’ve seen no one since the causeway, but suddenly there’s a loose dog coming at us like a rocket, so I make a grab for my gear. I’ve nearly lost a camera like that before. It got my lunch instead on that occasion. The dog gets a call from its owner who’s passing on the track above. I don’t get a glance, let alone an apology. It’s almost as if it’s my fault for tempting the dog by sitting at my ease. I find it strange.

I’m reminded of that story by the Zen monk, Thích Nhất Hạnh, about carrying a cup of coffee. Someone runs into you and you spill the coffee. Why did you spill the coffee? You’re tempted to say it’s because someone ran into you, but the answer is because you were carrying coffee. Had you been carrying tea, you would have spilled tea. Someone bumps into you, and you tend to spill whatever you’re carrying.

The fact I didn’t feel anything in particular is perhaps telling in other ways – that I’m perhaps carrying a cup of low expectations towards my fellow man, which isn’t healthy, but there’s also a fairly robust compass in there that’s keeping me aligned in other ways, at least for now. That poem though? It’s gone. The muse must have given it to someone else. I’m sure they’ll do a good job of it.

We almost loop back on ourselves here, taking the path down to Lead Mine’s Clough, and back to Allance Bridge. Then we’re up Hodge Brow to Morris’s Barn, and across the meadows above the Yarrow to Rivington and the tearoom. The tearoom is packed out and steamy, seemingly the whole world on its pension. Including me of course. We plump for a Kit-Kat and a cup of tea, sit out with it.

That poem though? We trawl the memory, but it’s like one of those dreams that slips away in the morning, and there’s just no bringing it back. It doesn’t matter. I know what she meant, even if I can no longer articulate it. It’s a doorway, I suppose, a doorway to a feeling for what the Welsh have as hiraeth. There is no direct English translation, but the closest I can get is that it’s a longing for the world behind the world, a homesickness for a place you can never return to. The Germans have a similar word, at least one that occupies a similar emotional space: Sehnsucht, this being a longing for a home, a world you’ve yet to find. I guess my poem fell somewhere down the gap between the two.

Anyway, that’s it for now. We leave the tearooms, take the path around the old chape1l. It’s a place heavy with shadow and centuries of moss, but where the sun slices in, by the gates… there are snowdrops.

About 5 miles round, 390 feet of moderate up and down.

Thanks for listening

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Out and about – Gone to Vaughn’s

Posted in out and about, outdoors, philosophical, photography, walking, West Pennine Moors, tagged abbey village, astraea, culture, myth, orion, out and about, photography, ryal fold, scorpio, tockhiles, travel, virgo, walking, writing on January 15, 2026| 10 Comments »

A cold one this morning, and the little blue car refuses to start. Her battery’s drained after a long period of inactivity, and one I’ve largely shared. The roads are heavily salted anyway, so she’s better off in bed. I’m still precious about her, want her to last forever – just a shape in steel and plastic, but I invest her with soul. So, I put her on charge and take the Astra instead. “Astra” means “of the stars”, and is derived from Astraea, last of the immortals to walk the earth – this being at the end of the mythical Golden Age.

Collectively, of course, the year also opens in a sombre mood with news of skies falling everywhere, and it’s been hard to find a voice for that, but also because of it. Many of you will be feeling the weight of oppression, not knowing where we go from here, and neither do I. But Astraea teaches us that while there can be no return to that golden age, that is not to say all is lost. We always have a role to play in restoring, at least in part, the vision of the gods, even though we do not have their blueprint.

There’s a promise of hazy sun, temperatures not much above freezing, so we’re looking at just a short circular walk today, to get us going – a familiar route from Abbey Village, over to Ryal Fold. Last time I came this way was late-summer, and drought, the reservoirs empty. Now, they’re brim-full and shimmering silver in the mid-morning light. The Rake Brook is half frozen, and the water-board road slick with ice, though a thaw has set in along the verges, so we’re still able to make way without accidents. Always, there’s a raw wind here, coming down off the moors.

It’s good to be out again, just me and the camera. Nothing takes the eye yet, but I’m especially wanting to photograph a hawthorn tree in the meadows around Tockholes. I made its acquaintance last year, and felt there was something special about it. It’s hard to say what that is, other than a crack in the curtains of the mundane where a bit of light gets in. Afterwards, we’ll head over to Vaughn’s café for a brew, by which time we should be ready for a warm-up, before making our way back by Rocky Brook.

When we’re out in the landscape, like the West Pennine Moors, we overlay it with our imagination, which can be coloured by feelings arising from our unconscious. If we’re feeling oppressed, the landscape will take on a hard, uncompromising feel. We project onto it. Now, some say the camera never lies. We all know that isn’t true, especially in this age of AI, but a camera can also help us see with a clear eye what the oppressed mind cannot. It can see, and amplify whatever we choose to point it at.

It was the poet Hesiod, writing around the 8th century BC, who first spoke of this Golden Age, a lost mythical Arcadia, looked back upon with a profound sense of aching loss. Ovid picked up the same theme, writing in the early Roman imperial period – that we move through various epochs of declining value – from gold, to silver, to bronze, but always heading into an Age of Iron, the thing that’s going to bring everything crashing down, and rob the very soul from the world. Iron is hard, functional. And cheap.

The plantations are stripped bare just now, only the birch saplings lighting up the undergrowth like flames, where they catch the low, slanting sun. There is neither bird, nor squirrel stirring, and a sense of expectation in the silence. Then I hear a voice behind me, an unbroken string of words, gentle lyrical, deep toned, like an actor projecting. It’s a poem. A cyclist appears, head bent, but instead of being plugged into music, I realise he is listening to spoken verse. I step aside to let him pass, we exchange nods, he goes on his way. I try to catch some of the lines, but the woodland consumes them, renders them secret once more. A curious and slightly surreal moment.

While we shall never see the Golden Age again, we sometimes catch fragments of it, floating though time, coming at us in snatches: art of all kinds – these are its echoes. It’s in a muddy cyclist listening to poetry, and sometimes it’s in the way light falls on trees.

We never actually get to the Age of Iron, of course. It’s more a state of mind that myth teaches us is part of the human condition. It’s always on the horizon, moving out ahead of us. Thus, we are forever travelling from an imagined age of innate value (Gold) to one of a cheaper, soulless utility. This is not to say things do not get worse from time to time, that law does not become uncoupled from justice, that the freaks and the ghouls never assume the levers of power, for clearly they do.

Many feel this as an affront, and rush to resist it. We see it in our social media – expletive laden posts, castigating the oppressor. We see it on the streets in protest. We share our own pain, and the pain of those we know. But there comes a point when this is no longer productive, and indeed might be seen as simply surfing the tide of oppression, simply for clicks. At what point are we sincere in this, and at what point do we risk becoming complicit?

A lone tree is a thing of great charm. Uncrowded by neighbours, we see it in its natural posture, shaped by its locale, and the prevailing weather. Some have a dancer’s grace, expressive and lovely. Others looked startled, some noble, expressive of balance and stoicism. Hawthorn trees can speak of struggle, some of them taking on fantastic contortions, especially in such an exposed location. But this one maintains an air of dignity.

Astraea left us when a Rubicon was crossed, when she saw we were without hope, and he left for the heavens, where she became the constellation of Virgo. In myth, the oppressor was the hunter Orion. Once he took to the field, he killed everything in sight, and the gods had to act before the earth was laid to waste. It was Pluto, guardian of the underworld, then who sent the scorpion to deal the fatal sting. And, once struck by a scorpion, there’s no going back.

I don’t know if the scorpion has struck, but I think we feel something. There is so much bloodshed and suffering, as Orion wreaks havoc on many fronts. Our own Age of Iron, I suppose is characterised by AI and the digital revolution, fashioned, as it were, into the bow and the sling that furthers the hunter’s aim – terrifying weapons, mass surveillance, and the spread of disinformation.

But if the scorpion has struck, there will be an irresistible call for transformation, and an opening to something new.

It’s colder at Ryal Fold. Vaughn’s is pleasantly warm. The lady brings my tea and sandwich, calls me love. That’s another of those cracks in the curtain, where the light floods through: how we choose to relate, not just to loved ones but to strangers. Perhaps to strangers most of all.

The thing with poets, writers, artists – some of us at least, and especially as we age – is we feel such an affinity for Astraea’s approach, see the world as fallen, and would as soon withdraw. But we’re mortal, and therefore bound to the trials of the earth, and the slow workings of its many stories. How we best relate then is not by pointing out what is ugly, nor by beating our chests on social media. But as the times continue to fold back into darkness, we try to remember and seek out what is beautiful – those places where the light still gets in*.

With apologies and respects of course to Leonard Cohen.

About 5 miles round, 235 feet of moderate up and down.

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In the pocket of safe-keeping

Posted in out and about, outdoors, philosophical, photography, walking, tagged ageing, mist, philosophy, photography, walking, winter on December 19, 2025| 8 Comments »

December’s getting on a bit now, the solstice approaching, and with it my sixty-fifth milestone. I’m not sure how old I feel, exactly, though certainly nowhere near so old as that. But then age, and older age in particular, is something that carries a lot of mythic weight. Our western, materialistic society does a lot to avoid mention of it, contemplation of it, even sight of it. We deny it, even seek to cure it as if it were a disease. Our tech-utopians are convinced we’re within reach of immortality, that it is just an AI discovered pill away. And why not, for was there ever anything more revolting to youth than the disintegration of the mind and flesh into the uselessness of old age?

But my sixty-fifth doesn’t feel much different to my forty-fifth, though I hope I’ve deepened a little since then, and therein perhaps lies the clue to ageing. Since the flesh has done the best it can, with what it was genetically given, and has at last begun to reveal its limits, inwards is the only place left for us to expand. So, the writings have shifted in tone, drawn closer to an acceptance of those things I cannot change, perhaps to the role of archivist of our late-world dynamics, collector of symbolic aphorisms – jewels rescued from the dung heap of apparent chaos. I pick them up from where they have been trodden into dirt, wipe them down, hold them briefly to the light, see them sparkle. Then I slip them into my pocket for safe-keeping.

The weather settles in, mostly wet and windy, hardly conducive to taking the camera for a walk. And on those occasional brighter days, I am taken so much by surprise, by the time I have got myself together, the light is already slipping away. Such are the winter months. And then there are the practical domestic problems like how to get one’s washing dry, and why is the boiler taking so long to warm the house?

Then, my good lady, feeling under the weather, finds herself in need of Ibuprofen, so I take the car out, drive across the plain, to the budgetary revelation that is our relatively new Aldi store. It’s already mid-afternoon, the day has settled breathless, cold air over an earth warmed and wet. A pale, spectral mist begins to rise.

There is something ethereal, something mysterious about the way mist behaves. Of course, the science is so well understood, the Met Office can predict it days in advance. Yet to watch it, or be about in it, is to feel something of a connection with the earth, a sense of its aliveness. Then, add to this a low sun, and one’s senses begin to tingle.

There’s a lot of flu around at the moment, which is perhaps why I arrive at Aldi to find the shelves cleared out, and not a box of Ibuprofen to be had. I buy wine and fatty treats instead, and return home, with just forty minutes to sunset. Thus, it looks like the day is run, but the light is taking on more and more the appearance of something magical.

So we make haste, grab the camera, pull on the boots, and set out across the low-lying meadows and ditches of the plain. The mist is patchy and moving, some meadows clear, bathed in the amber of a winter sunset. In other places, the way is dense with fog – fingers of light and shade streaming through the coverts and hedgerows. There is something elemental about it, a blurring of the confusion of peripheral detail. The world narrows, becomes intimate. Personal.

Although I’ve managed to pick up the technicalities of photography over the years, I tend to forget them in the heat of the moment. Thus, a photograph that works is more often a combination of luck, and impulse. Many’s the time I think I’ve got a cracking shot, only to realise the camera is set up all wrong. But then the shots I think unpromising turn out to be the ones I like the most. So, of maybe thirty photographs, I come away with three that I shall archive, memories of a misty afternoon, December 2025, jewels held briefly to the light to see them sparkle. Then slipped into the pocket for safe keeping.

We see the sun down, capture the moment as it’s embraced, set gently to rest by a distant ash. The time of dusk is brief, darkness coming on when we return home. The village is lighting up for Christmas, twinkle light around doorways, garden trees festooned. And there are gnomes on doorsteps holding little banners beseeching Santa to “stop here”. I used to believe in Father Christmas. There’s no shame in it. The world disabuses us of so many magical things along the way, but we would be foolish to stop believing in magic altogether.

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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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