The Rivendale Review

I’m a bit nervous, parking the car by the wayside here at Roddlesworth. It looks like the cows are gathering at the gate, in the meadow up ahead. It’s a bit early (or maybe late) for milking, but I’m wondering if they’ll be herded down this narrow lane, in my direction. A cow’s flanks can crush the side of a car and not even notice. Anyway, after watching them for a bit I don’t think they’re coming out. I’m just catastrophising – an increasingly tempting response to uncertainty – a kind of capitulation ahead of time.

I blame my Substack feed, which has been growing increasingly hysterical and intemperate of late. If you write on there you have to accept back this tide of stuff you neither wished nor asked for. I’ve un-followed everything of a “current affairs” nature, thinking that was driving the algorithm into depths of despair since – let’s face it – things are pretty desperate at the moment. But if anything it’s made it worse. Unlike writing on WordPress, I can’t control what comes back at me, which is too much of everything: America, Ukraine, Gaza,… And yes, I know all of that is real, and growing darker by the day, but there’s nothing I can do about it directly. And that rubs up all wrong against the natural instinct most normal humans have for altruism – that where there’s suffering we want to help out.

Still, here we are, West Pennine’s again. We’ve had a long cold spell through late May and early June, with lots of rain, but things look to be taking up again. Mid-June and we have a riot of colour in the hedgerows with foxglove and cow parsley, comfrey and campion, also a strong scent of herbs rising with the heat. We’re off over Brinscall Moor today, tracing a little trod way among the lost farms, then an even thinner trace of a route along the upper Hatch Brook, across heather and bog cotton, onto Great Hill.

I’ve been lost on Brinscall Moor, depth of winter, a thick mist, and an hour from sunset, so I’ve been making a point of getting more of a feel for it, over the years. On a clear day like this, you navigate by the trees, knowing which of the various lost farms they’re attached to, and then orienting yourself on the map. I could probably get by on a bad day now, but I’d rather not. Days like this are best, when the views are far-reaching.

The curlews are out in force, and musical. I think they must have young in the grass, and they’re anxious about my intentions. We have skylarks too, and I hear a grouse somewhere. I’ve been reading George Monbiot on the creeping desertification of our uplands – or rather their reduction to a monoculture – namely purple moorgrass, which is about the only thing sheep won’t eat. It’s what gives so much of our moorland that uniform beige colour – sheepwrecked, he calls it. But the moors around Brinscall are green – haven’t seen sheep up here for years now, and I count a wide variety of grasses and heath bedstraw – even some opportunistic shrubs beginning to establish themselves. I don’t know if this is planned or the result of economic circumstance rendering sheep worthless.

Our first milestone is the ruin of Grouse Cottage, and its magnificent sycamores. Then it’s south-east to the fingerpost, and south-west for Popes – just a pile of rubble by the brookside, which we cross by stepping stones. From here we pick up the distant marker that is the stunted beech tree at the ruins of Botany Bay, where we break for lunch.

As a symbol of tenacity in the face of insuperable odds, and terrible weather, the Botany Bay Beech is an inspiration. And we could all use some of that. I have a rummage in the grass for any beech nuts it might have dropped, thinking I could grow one on, but it’s a big tree, a beech – not exactly the sort of thing you’d rear in a pot. Quite a statement though in the back garden, and in a hundred years, it’s not going to be my problem. I pop a couple into my shirt pocket for luck anyway.

Here’s another, slightly more impressionistic shot from several years ago. I think I was trying too hard with the effect. Some say less is more. I don’t know – I do remember the day and the picture sums it up fairly well – gritty sky and squally rain while today is clear blue and blustery, at least on the moor – hot and sultry in the vale.

They’ve erected one of those information boards by the ruin, telling you all about the farm, including a group portrait from the days when it was known as the Summer House. Hard to believe it was a scene of revelry once, a long walk up from Brinscall on a Saturday night, remote and lonely now. Haven’t seen a soul since leaving the car an hour ago.

Another stand of trees brings us to Solomons, then the Far Temple, hardly anything to go on underfoot here – just following the lay of the land as this little isthmus of pastures narrows down to point at Old Man’s Hill. Then we’re up onto the black waste of Withnell Moor with its heather out of season, and contrasting shadings of cotton grass. We can see Great Hill now, the broad green flank of it, and quite intimidating from this angle.

We’ll be picking up the main route from White Coppice shortly, which is always busy even on the grimmest of days. So we slow it down and soak up the sound of solitude. It’s different, out here – silence I mean. It’s a silence woven from a million micro-sounds – distinct from popping on a pair of ear defenders – and then you’ve the sigh of the wind and the curlew, distant now, but lovely.

We rest a while on a stile, take in the wide sweep of the moor, views out to a distant Darwen Tower, beyond to Pendle and Longridge fell. I’m feeling quite done in, actually, and not a bit sweaty. It was a late night last night, writing, researching stuff for the new novel. I thought I’d reached a point in my creative years when the flame was beginning to die down – the last few novels have been difficult, but this one’s writing itself – something daemonic driving it, like a deep and powerful engine. So many threads to chase up, and all of them stimulating. It’s no coincidence, I think, that the year has also been rich in dreams – long may it continue.

I know it’s no solution to the problems of the world, cutting oneself off from the fire-hose of online media, but so few of us are in a position to do anything constructive about it. And to shout all caps in the comments section is the same as shouting at the wind, or worse, peeing into it, and only damaging to oneself.

It might sound overly poetic, but those of you struggling with all of this, if you can cultivate your dreams instead of your social media, it’ll put you in a much better place. I’ve long believed we each have inside of us something that knows best what we need, and we have to find a way of trusting it. Better that than some machine algorithm which treats us as a package to be manipulated and sold on. But the world makes such a noise, it’s harder these days than ever to be a dreamer, and be taken seriously.

Anyway, off we go – picking up that main path from White Coppice and, sure enough, we encounter company, but not the chatty sort. This old beardy gent gives me a blank stare in exchange for my greeting. Funny, he has the look of an experienced rambler, and they’re usually good for a passing chat. Then again, he’s neatly togged out in expensive gear – something ironing-board fresh about him – and looking respectable – he perhaps didn’t think the same about me.

At the cross shelter on the summit, someone’s been to the toilet in one corner of it, so we move on, find somewhere else to snack, and top up on water, and where better than the ruins of Pimms – another oasis of green and soaring sycamores on the moor’s edge?

Things are changing. I’m changing. I read it in the dreams. I remember those early years of retirement, and how they felt like I was on holiday. Four years on and it’s different now. This is the way things are – settling in, and no great desire to make an impact in the world. The big camera gets left behind on trips like this more often than not – having worked the fantasy landscape photographer out of my system. Instead, I take this old small sensor zoom, light as a feather, and just for the blogging, which seems a constant, and still satisfying to me as a way of ordering my thoughts. And there are the books, of course. There will always be books to write, for as long as I can keep dreaming.

Down to the old turnpike now, and the sudden shock of traffic. Pick your moment and run, make the crossing, and plunge back into the cover of Roddlesworth. Here, we follow the run of Rocky Brook, pausing only briefly for a shot of the falls. Never managed a good one of this yet – including today. Look at those purple speckles on the water! Here’s another go, more artistically “imagined” by AI.

And then we’re back at the car, cows still safe in the meadow, doing what cows do, and just the lazy hush of a late afternoon. Silence, again, but somehow different to when we set out.

I’m reminded that even when everything feels like it’s falling apart, there are still places – real places, beyond our screens – where you can go and things still hold together pretty much the way they always have. And then perhaps, each of us, by tending to these inner and outer paths, by way of intention, mindfulness just calming the hell down, we might yet heal the world in all those places it really is coming undone.

Five and a half miles round, six hundred feet or so of ascent.

Thanks for listening.

Play me out, Stevie:

Who else remembers this like it was yesterday?

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