The sound of chiff-chaffs shouting in the woods falls away as I follow the South Dorset Ridgeway upwards to the[…]
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Author: admin
Great crested newt, squashed
It’s the yellow that catches my eye. Bright egg-yolk splotched with black warts, glistening against wet tarmac. Long, striped toes.[…]
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Wanting wild horses – Dark Mountain 13
Nearly seven thousand years ago the people who lived beside the Samara River on the Russian steppes created a cemetery[…]
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Hardy’s ‘red tyrant’ still rules – threshing wheat reed
It takes five workers eight hours to thrash three acres worth of wheat reed. That’s enough to thatch the average[…]
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Numens, ghosts and fugitives
Some places invite responses from the deepest part of the unconscious mind. Dig down through the strata of fiction and[…]
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At the year’s midnight
A winter night in the Marshwood Vale. Written for Dorset Life magazine December issue. The Marshwood Vale is one of[…]
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Exmoor ponies gathered from the moor
A wild ride on Exmoor: A Guardian Country Diary piece on gathering the Tippbarlake Herd of Exmoor ponies. You can[…]
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‘The wild is in us and we are in the wild’
I’m giving a talk at The Other Side near Sherborne on Saturday 11 November. It’s about unearthing buried stories in[…]
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The Empty Countryside
‘Our yearning for rewilding can run the risk of placing humans somehow outside of nature, maybe even counter to it.[…]
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Summer’s sweetness distilled
The honey harvest at Ryall, Dorset. The bees think it’s autumn. Since mid-July they have been reducing their numbers and[…]
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