The long winter lockdown months led to many pages being turned. Maybe the time of year, with thoughts of spring and rejuvenation influenced my choice of books. All four had familiar themes; a quest for knowledge, mystery, macabre, and demons. It was a lockdown of literary monsters. Monster is too strong a word for these…
Cumbrian Gods | Cocidius
A sullen sky hung over the land. The mountains had wrung most of the moisture from the clouds, but what little remained now fell on Scaleby. I met the Walkers are Welcome group at Crosby-on-Eden, but we would give Scaleby Castle a miss. Built by Robert de Tilliol in 1307, on land granted by Edward…
Sea to the West – Blinded by Dazzle
By the mid-1970s my natural playground was the slagged cliffs and green-slimed rocks of Workington beach. There was a rent in the cliffs that let you down over the edge, sliding steeply towards a hole in the cliff face and clamber down through a cave that stank of algae and piss, out onto the coal-jewelled…
The Dream, the Journey, the Tears
Ellis Island may be a small dot on the map of west coast America but it is a unique destination for millions of visitors. After welcoming immigrants from all over the world, Ellis Island stands as a poetic symbol of the American Dream. But not for everyone. Between 1892 and 1927, 12 million people passed…
Walton Wood Cottage by Ben Nicholson
October half-term. A long-planned visit to Edinburgh, staying in the Community Hall of Well Court, part of Edinburgh World Heritage Dean Court. These apartments were built in 1886 as a model housing development for artisans and worker families employed by the many mills that dipped their wheels in the Water of Leith. The Water of…
An Evergreen of Contrasts
Mistletoe is an evergreen of contrasts. Its lustrous green and golden globes only fully visible once winter has removed the dead leaves around it. The European mistletoe, Viscum Album is semi-parasitic. It takes water and nutrients from the host’s inner bark yet its own green leaves power photosynthesis. Unhindered by the need for sunlight or gravity, mistletoe…
Carlisle Roman Bathhouse | A Community Digs
Good news at last for Carlisle Cricket Club. A £5,000 Lottery grant will kick-start repairs to flood damage created by February’s Storm Ciara. Five years earlier, Storm Desmond flooded the Edenside cricket ground, but that natural catastrophe created a chain of events that led to the discovery of the 1600-year-old Carlisle Roman Bathhouse. But with…
Jacob Polley, Phill Jupitus and a Jar of Honey.
Back in those heady days of 2009, with the news dominated by bankers’ bonuses and MP’s expenses, the BBC launched a campaign to let poetry into our lives. On 28th January that year, BBC Director-General Mark Thompson announced a deeper commitment to arts and music on the BBC, with a range of initiatives to support…
Thomas West’s Guide to the Lakes Revisited
Maggie Smith was right to insist her room had a view. We pay a premium for hotel rooms with stunning vistas and would Helena Bonham-Carter think Florence so sublime overlooking the Pensione Bertolini’s car-park? Merchant-Ivory’s film of E M Forster’s novel grants us an insight into the Grand Tour, the Gap Year for Victorian well-to-do’s…
A Walk around Wordsworth’s Grasmere
Bring Wordsworth to life on this 5-mile walk through Wordsworth’s Grasmere, visiting the houses he lived in and the poems he wrote. Created from a brief to sell a literary walking holiday through Wordsworth’s Grasmere based at HF Holiday’s Coniston Hotel. A. HAMMERSCAR [Park GR NY 337053. Follow track NE then N to…
Blood on Burnswark Hill
History, for me, becomes most alive when ancient and modern uses are found for the same device. I first realized this when I read about the historical and contemporary uses of the term wall-chalking. During the Great Depression, an estimated 4,000,000 adults left their homes in search of work. These ‘hobos’ roamed the United States,…
The Last Post Of Dunluce Castle
For Game of Thrones fans, Dunluce Castle is a highlight of any Northern Ireland location tour. Perching precariously on the basalt outcrops of the Antrim coast, its dramatic situation, plus a touch of CGI, turned Dunluce Castle into Castle Pike, Seat of the House Greyjoy, in fictional Westeros. For naval researchers, H.M.S. Dunluce Castle is a frequent posting on personnel…